All season, Cleveland’s weak spot has been their bullpen—though, really, that’s far more polite a description than the situation deserves. Their relief corps hasn’t been so much a weakness as a festering sore, continuously putting the entire team at risk. For weeks, baseball’s safest deadline bet has been that they’d make a move to bolster their ‘pen. Now, they’ve finally done it, trading to acquire San Diego’s Brad Hand and Adam Cimber. But they paid a high price to do so. In exchange for the pair of relievers, Cleveland gave up 22-year-old catcher and top prospect Francisco Mejia.
Cleveland has the most comfortable division lead in all of baseball, but that’s a product of how dreadful the AL Central is far more than it is one of how well this team has played.