From the folks at IPL, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year. We’re very thankful that you’ve read our work in 2012, and we hope that the Indians give us a great season to write about in 2013. (We’ll still enjoy blogging, regardless of what happens).
Santa and his reindeer (i.e. the Rally Cows) hope you had a great day.
Hope all you guys at IPL had a great Christmas too. Hope Santanelli’s gifts end up being good ones this summer when we take them out to play!
I had a great Christmas, although I nearly ate myself to death! I hope they’re good gifts, and not like when you were a kid and your new favorite toy broke a month after you got it.
The best Christmas present would be a competitive Indians team. The funny thing is that they are only a DH and SP away from having a complete team of legitimate players. Maybe not a champion with all-stars at every spot, but no fringe players or 4A hangers-on either. With the STO sale complete, the team has money. Signing a pitcher and a hitter to round out the team is very realistic and would make the team worthy of watching again. Wouldn’t that be something?
It would be! I was at the airport today and there was one of those Cleveland + ads. It said “believe more” and said Indians under it (I’m guessing they sponsored the sign). It was like it was imploring me to have more faith! I even took a pic, but I don’t think there’s a way to post it into comments.
A bit off topic, but speaking of DHs…I’m a little surprised nobody grabbed Hafner yet. Not that he’s spectacular, but I still thought someone would give him a few million for a year or two since the market was kind of nuts this year.
There are a lot of things working against Hafner. He can’t play the field at all, which eliminates the entire NL. Plus, many AL teams are shifting away from a full-time DH and prefer to rotate position players through the DH spot. Lest we even talk about the injury risk. Has the guy played as many as 100 games in any of the last five years? So now you need two DHs, Hafner and someone to replace him when he gets hurt. That’s a lot of lineup flexibility lost for someone who hasn’t topped 13 HR in five years either. I like Pronk, but he’ll be lucky to get a guaranteed offer. I see him going back to the Indians for $1M or retiring. If the team spends money on a free agent SP, a million is about all they’ll have left for a DH anyway so it’s a fit. If they want to spend 5 or 6 million, they can go after Hairston or Young, but then they probably won’t have money for the pitcher they desperately need.