Cleveland Indians: Should they inquire about Cubs’ Soler?

Should the Cleveland Indians try again with the Chicago Cubs for Jorge Soler? After signing Dexter Fowler, now might be the time to strike.

Suppose your neighbor goes out and buys a new car.  After you get over being jealous, you notice that he still has his old car, but it sits out in the driveway and hardly ever gets driven, and it seems more than anything else to just be in the way.  Now suppose that a week later your car dies, and you are not in a position to buy a new car, possibly because you spend too much time reading sports blogs.

Now you look at that car parked in your neighbor’s driveway and wonder if he would like to sell it.  In fact, it’s quite likely that the two of you can agree on a price because, at this moment, the car is worth more to you than it is to him, so any price that is less than the car’s value to you and more than its value to him would make both of you happy.

These situations happen in baseball all the time, but teams need to work to make them happen.  For example, the Cubs just signed Dexter Fowler to a contract.  Now, there’s no way to know all the factors that went into such a decision, but what can be safely surmised is that Jorge Soler is now the car sitting in the driveway.  Maybe the Cubs expect to use four outfielders, or maybe Kyle Schwarber will spend a lot more time at catcher than we expected, or maybe the Cubs are just so freaking rich that they don’t have to worry about it.

Regardless of which of these is true, there is no denying that Soler has less value to the Cubs than he did a few months ago, when there were rumors that the Indians were asking for him as part of a Carlos Carrasco deal.  It may be that the Cubs have no intention of trading Soler, or that their price tag won’t change much, but if they were completely enamored with Soler they had no reason to sign Fowler.  It is worth a phone call to find out, especially in light of the suspension of Abraham Almonte, which renders a perilously thin outfield situation even worse for the Indians.

Just because Soler might not be the answer in Chicago doesn’t mean he couldn’t help the Indians.  Small market teams need to take advantage of situations where large market teams undervalue their players.  James Loney was run out of Los Angeles because he didn’t hit home runs like a typical first baseman, but Tampa Bay valued him for his defense and ability to make contact, and he helped them make the postseason in 2013.  Brandon Phillips is an example that strikes close to home.  Half of Oakland’s roster has been somewhere else and found lacking, and the A’s were a perennial contender until last year.

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So I would make the call.  Maybe they laugh at you.  Maybe they still want Carrasco.  But maybe they have decided that Soler will never work out and they would take, say, Cody Anderson.  Why would the Indians want Soler if the Cubs have lost interest?  Because sometimes teams are just wrong, and if another team is aggressive and opportunistic they can take advantage of that.