Cleveland Indians: 3 players that COVID might force them to trade

Three players the Cleveland Indians may have to trade as the ripple effect of COVID-19 impacts the economics of baseball.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cleveland Indians were already one of the most fiscally conservative teams in Major League Baseball.

Now, with the novel coronavirus shuttering the economy, no area of commerce is safe, and that includes professional sports.

The way things are going, if baseball does play a season in 2020, there won’t be any fans in the stands, and while MLB has a healthy television rights contract, owners, especially the Dolans, count on yearly sales of season tickets and what happens at the gate.

Remember the Tribe’s run to the 2016 World Series. Ownership profited so heavily from all of the extra games at Progressive Field that the Indians became a rare player in free agency, landing slugger Edwin Encarcancion.

The bottom line is that if there aren’t going to be fans in the stands, the Tribe is going to be one of the most economically impacted clubs in the game. Economic doom will surely be spun as a way to explain moves and transactions fans don’t like or approve of.

It’s not exactly something fans who are out of work, as unemployment rivals numbers unseen since the Great Depression, will want to hear, either.

However, as the Indians and MLB set the parameters to play a 2020 season, here’s three players who may be traded as ramifications from a once in a hundred-years pandemic.