Post 40 man roster analysis

First, if anyone is reading this raise your hand.

OK.  Let's continue.

The obvious Indians prospects to be added to the 40 man roster were added.  I haven't found an analysis and don't have time to do one but let's postulate that the Indians were not the worst or not the best at protecting prospects from the Rule 5.  

The Indians left a lot of dead weight on their 40-man roster.   I used to get bent out of shape about this but many times those guys are just placeholders in case of a free agent signing or a trade where more guys come back then go out.   So, this is a great wait and see time.

Looking at the Nick Goody DFA, you likely have to disconnect the dead weight from what happened to Goody.   Letting Goody go meant that keeping him as a placeholder didn't make sense to the Indians and, rather, was something else.   We will see what his DFA meant as time goes on.

I have to be honest, the prospects who DIDN'T get protected are not that great of prospects.   The best of the bunch, Ka'ai Tom, is, at this point, a one year wonder.   The rest of the guys are either too early in their career or are not high draft picks or guys with big tools.   I can't be too mad at the Indians as they generally know what they are doing in these situations.

That DOES NOT mean the unprotected guys will still be with the Indians after the Rule 5 draft.   Anyone who says they really can predict who will be picked in the Rule 5 is likely blowing smoke up your butt.   No one really knows who will be drafted.   If someone asked me to guess, I guess the Indians will lose 1 player in the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft and there will be at least one surprise loss in the AAA phase.   That surprise, of course, would be that whoever we lost was not able to be protected on the 38-man Columbus reserve list.

I will end this post by talking about Mark Mathias.   Very interesting trade as one would guess the Indians suspected they would lose him in the Rule 5 and so got a rookie league catching prospect as a consolation prize instead of just the $100,000 if some team drafted Mathias.   The reason it is interesting is this sort of trade is not normal in my experience at this time of year. My only thought here is that the Brewers told the Indians they were going to draft Mathias but that it would be to the Indians advantage to trade him now as compared to maybe getting only cash if Mathias was drafted.   Given that I rated Mathias and Tom roughly the same in terms of susceptibility to being drafted, it will be interesting to see if Tom is drafted.

Time will tell and we should get a much better look about the time spring training starts.