We are at a crossroad. Which direction do we go

OK, some of you probably thought we would be at this point now.

Here is how we got here:

1. Ownership's mandate to cut salary

2 Management's plan to build this team around starting pitching and the bullpen, hope the hitters left could shoulder an increased load and hope that young guys could break out or veterans obtained on the cheap could be better than expected.


3. The belief by many that no team in our division was even good enough to break .500

4. Something would have to be done to win in the playoffs but exactly WHAT that was would be determined during the season.

So where we are now can really be summarized with these two sentences.

(a) The hitters haven't been able to do the job

(b) The Twins are likely going to finish above .500

Soooo, people are pushing the panic button or are getting comfortable with the fact that we may not make the playoffs this year due to the Twins overachieving and the fact that our plan is not working out.

The big question is: do we pull the plug on this season right now or at the trade deadline.

To me, the resounding answer is NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, I don't have stars in my eyes and think all of a sudden the world is going to turn upside down and the Indians will magically find a spark that pushes them back to the top of the AL Central.

But have a firesale?  Well, everything is aligned to say that this is the LAST thing we should be doing.  Here's why

a. Trevor Bauer has minimal trade value at this point.  What, you say?!?   Well, Francona overused him at the beginning of the year, starting all the way back in spring training.   A case can be made that Bauer may never again be the same as he was last year.   Francona has, potentially, DustyBaker-ed this guy into being so undervalued that we might as well keep him and hope that his arm is not so damaged by this extreme workload that he can recover.   But with his past flaky history, his overuse early in the year and the poor performance recently, no team is going to meet the Indians asking price for Bauer and, frankly, the Indians should not be backing off the asking price they had for Bauer this past winter because the trade of Bauer better net us quality position player prospects of the type we got in the Joe Carter deal (i.e., Sandy Alomar, Jr. and Carlos Baerga)

b. Corey Kluber has minimal trade value at this point.   Kluber was a big question mark BEFORE his arm got broken.   The story is the same as Bauer's.   Kluber could have been viewed as damaged goods BEFORE the injury and teams that wouldn't meet the Indains' price during the winter certainly won't meet it now.

c. Mike Clevinger and Shane Beiber should NEVER be traded.  If we are rebuilding they are young, controllable pieces.  If we are trying to contend now they are young, proven quantities.   They are exactly the guys you keep no matter which way you are going.

d. Jose Ramirez is untradeable.  No need to explain this one.

e. Carlos Santana is tradeable but a defensively challenged hitter who prospers only when he can DH part-time is not very valuable and, in his case, he is more valuable here than as trade bait, even if we cash in our chips for this year.

f. Brad Hand should NOT be traded.   If the Indians are going to compete for the rest of this year and for next year, Hand has to be their closer.  We can always trade him next July and get as good value as we can get now.

g. Francisco Lindor should not be traded now.  Look, this one is emotional to me but trying to look at it objectively, you just don't trade the face of your franchise before you have to.  He is not eligible for free agency until after the 2021 season.   If you are even THINKING about trading him it should, as with Hand, not be until July next year.   Trading him now really means that everyone on the roster is available and, as we said above, most of the better players are untradeable and the ones that aren't are too young to be traded.

h. Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar are not worth enough to trade right now.   Now Carrasco has looked good lately and in a perfect world  we could afford to lose one of Bauer, Kluber or Carrasco.   But this is not a perfect world as we stated above.   If Carrasco was a Cy Young candidate this year we might still think about trading him and gamble on the rest of the starters coming back into form.  But since he likely won't yield what we were asking for for Bauer last winter, no since giving him away.   Salazar might have been the perfect trade chip to get us help at the deadline but he is not untradeable.

h. Our other bullpen guys and remaining position players are not worth much and, as such, are untradeable.

Basically, if you are re-tooling or rebuilding you can't do it with this roster as it is currently performing.  You either can't get enough back or you can't afford to trade guys in case you can compete next year.

As far as 'going for it'/'being all in' and trading prospects to get back in the race, our farm system is so thin right now and frankly no one has stood out the way Mejia did last year as guys are either hurt, underperforming or are so far down in the minors they don't have enough value to trade at this point.

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