Indians Inquire On Freddy Garcia

man, if he was healthy, i'd love to see the Halos pick him up for a year or 2. We could use another innings eater

Hahaha, the Indians just love to do this “sign and wait for him to be healthy incase we can use him at that time” thing. The team have filled half their bullpens some years with guys like that.

I don’t think I would be against it if they go Contract w/2009 option on him, but if they offer something like the 2 year guarantee they gave Aaron Boone then I will be quit upset. (stupid Dodgers driving up the price…) I just hope they don’t get stuck trying to fit a probably less-productive Garcia into the rotation over a kid next year just because they were hoping to catch a steal of a deal, and if there is too much competition this time around, I hope they just pass…

i say the redsox on a minor league deal, if nothing else, for the medical team. it's turing Bartolo around, it can work for Garcia too.

if there is one team that has plenty of pitching its the indians. i dont think this makes sense. they will need pitching next year. they need to play their young starters.

"man, if he was healthy, i'd love to see the Halos pick him up for a year or 2. We could use another innings eater"

Thats like saying "man, if Mark Prior was healthy, he'd have won 3 Cy Young's by now." Its just kinda worthless, because he's not healthy, and likely won't be for a while. And the last thing that he would be is an innings eater.

And honestly I think this would be a really odd move by the Indians. They already have a set rotation of veterans in Sabathia, Carmona, Westbrook, Byrd and Lee, and they have a good stable of young guys that are pretty much MLB-ready in Jeremy Sowers, Aaron Laffey and Adam Miller. Why would a team thats ran so well think its a good idea to take starts away from those young guys so they can trot out there a hobbled Freddy Garcia? I don't get it..

two reasons why the Indians would do this scribble. One, it never hurts to have a surplus of arms. And two, they've been taking in injured players to their minors for years now. It's been pretty much come to our minors, rehab all you want without pressure and then if we have a spot for you we'll move you up to the majors, if not we'll release you so you can catch on somewhere else. They did it with Boone, Elarton, Rivas and tried to do it with Clement and Mulder. It's all part of their effort to run a classy organization where people want to play.

Notice the guys you listed though, Boone, Elarton and Rivas. Those guys all pretty much suck. The guys who managed to get major league deals, Clement and Mulder, were actually good players when healthy. The same can be said for Garcia. I seriously doubt he would sign a minor league deal to toil in the minors if he could get a MLB deal in July from some pitching starved team. I still think it'd be a dumb move by a very, very well ran front office.

All of you who are wondering why the Indians would even consider this-

You do realize this is the team that sent Francisco back to AAA so that Dellucci can play LF instead, right?

whoa whoa whoa krambo, its not like this is the Dodgers. They let Sizemore, Gutierrez, Cabrera, Peralta, Carmona, Sabathia and all these other guys play when they were all really young. You can't complain about the Indians playing veterans over young guys. Not when they won 96 games and practically made it to the World Series last year.

“You do realize this is the team that sent Francisco back to AAA so that Dellucci can play LF instead, right?”

You mean the guy with less than 70 ML PA resulting in a .303 OBP last year wasnt chosen over the guy with the 125 OPS+ average over his last two healthy seasons? How could they…

Really, there are probably a couple reasons DavidD was chosen:
1) Proven vs Untested ~ the Indians are competing afterall, and have youngsters at many positions already.
2) Salary vs TimeClock ~ you are paying DavidD no matter what, you really want to waste a year of BenFrans time with the club on top of that cash just incase he happens to be more productive?
3) Power vs Speed ~ Cleveland needs the power threat bat more than another speedy type.

Scribbles right, this team is nothing like the real offenders here and this is actually more a case of “how many kids do you expect us to carry?” instead of “don’t want to carry kids”

yeah, what he said.

Dellucci's best years for "power" were hitting 17 and 29 HR in Texas, during which time his batting average was mired around .250. The Rangers play in park very favorable for hitters, not to mention the fact that he was probably on steroids. How is he possibly a power threat? Did you see how feeble he looked last year?

“Dellucci's best years for "power" were hitting 17 and 29 HR in Texas”
…Not true. His best year for “power” was 2006 when he was with the Phillies. The .530 SLG tells us as much…

“during which time his batting average was mired around .250.”
…BA doesn’t mean much, its OBP that is really important. His OBP was .342, .367 and .369 the previous three years leading up to 07. Well, .360-ish would have been good enough for 4th on our team…

“The Rangers play in park very favorable for hitters”
…True, and you can say that all day. Only problem is, well it doesn’t mean he benefited from it. His Home vs Away numbers look like this from 04-06 (his time with Phi & Tex in hitter-friendly parks)
04 Home ~ .260/.342/.453/.792
04 Road ~ .216/.341/.424/.765
(-.027 OPS ~ hardly much difference there)

05 Home ~ .240/.354/.485/.839
05 Road ~ .262/.382/.545/.927
(+.088 OPS ~ hum, interesting…)

06 Home ~ .289/.366/.555/.921
06 Road ~ .294/.372/.507/.879
(-.042 OPS ~ little difference, but…)

3YR difference between Home vs Road = +.019 OPS on Road… oops, huh? So, despite the fact that the “Rangers play in park very favorable for hitters”, Dellucci was a better hitter away from that (and the Philly) stadium…

“not to mention the fact that he was probably on steroids”
… fact-less, tasteless, childish accusation with nothing to support it. If you were attempting to show bias, you succeeded ~ if you were trying to make an actual argument, well this sentence ruined it and showed where your true feelings lie…

“How is he possibly a power threat?”
…Uhh, the fact that he hit 44 2B, 11 3B and 59 HR in 1030 AB from 04-06, that’s a .494 SLG% and a pace of 24 2B, 6 3B and 32 HR (62 XBH overall) over a 562 AB season. The .494 SLG would have been the second highest on our team last year to only Martinez. VMart had actually had a 562 AB season last year (why I chose that AB total obviously), and provided 40 2B, 0 3B and 25 HR (65 XBH overall), ~ do you also think Martinez isnt much of a power threat?

“Did you see how feeble he looked last year?”
…Did he have a reason? Oh yeah, major injury ~ that’s right…

Listen, I’m not a big Dellucci fan myself, but come on... If healthy and producing something like a .270/.360/.500/.860 line ~ well, no one would be complaining if that was the case. I love Francisco, but DavidD is the no brainier choice here.