Indians: Letting Tyler Naquin go could be a major mistake

The Indians made the choice to let Tyler Naquin walk instead of going through arbitration with him, making the outfield even more depleted.

The Indians had a big issue in 2020 with trying to find consistency from the outfield as player after player failed to generate any real efficiency. While he didn’t set the world on fire, Tyler Naquin’s insertion into the lineup did help things out. Naquin hit only .218 but was the third-best hitter among the outfield. Only Delino DeShields and Josh Naylor had a better average than Naquin.

So yes, he’s not Mike Trout but he’s still good enough to warrant time on this team. After all, who’s going to replace him? Jake Bauers or Bradley Zimmer? One can only hope, no one is rooting for them to fail but we’ve been down that rabbit hole before. It’s far more likely that they continue to struggle at the plate, so why not keep Naquin?

By no means are the Indians no longer a playoff team without Naquin and with DeShields, fans know that talent can come out of nowhere. Still, at only $2 million a year, it made sense to keep Naquin around. Especially with how limited the Indians will be in 2021 with regards to making moves to improve the team.

The MLB got hit hard by COVID-19 and finances around the league are going to be down. So what’s a team to do when you don’t have money to improve your team? Keep what assets you have.

Granted, the Indians are going to trade Francisco Lindor to someone, and maybe they believe they can get back a prospect and/or a starting-caliber player to come in and replace Naquin. That’s certainly possible, just not something anyone can really foresee.

That’s the big issue with this, is that there are a lot of options and avenues the Indians could go to replace Naquin, it’s just that so many of those options open up so many questions that it’s not reassuring to think about.

Naquin, while average at best, was at least a known quantity. That’s why walking away from Naquin may have been a mistake, because at least with him you know what you’re getting.