Cleveland Indians: Analyzing this week’s roster decisions

The Cleveland Indians made multiple roster moves this week ahead of the Rule 5 Draft deadline, including a couple of surprising ones.

The Rule 5 Draft deadline passed Monday night and as expected, the Cleveland Indians added multiple players to their roster.

In total, the Indians protected four players from the draft: Yu-Cheng Chang, Willi Castro, Julian Merryweather, and Eric Stamets.

They also added Rob Refsnyder after claiming him off waivers.

The additions of Chang, Castro and Merryweather were no surprises at all. As talked about Monday, they were all very much expected to be added for various reasons.

Chang is one of the top prospects in the Tribe system and it would have been a shock of epic proportions for him to be have been left off the roster. Outside of Francisco Mejia and Triston McKenzie, one could make the case that Chang has the most trade value of any prospect in the system. Can’t risk losing that.

Castro isn’t quite as developed as Chang but wasn’t far behind him in terms of needing to be rostered. He is not a top-five prospect in the system but he could be a top ten guy on many prospect rankings this offseason. He was hot prospect even before the breakout 2017 season.

Merryweather is a guy that I would not rule out seeing in Cleveland at some point in 2018. He is a starter but could pitch out of the bullpen if needed like Mike Clevinger has at times the past two years. Even if he’s not needed, he’ll provide depth behind a stacked rotation along with the likes of Adam Plutko and hopefully a healthy Cody Anderson.

The addition of Eric Stamets was a bit of a surprise to me though not a total shock. Stamets was acquired back in July 2015 from the Los Angeles Angels for David Murphy and was listed as a “longshot” to be added to the roster on Monday.

He’s a good defender at shortstop and can play all over the infield. He had a very nice year with the bat as well hitting a combined .259 with a .798 OPS between Akron and Columbus. The Dublin, Ohio native was even named our top minor league position player for the month of May.