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Bad News-Good News: Cleveland, Betts and Pederson

There are two sides to every story. For some, there is a third side: your side.

For every piece of news that breaks around baseball, someone is affected. Teams, players, and fans bear the brunt of every decision made. Generally, ripples made by one move can reach every team in the league. That is where we come in.

'You gotta see both sides,' as the online adage goes, and nothing is binary. There is an equal and opposite reaction to everything, with plenty of gray area. With that comes some positive and some negative from the perspective of the Cleveland Indians.

This is Bad News-Good News.

News: Mookie Betts, David Price, Brusdar Graterol, cash, and a 2020 Competitive Round B draft pick traded to Los Angeles Dodgers; Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong traded to Boston Red Sox; Kenta Maeda and cash traded to Minnesota Twins.

Bad news: It does not really matter to the Indians if the Dodgers got better, which they did. The Red Sox are worse off for the 2020 season. The Twins, after an already solid off-season, added to a pitching staff that sorely needed another high-end pitcher.

Granted, Twins President Derek Falvey had to sign off on dealing top relief prospect Brusdar Graterol in the trade, a potential three-pitch closing candidate down the line. Minnesota seemed dead-set on trading the 21-year-old, and there were likely reasons why they soured on him.

The righty had Tommy John surgery in 2016 and dealt with shoulder injuries in 2019, as well. Paired with a high-velocity sinker, a pitch that has seemingly led to arm injuries over time, Graterol is a bit of a risk.

Either way, a young reliever was only going to help Minnesota so much in 2020. With a long-term commitment to Josh Donaldson set to provide the most value in its first two years, the Twins are looking to capitalize on their youth, and leverage the AL Central while the Indians recover and before the Chicago White Sox grow.

Maeda is just 31, with 589 innings under his belt over four years, racking up 9.6 WAR. The righty generally only saw lineups twice through with the Dodgers, with occasional turns out of the bullpen when LA's rotation was fully healthy. Former Dodger and current Twins lefty Rich Hill was employed the same way by Dave Roberts.

With Michael Pineda set to serve most of his 60-game suspension to start the year, Minnesota needed more help behind Jose Berrios and Jake Odorizzi in the rotation. The signings of Hill and Homer Bailey will bring a veteran presence, but without Maeda, Rocco Baldelli simply did not have enough pitching to match his potent offense.

Good news: For everyone saying that the Indians should deal Francisco Lindor this winter to capitalize on his two years of control, the Betts trade shows why not to.

Boston was able to secure a talented prospect in Downs, who profiles as a strong hitter up the middle who can field his position. To fill in for Betts, they received Verdugo, a talented outfielder who has shown an above-average bat over 158 career games. Verdugo also has five years of control remaining.

If you had to imagine the right package for an Indians trade of Lindor, would it not include a young, controllable outfielder, and a young, controllable middle infielder? Perhaps Downs is further away than Cleveland would wish for in a Lindor replacement, but this was a trade for a player in Betts that had a single year of control at a premium price. Boston also made it conditional on a deal for Price, covering half of his $96 million owed through 2022.

If anything, this proves Cleveland correct in their reported asking price of both Dodgers mega-prospects Gavin Lux and Dustin May. It also says that on a one-year rental, with no salary albatrosses attached, Cleveland could still get quite a return for Lindor. Hopefully, such a deal would not be as complicated as the Betts trades, but deals for megastars often are.

With Lindor still onboard, the best news of all in the Betts trade is that the sidecar deal that would have sent Dodgers outfielder Joc Pederson to the Los Angeles Angels has since fallen apart. Just like the trade of Betts, the world got to see what such a trade would look like.

The Angels were set to receive Pederson and right-handed pitcher Ross Stripling in a deal for infielder Luis Rengifo. The move was another attempt from the Dodgers to avoid the luxury tax threshold, sending close to $10 million to their cross-state rivals (Stripling will make $2.1 million in his first year of arbitration this season, while Pederson makes $7.75 million in his final year.)

If any competitive team has a need for Pederson, it is Cleveland, who could have the perfect platoon partner for Jordan Luplow.

Yet the two main hang-ups in an Indians trade for Pederson would be salary-related. Obviously, the Indians are hesitant to add salary, but if they truly had an interest in Yasiel Puig at $6-8 million, Pederson at $7.75 would be a no-brainer, even with the (dependent on Santana's contract.) Adding a controllable Stripling at $2.1 million would be a coup.

But the Dodgers are no longer desperate to shed any salary, as the Betts deal pushed them beneath the luxury tax. It is not as if Pederson does not still have a platoon spot with Chris Taylor in the Dodgers outfield. He may not be dealt at all unless LA is looking to get below a certain number.

As for the player dealt for Pederson and Stripling, Rengifo, what role he served in the trade was unclear. 23 at the start of the season, Rengifo is currently a glove-first infielder who has speed, a developing bat, and just 147 days of service time.

If it is a controllable backup infielder that the Dodgers need, Cleveland could cut ties with Christian Arroyo, Andrew Velazquez, or Yu Chang. Given the financial implications they are trying to avoid, Chris Antonetti could talk the Dodgers down to Ernie Clement if they are truly set on shipping Pederson away.