The Indians are expected to finalize their deal with free-agent slugger Edwin Encarnacion this week, Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer reports. The sides reportedly agreed to terms on December 22, but have yet to announce the pact formally.
Encarnacion, 33, is set to arrive in Cleveland tomorrow and take a physical on Wednesday. Assuming all goes well with the medicals, he’ll be introduced as the newest member of the Indians on Thursday. His agent, Paul Kinzer, says that he doesn’t expect any issues given Encarnacion’s solid recent health history.
Of course, the market has surely already absorbed the soon-to-be-official signing, which seems to take Cleveland out of play for other significant bats while forcing other pursuers to consider alternatives to Encarnacion. Still, we’ve yet to see any appreciable uptick in the action on the many remaining sluggers, none of whom have agreed to terms since the signing.
The next man up could be Mike Napoli, who had been in conversation with the Indians about a return before the Encarnacion agreement. He has been tied closely to the Rangers, but it seems that other organizations remain in the hunt as well. Other still-unsigned power bats who fit the same general profile include righties Mark Trumbo and Chris Carter as well as lefty hitters such as Adam Lind, Brandon Moss, and Logan Morrison.
This is a great signing for Cleveland…they just made it to the World Series and instead of blowing it up and resorting to what most small market teams do, they went after another piece to get them over the hump…it’ll be exciting watching them this year to see if that translates into another deep post season run
championship
you’re right, the Cubs will repeat
The Cubs could barely beat the Indians with them missing Brantley, Carrasco, and Salazar. Add Encarnacion who is replacing a guy that didn’t hit at all in the playoffs (Napoli) and you have a team that can beat the Cubs. Not to mention the Cubs have not gotten better by subtracting Fowler, Chapman, and Soler. Davis and a full season of Schwarber and Jay aren’t making the Cubs any better
Yup. My money is on Cleveland this year.
Love this logic. Why play the season then?
Lol someone sounds salty.
And….7 game sample sizes from last year have 0 bearing on what will happen in the future, so any talk of them “barely beating” the Indians is pointless.
It’s baseball, anything can happen in a 7 game series, we see the better team lose in a series all the time.
This is a good move for cleveland. I don’t know what brantley’s future holds with that shoulder or if their pitchers can stay healthy, but they are a good team. Also, Lindor is awesome.
Instead of making a stupid comment like that why don’t you just explain reasoning.
3-1
Those youngsters in the Cubs just got one year better, however, I don’t think they’ll survive another WS with Maddon at the helm….unless he makes some changes to his managerial ‘style’. That’s just my personal opinion.
LOL at saying Schwarber doesn’t make the Cubs any better. Without him, they don’t win the World Series.
It’s also interesting how Indians fans are so sure Brantley will return to form. Shoulder injuries are typically very serious and continuous. He was “supposed” to be healthy this year too and see what happened.
The majority of the Cubs’ starters on offense had no more than two years of experience. Lots of the Indians best players have already reached their prime, while all of the Cubs’ young players will likely improve this year. Plus, we will have a healthy Schwarbs and will definitely get a better season from JHey this year.
Young players’ production doesn’t just increase as they continue to play. Production bounces around a fair amount. For example, I would’t be surprised if KB doesn’t repeat his 8.4 war season. I’m not sure where this idea that young players will just continue to get better each year as they age comes from, you simply need to look at a players stat sheet to see how variable production is from year to year and it doesn’t follow strictly that with age they get better each year.
If Davis doesn’t hit a HR off of chapman, his only one ever given up as a Cub, his moves all worked to his liking. The theme of this years playoffs was to use your ace reliever as much as you possibly could. To say that maddon will prevent them from winning another series is moronic.
I agree that you do whatever it takes to win but I think everyone can agree that maddon may have used chapman when he didn’t need to, when they were up 5 runs. Why not use someone else, let the starter give up 1 more run then go to the pen but they won the WS so who cares, it’s irrelevant. If they lost then he could be blamed but they didn’t
His biggest mistake was using chapman in game 6
Hey Genius name me a world series champion who won a game 7 who also “just barely” beat the other team. Its called winning a championship moron. You do not get anymore brownie points for winning in 5 or 6 nor does a 4 game sweep make you a better champion then a 7 game winner. Depends on who you are playing and of course it all has zero to do with next year since no team is guaranteed to get back to the World Series. You gotta earn it next year
Well said Santospinky!
They got nothing out of him last year or their starting catcher Yan Gomes, so obviously anything out of them is a plus over last year. Add in Carrasco, Salazar and Trevor Bauer being healthy and there is reason for optimism. Especially considering they were within one run of being World Champions.
