Indians Notes: Free Agent Targets, Marte

2010 is a season of low expectations for the Tribe. A good 2010 would include:

1. Kerry Wood pitches well and the Indians find a suitor at the deadline w/o having to eat any salary.
2. Westbrook is healthy and can be dealt for quality prospects at the deadline.
3. Peralta rebounds and is dealt which is why Marte should be retained as a placeholder for Chisenhall.
5. Hafner's shoulder is better and he earns his keep.
4. Belcher manages to fix Carmona and return him to form.
5. One or more of Masterson, Carrasco, Huff, Laffey or Sowers develops into a solid middle of the rotation contributor.
6. C. Perez, J. Todd and other new acquisitions stabilize a miserable bullpen including R. Perez finally looking more like himself.
7. Shapiro resists any delusions of competing in '10 and stays away from the free agent market.
8. Newcomers M. Brantley, M. LaPorta, L. Marson, J. Donald turn out to be the real deals.
9. C. Santana is up by the break and helps everybody forget about the loss of V-Mart.
10. Sizemore is healthy
11. Choo finally gets the recognition he deserves and a contract to buy out his arbitration years and beyond.

If the Indians are trading Shoppach, Omar should look into it. Any ideas on what the Mets should give?

If the Mets trade for Shoppach, they would need to give up young pitching. Perhaps a developing closer? (Keep in mind, I have no knowledge of the Mets or Indians farm systems, I'm just going on what their major league teams look like.)

That said, I think the Brewers might want to give him a shot. He's only signed for another year, right? If that's true, we could use him as a stop-gap until Jonathon Lucroy is ready to come up and start.

I think the Mets, Jays, Mariners, Marlins, Blue Jays and Reds might be logical landing spots for Shoppach. I hadn't thought of the Brewers. I'm terrible at proposing trades, always over or under valuing players, so I resist it. A guy like Oscar Puello from the Mets, Maikel Cleto from the Mariners, Markus Brisker from the Jays, Brad Hand from the Marlins or Wily Peralta from the Brewers would be great but, like I said, I'm terrible at this. The Indians have lots of other nice pieces to offer with Shoppach as a package. If the Indians could offer Shoppach a contract and accept whatever arbitration salary he would be granted they could package Shoppach, Westbrook and Kerry Wood at the break, maybe add a Matt McBride type and get a nice young group of players.

Boy, Travis Hafner's deal is an albatross for a non-contender:

2010: $11.5M
2011: $11.5M
2012: $13.0M
2013: $13.0M
2014: $13.0M option /$2.75M buyout

Anyway...

It will be interesting monitoring the progress of Lou Marson, Carlos Carrasco, Jason Donald, and Jason Knapp this year. Guessing the Phillies are ok with the Cliff Lee deal, but the Indians could come out looking ok here too.

how about the mets trade a used ball bag for shppach and his .214 BA

Or let's compare '08 lines:

Schneider: .257/.339/.362
Shoppach: ..261/.348/.517

Shoppach is a slugger and while he didn't have a good '09, he is what's called a "buy low" opportunity.

On another front, Noah Lowry is the kind of pitcher the Indians already have out the wazoo. I fail to see the point.

im a phils fan and beleive me in a year or 2 marson will be very good i saw him play