Great Regular Season!

From an organization and affiliate standpoint, a great season for the Indians' minor league affiliates as5 of the 7 domestic affiliates make the playoffs and a 6th, Columbus, falls short by a half game after an end-of-season losing streak.

Winning in the minors may or may not correlate to winning in the majors but it is better than losing in the minors, for sure.

Here are some general thoughts without statistical backup for any of this:

• The Indians seemed to not use an extraordinary number of rehab guys or use the rehab guys they had, in Arizona or Mahoning Valley for extended periods of time to artificially make those teams stronger and get cheap wins that way.   This helps validate that the winning records were built on age-appropriate players.
• The Indians seemed, up and down their system, to use age-appropriate players.   Sure at AAA they have to use some minor league veterans but very few minor league veterans were used at AA and even fewer on the A league teams.   Again, I sure these numbers exist but my gut tells me the Indians did not manufacture wins for their minor league affiliates by stacking lower minors teams with older players.
• The Indians promoted guys at a good rate.   Beiber is a good example.   He could have spent half the year at AA and half the year at AAA and no one would have blinked.   Other guys either were promoted or were not promoted because they lost time to injuries.
• The Indians did not have a lot of superstars on these teams, just good solid prospects that their coaching staffs developed and turned into winners.

I think whenever you have teams with winning records in the minors it is a good thing.   It was a little disappointing that Columbus didn't make the playoffs in a year when the AAA championship will be settled in Columbus but, truth be told, it wasn't like the roster was gutted during the season as guys who started there mostly ended up there and some of them after stops in Cleveland.

I am a stats guy and so I have limited excitement about the minors except that I love the game in the minors and guys in the minors turn in, sometimes, to guys in the majors.   I will address this latter point later but, for right now, let's sit back and enjoy our 3 remaining teams in the playoffs and congratulates all the teams and their staffs in the minors for one of the best years in Indians' minor league history!