Cleveland Indians shuffle off-season team line-up – MLB News
After a disappointing 2011 season, the Cleveland Indians started to shuffle their roster in this off-season for a better start in 2012. They won a total of 80 games and lost 82 in the regular season while their winning percentage remained below at .494.
So far, the Indians’ management has made two roster moves when they removed Mitch Talbot and Jerad Head from their 40-man roster and created space to bring in a couple of more players for next season.
Talbot and Head will both now opt for free agency, which might not perform as well as expected. Talbot’s 2-6 record with a poor 6.64 ERA average and a .344 opposing batting average proved lethal for his individual stats and led the Indians to decide not
to include him for next year.
Jerad Head, who played his rookie season this year with the Indians, also could not show any extraordinary performance. He played a total of 10 games and averaged .125 with a single RBI.
According to some recent reports, no one in the Indians roster was sure as to whether removing these two players will make any positive impact or not as three very important players from their roster are already out due to injuries. Carlos Carrasco along
with Josh Tomlin, Michael Brantley and Shin-Soo Choo had suffered bitter injuries in the regular season which have threatened their chances to make a comeback next season.
Dropping Head and Talbot has shaped other speculations regarding Grady Sizemore and starting pitcher Fausto Carmona who played their last contractual year with the Cleveland Indians. Now, the Indians’ management will certainly think to pick Sizemore’s and
Carmona’s last season’s options to maintain some stability in the team.
Last season, the Indians struggled to bring a potential player at first base, the outfield and at the starting pitcher position but these late roster moves will try to help the Indians address these problems more efficiently. Though, many baseball experts
have mentioned in several reports as these are still very minor roster moves, but at the same time they accepted that these two changes are groundwork for the Indians before Spring Training.
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