Standing Pat

In Anthony Castrovince's latest mailbag (you do read the best team blog online, right?), he mentions that Mark Shapiro more or less said that the Tribe blew it's wad of cash by signing Kerry Wood. What this means, basically, is that all remaining holes will be filled either internally, or through trades.

Since we can (and will) speculate until the cows come home about trades, let's work under the assumption that the Tribe is, officially, done, and that our line-up next year will be determined by Spring Training. Sound scary? Well, it's not quite as bad as you might think.

The addition of Kerry Wood (and Joe Smith) actually, on paper, gets this team to the post-season. Last season, the Tribe had 51 save opportunities and converted 31 of those, blowing 20. If Wood helps the Tribe pick up even 10 more saves (and realize that Borowski had just 6 last year) -- and you add that to our record last year -- we're 91-71, first place in the AL Central.

And what about our offense? The Tribe actually ended the year with the 6th most runs in the AL, although the Twins, White Sox, and Tigers were all ahead of us. But that was a year without Hafner (who, even if he was off in '07, still drove in over 100 runs) and basically without Martinez. With Shoppach getting extra at bats and the return of Martinez and (hopefully, but not neccessary for those numbers to remain the same) Hafner, the Tribe should be fine in the offense department. And, not to be mean, but the less at bats lost to Marte and Gutierrez will help, too.

So, then, what about fielding? The Tribe finished 9th in fielding. Moving Peralta to third will probably be a wash, but shouldn't drop our team score. Cabrera at short will most likely raise our score, and I would imagine any combination of Carroll/Barfield/Valbuena will hold even at second. The Garko/Martinez combo at first should stay the same and the Martinez/Shoppach combo will hold steady. Our outfield, while losing a great player in Gut, will still feature Choo (with a cannon of an arm), Sizemore ('nuff said) and Francisco. Should be pretty good.

Clearly, I'm willing to make a lot of assumptions here. Where, then, is the big concern? I think that's pretty obvious: our rotation.

There's no way we can count on Lee to repeat what he did this past year. That would just be insane. I have no idea which Fausto Carmona will show up. Anthony Reyes looked good in his few starts with us, but that assume he can a) stay healthy and b) maintain that production. Which leaves us with two open spots in the rotation, at least until mid-season, assuming (a big assumption) that Jake Westbrook returns and pitches like we all remember.

The upside is that we have a number of guys competing for those two spots, so we should, in theory, be able to get good people in there. The downside is that they're all really young. The list includes Aaron Laffey, the good Jeremy Sowers, the bad Jeremy Sowers, David Huff, Scott Lewis, the Zach Jackson for four good innings, and the Zach Jackson for one bad inning. That's five guys and two spots, which should make for some nice competition.

Given how the season ended, odds are that Lewis will make the cut. I would expect Laffey to win the other spot, unless Sowers has learned how to be consistent or Jackson has learned how to beat the one bad inning which always seems to ruin him.

Not unlike 2007, we're going to need a young arm to step up the way Fausto did if we're really going to make a run at it.