Indians: 3 players from the Eric Wedge Era who we wish played today

If you could bring three Eric Wedge Era players to the 2021 Indians, who would it be?

The Indians could use some help right now. The minor leagues have some great talent but none that are really ready to make an immediate impact. The free agency market is dead and the trade market hasn’t really picked up yet. So what would you do if you could do anything to improve the team?

Why not borrow from the past?

Thinking about it the other day, the Eric Wedge Era of Indians had some players that fit in perfectly with Terry Francona’s 2021 squad. During that stretch of 2003 to 2009, Wedge’s Indians weren’t world-beaters, mostly due to bad draft picks and bad trades, but the talent they had were top-notch and had some of their bigger names lived up to their contracts and not gotten hurt, who knows what the subsequent years would’ve looked like.

So in this exercise, we’re going to pick three players from that Eric Wedge Era and bring them to the 2021 Indians squad. There’s a catch though. Instead of just cherry-picking the best players possible we’re going to look at the current crop of players. The rule is though that if you call up a player at a position, from the mid-2000s, then that position player in 2021 is removed from the team.

So if you call up Casey Blake, you lose Jose Ramirez. This will be applied to the pitchers as well, with the ace of the team, the second starter, the third starter, etc being applied based on performance and talent. Same thing with the bullpen.

Honorable Mentions:

Rafael Betancourt, Shin-Soo Choo, and Victor Martinez were all considered as well. The bullpen is fine as it is, so since we only had three spots we thought bigger picture. Choo would develop into a good player but wouldn’t put it together until Manny Acta took over the team. Martinez was in strong consideration but the 2021 Indians are a pitching-first team, and Martinez was never that great of a defensive catcher.