DFAing Haase and other topics

It's past midnight and Dec. 30th and Francisco Lindor is still a Cleveland Indian.  On a northern Ohio sports weekend like we just had, any non-negative news is good news!

A blip on the bad weekend news is that the Indians DFA'd Eric Haase to make room for Cesar Hernandez.   I am sure that there is an analytics guy or team of analytics guys somewhere who are sure this was the best move the Indians could have made.  Not sure if Haase is out of options but, even if he is, this is still not a good move.

•  We have 9 outfielders on our roster.   We may keep 4 or 5.  One, Greg Allen, has become about 4th on the list of CFers, utility outfielders.
•  We have 3 utility infielders.   We probably will keep 1 and be able to send one other to AAA.
•  We have 12 or 15 relievers, depending on how you count Plutko and whether you count Hentges and Mejia of which two of them, Maton and Hoyt, appear to be AAAA lifers.  And that's without the typical January and February minor league free agent reliever signings.

However, at this point, we had only 3 catchers on the roster and exactly zero catching prospects in our system above low class A.   That is ZERO.   

Remember that even if we made a deal with Haase to keep him if he clears waivers he would still need to clear waivers for us to keep him.  Not likely with the perennial state of catching in baseball but I am sure those analytics guys are somewhere smiling, saying it doesn't matter if we don't keep Haase because he is not above replacement level.  I don't buy that because I value prospects and guys brought up in an organization more than the AAAA flavor of the month.  

There is no way that Haase was the fluffiest player on the 40 man, not by a long shot.   But he did have one distinction.   On the roster with 9 outfielders and 15 potential relievers, and 3 utility infielders, Haase was the only guy on the roster who was clearly the "next man up" at his position going into spring training. Doesn't matter that his position was backup to the backup catcher,

there had to be a better guy to DFA.  Had to be.  The roster breakdown shows this.

But, somewhere, analytics guys are giving each other high 5s while watching reruns of Big Bang Theory.   Remember, the word 'analytics' starts with "anal".   Never has that been more clear than this off-season, at least for the Indians in the makeup of the bottom of their 40-man roster.