@JKB It’s funny that you resort to name calling. I’m sorry you vocabulary is so limited. I really hope your team’s World Series championship solves all of your life problems.
I wonder if Toronto can swing a deal for Cleveland to take Shapiro and Atkins as well.
I’d add Aaron Sanchez to the deal to make it happen
No thanks, they’ve done a great job in Toronto.
Please explain? All they’ve done is add a few veteran pieces other organizations didn’t want. He inherited AA’s team, overpaid for Morales and to retain Smoke. He added some prospects which are exactly that at this pt. They’ve done nothing in their time in TO.
They’ve made trades that turned out amazing in which they gave up nothing for Benoit and Grilli. The Liriano trade was genius. Signing Happ/Estrada instead of Price. If you’re so po’d at them for overpaying slightly for a bench bat, I don’t know what to say. And I liked AA, but are you telling me he hasn’t overpaid? Martins contract will likely be bad in 3 years. Tulos contract will be bad in the end. He depleted our farm in which the new front office has grown back with the additions of Gurriel, Zuech, McGuire, Ramirez. This Shapiro/Atkins thing is such a stupid narrative. They’ve had an unfair start ever since the way AA left.
It’s basically the same system as when Shapiro was the Indians’ GM, just with more payroll. Coming from a smaller market team, his focus is on drafting and development, with free agency being a bonus.
His first several years with the Indians were spotty due to poor drafting and ownership not wanting to spend on top-tier free agents. But once he had the right people in place in amateur scouting, he and Chris Antonetti (now the Tribe’s PBO) were able to build a solid core through the draft and by making smart trades.
Now that he’s in the Blue Jays organization, he has greater capacity to supplement via free agency and take on large contracts when necessary. Mind you, he’s not tearing down and rebuilding the major league club, he’s applying small-market business tactics in order to make the franchise profitable and allow the team to have sustained success.
You do realize that E.E could have a bad year like Heyward did and Brantley still isn’t ready and the Cubs did get better but it is hard to follow up an offseason where you sign Heyward Zobrist and bring back a guy like Fowler. Solar was the odd man out with Schwarber Heyward Jay Almora Jr. Zobrist and were able to get Davis who instantly replaces Chapman and they also signed Koji who will be solid for them. The Cubs are build to win and compete for many more years. Cleveland just waisted money on E.E who isn’t getting any younger and will prevent them from making big signings when they need to in the future.
He’s only signed for 3 years which fits pretty well with their likely window of contention with their pitching staff
I wouldn’t compare EE with Heyward any day of the week (speeches not included lol) but the concerns about the Indians should be there with Brantley and also nobody seems to be talking about the Jose ramirez as a regression candidate. I expect the Indians to compete for sure but a lot of question marks on the position player side to balance out possible health of their elite pitch.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Tyler Naquin and his 411 babip regress too.
Prevent them from making big signings? They don’t make any big signings so outside of EE they wouldn’t have made any anyway._
You’re ascribing this idea that’s fun to do as fans: the next season is going to play out exactly as the last season did, and this time Cleveland will have the advantage because all its pitchers will be healthy, a full healthy and productive season from Brantley, etc.
Of course, the chances are highly unlikeley botht these teams or either of them play in the WS again in 2017. They are probably the two best teams on paper, but lots of WS have been won by teams not the best. Short-season playoff series are a total crapshoot. The Cubs, for example, barely squeaked by a clearly inferior Giants team in last year’s NLDS, even though the Cubs were by far the best team in baseball no matter what way you want to measure that.
Cleveland will breeze through the AL Central, obviously, but I doubt Brantley is healthy and productive the whole season. Shoulders are tricky things. Carrasco’s injuries were a bit fluky, so maybe he manages to stay healthy, I’d put less stock in Salazar. Schwarber was a fluke injury too, if the Cubs can figure out a position for him he should have a good season. Dude can flat-out hit. The Cubs, because of their massive payroll advantage over Cleveland, have a lot more depth. Cleveland has a couple superstar-level players (Lindor and Encarnacion), joined by a superstar level pitcher in Kluber and the best reliever in baseball, although Miller will have to be used a bit more conventionally during the season.
And the Cubs did improve a bit in specific areas. The downgrade from Fowler to jay/Almora is big but not a yawning gap. Uehara is still, basically, the hardest pitcher in baseball to get on base against. A full season of Contreras as catcher will provide a lot more offense than the Cubs enjoyed back there last season.
While it would be fun to see these teams match up again next October, this isn’t the NBA, where the two best teams are clearly better than everyone else. It’s quite possible it’s the Dodgers and Red Sox next season. Or the Nationals and Astros.
Well said.dc74