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No Lucroy, but Miller trade is special for Tribe
- Updated: July 31, 2016
CLEVELAND — Leverage is a powerful tool, one that can have applications on the October stage and one that can have implications in the midseason trade game. On a wild Sunday morning in the summer swap market, the Indians dramatically improved their late-inning leverage with the addition of Andrew Miller, while simultaneously suffering the effect of Jonathan Lucroy’s contractually negotiated trade leverage.
Timing is a powerful tool, too. Had no news leaked of the potential Lucroy deal, which Lucroy himself reportedly vetoed, and the Miller swap been the sole Sunday storyline, the Tribe would be heralded as having acquired the market’s biggest trade chip given the value of a dominant back-end presence and the two-plus years of control attached to Miller’s left arm.
As it stands, what happened here will be viewed as a .500 finish, of sorts. But while a Miller/Lucroy two-fer would have been a sure stunner, don’t let anybody tell you the Indians didn’t just pull off something special.
Miller was no lock to be moved. Mere days ago, in fact, it was the gut feeling of multiple front-office evaluators that he wouldn’t be moved, that the Yankees, having rattled the relief market with their impressive haul for two-plus months of Aroldis Chapman, would keep his price tag so astronomically high as to make it impossible for an actual deal to get done.
Well, what the Indians gave up for Miller was astronomical, especially relative to their market size and need to build from within. And that point was not lost on their two-time World Series-winning skipper or the guys in the clubhouse.
“It’s costly,” Terry Francona said. “But I think our team deserves the chance.”
The cost: The Tribe’s No. 1 prospect, per MLBPipeline.com, in outfielder Clint Frazier, as well as their No. 5 in left-hander Justus Sheffield and No. 30 in right-hander Ben Heller. Right-hander J.P. Feyereisen also went to the Yanks.
Frazier might have rated as Cleveland’s great red-headed hope, a right-handed hitter with …
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