Cleveland Indians: Grading the roster by position, post-trade deadline

Grading the Cleveland Indians roster by position, post-trade deadline

The Cleveland Indians were able to pull off four trades at the deadline, letting go of six players while adding three to the organization. Most of the additions will add to the club’s minor league pool, but could all be contributors within the next few seasons. While the additions will go a long way to help the future of the organization, it hurts now.

Letting go of major league talent hurt the Tribe’s current roster, but the upside is we’ll get to see a sample size from other players who are coming up through the organization. This isn’t how we necessarily wanted the season to go, but for a young team that is still progressing, there’s worse outcomes.

With the roster changes, we’ll take you through the entire roster by position group and give each position a grade. Not all saw changes from the trades, but the team will have to have a different approach as a whole the rest of the season.

Cleveland Indians Catchers

In today’s baseball climate catchers are either strong defensively or strong offensively. There are few in the game who can check off both. For the Cleveland Indians both current catchers, being Roberto Perez and Austin Hedges, check the defensive box.

For where the organization is, this is the focal point that is needed. With such a young pitching staff, having a defensive-minded catcher who can think through games is a must. Just go take a look at the starting pitcher splits since Perez returned. It’s a night and day difference, especially for Cal Quantrill.

While offensive production would be nice, the current duo of catchers is providing what the team needs at this stage in the process. Once the pitchers become a bit more experienced then the organization can sacrifice a bit of the baseball IQ for talent at the plate. However, right now the defensive side of the game is what this team needs and that’s what Perez and Hedges provide.

Grade: C

Cleveland Indians Infield

The infield for Cleveland is a bit of a mix-and-match of good and bad right now. We’ll start with the good and there really isn’t a better place for that than Jose Ramirez. The starting third baseman for the Tribe has actually had a down season by his standards, but unfortunately that still has him as one of the club’s best players this year. He’s also historically better in the second half, so stay tuned.

Beyond Ramirez, there’s been bright spots. Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the rise of Amed Rosario at short. Rosario had a tough beginning to the season, but once he transitioned to his natural position at shortstop the rest of his game fell into place. He doesn’t have the best glove for short, but he’s still young.

In a similar fashion, Bobby Bradley has began to emerge lately. His slash line is a bit lower, but the power he brings to the lineup has been a huge plus, especially when batting near Franmil Reyes to protect him a little bit. As Bradley gets more experience in the majors hopefully the strikeouts will go down and the average up, but the power is a nice addition.

The hole in the infield is now clearly at second base. As we highlighted in our internal candidates to take over, basically no one has experience at second base. For that reason, this spot really brings the whole group down a bit.

Grade: B

Cleveland Indians Outfield

Since we just ran a story on how the Tribe will address the outfield – found here – we’re not going to do a deep dive back into essentially the same players. For the full analysis of the position, take a look there.

For the purpose of this, the jist is that the Cleveland outfield is just a question mark right now. There’s favorites, but no definitive answers just yet. Of all the positions, the second half will be the most important to this group.

Grade: D+

Cleveland Indians Bullpen

The lifeblood of the Cleveland Indians this season has been the bullpen. When the starting pitching started to go down, they were the ones that were able to hold the fort for at least a little bit. While the unit has fallen flat more frequently recently, they’ve still been solid for most of the season.

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Despite moving Phil Maton at the deadline, the bullpen is still the strongest point of the team. Bryan Shaw, James Karinchak and Emmanuel Clase are able to lock down the last three innings more times than not, which has been able to take some of the stress off the starting rotation. Even arms like Blake Parker and Nick Sandlin have found a role.

Like the starting rotation, this unit should improve when Bieber and Civale return. We’ve already started to see the improvement as the current starters have been able to go deeper into games. Once the rotation gets a boost, less pressure will be on the bullpen to eat innings.

As a unit, the bullpen has a 3.63 ERA this year, nearly two full runs fewer than the starting pitching. The bullpen has also been averaging 10.8 strikeouts per nine, more than two strikeouts more than the rotation.

As I’ve said, this is the team’s best strength right now and should only get better as the rest of the roster comes around and the pressure decreases.

Grade: A-