As the Indians take part in pitcher fielding practice, beat reporters work on their golf swings on dry Arizona courses, and Mike Chernoff plays catch with his dad, Indians fans enter spring training disquieted by a passive off-season. Yet, even as Indians fans note how cheaply talent like Todd Frazier could have been added or note the risk of picking up Michael Brantley’s option, there exist expectations, World Series expectations.

These expectations are reasonable, coming off perhaps the best rotational performance experience in history, the Indians have lost none of their starters, the bullpen remains anchored by Cody Allen and Andrew Miller, two of the 15 best relievers in baseball over the past five years, and a solid position player core is headlined by MVP candidates Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez. Further, the Indians have really nice depth in some areas at AAA Columbus with uber-prospect Francisco Mejia waiting in the wings, Eric Haase providing additional catcher depth upside, Greg Allen waiting in the wings to play Center Field, as well as Yu Cheng-Chang and Bobby Bradley closing in on big league readiness. This Indians team is one of the most star-studded teams in baseball and worthy of championship expectations.

Never the less, due to the reality that I have written about every single Indians player on the 40 man roster multiple times over, my focus for a moment is not on the 2018 Indians but rather what comes later. Further, the 2017-18 off-season may be easier understood if the future is contextualized.

Time to face the issues, for 2019 and 2020, as of now, Indians fans have little expectation that Cody Allen and Andrew Miller will return following the 2018 season. This appears to alter the Indians expectations in that the playoffs, and increasingly baseball in general, are heavily influenced by bullpen quality and the talent of arms a team has pitching in high leverage situations in October. If both Miller and Allen were to leave the Indians would shift from one of the three best high leverage reliever groups to perhaps the worst of any expected playoff team. But the Indians are not only losing Miller and Allen, they also should expect both Michael Brantley and Lonnie Chisenhall to leave Cleveland. Below are the players/money headed out the door following 2018:

Courtesy of Spotrac

Excluding the non-guaranteed deals for Upton/Hanigan, though I expect Upton to be picked up, the Indians will clear roughly $40 million in commitments. Further, the salary escalations are pretty minor, with Kluber, Carrasco, Ramirez, Perez, others all locked in for pretty modest raises via contracts and Francisco Lindor hitting his first year of arbitration eligibility. The Indians current contract commitments through 2022 are listed below:

Courtesy of Spotrac

Of course, the base total payroll allocations can be projected between $105-$110 million based on arbitration types like Cody Anderson, Nick Goody, Francisco Lindor, Danny Salazar, and Trevor Bauer. As well as the league minimum allocation to the remainder. Based on this year’s payroll, that would provide the Indians with roughly $25-$35 million in flexibility and perhaps additional expenditures can be expected.

Kevin Kleps of Crains Cleveland has reported that the Indians have climbed to the middle of the pack in MLB revenue rankings taking in $271 million in gross revenue in 2018. Further, the segment the Indians have the most influence on in terms of revenue, ticket sales are increasing yet again for the 2018 season:

There are three ticketing segments — revenue, total tickets sold and dollars per capita (gate receipts divided by paid attendance). Each of the three are broken into seven categories — overall tickets, season tickets, full season tickets (81-game purchases), partial season tickets, groups, mini plans and single-game tickets. The Indians’ year-over-year numbers are up in 19 of the 21 total categories, and are down in just one (mini plans in the dollars per capita segment).

Even 5-10% payroll growth to sit comfortably at $145 million secures $35 million in flexibility for the Indians to revamp parts of their roster for 2019.

With that flexibility let’s look at the projected roster for 2019 and what potential adjustments could be made to protect the juggernaut.

Projected outfield: Brandon Guyer, Bradley Zimmer, Greg Allen,

Projected infield: Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, Jason Kipnis, Yonder Alonso

DH: Edwin Encarnacion

Starting Rotation: Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer, Danny Salazar, Mike Clevinger

Bullpen: Nick Goody, Cody Anderson, Tyler Olson, Dan Otero,

Catcher: Yan Gomes, Roberto Perez,

Pre-Arb depth: Yandy Diaz infield/outfield, Francisco Mejia infielder/catcher , Eric Haase catcher, Tyler Naquin outfielder, Shane Bieber RHP, Bobby Bradley 1B, Yu Cheng-Chang, Triston McKenzie, Willi Castro, and Julian Merryweather. There are a couple other fluff arms and bats but this is the depth worth considering.

Barring injury, the Indians will not need infield help or substantive rotation addition outside of perhaps an innings eater to cover Salazar injury risk. The two massive holes for this team moving forward are back-end bullpen help and starting outfielders.

For this the Indians will have the roughly $30 million in financial space as well as their other major commodity, young trade assets, if the Indians cannot fit Mejia behind the place or in the outfield, he can be the centerpiece to a trade that remedies an outfield corner for the long haul.

As for financial flexibility, time to look at potential 2019 free agents with the following caveat, the free agent market may be becoming increasingly efficient for teams like the Indians. The luxury tax ceiling is being treated like a hard cap, which has forced major market teams to protect cap space in ways similar to NBA teams attempting to court Lebron. Further, the impact appears most heavily on the middle class of free agents.

If you are looking for a good to impact reliever this is an ideal off-season for a couple of reasons. First, there is way more reliever talent entering the 2018 market than the 2017 market: Zach Britton, David Robertson, Cody Allen, Craig Kimbrel, A.J. Ramos, Andrew Miller, and Kelvin Herrera all hit the open market. As well quite a few solid 7th inning types like Brad Ziegler, Brad Brach and others will reach the market.

It warrants saying, however, each of the above has their flaws, Britton specifically with injury risk, but that is a ton of reliever talent. If the Indians can grab David Robertson for 3/$36 million or one of the others outside maybe Ramos for an annual average value of roughly $14 million and then add a one year $6 million type deal for Ziegler, they could rebuild the bullpen with roughly $10 million in financial flexibility remaining.

Of course, the Indians can also shift Danny Salazar to a bullpen role, preferably the Chris Devanski role, but as theoretically interesting as that deal is, his experience of pain cropping up when shifted to the bullpen suggests it is not a fit. But, the Indians continue to behave as if Salazar to the bullpen is the last resort and that is the right approach. With that in mind, the bullpen expenditures are necessary.

While the outfield market is top heavy with Bryce Harper, Yasiel Puig, Charlie Blackmon, A.J. Pollock all scheduled to hit free agency, the Indians could add a second-tier outfielder for roughly three years at an annual average value between $10-$15 million with a guy like Marwin Gonzalez, or late career plays on Andrew McCutcheon or Adam Jones.

While the flexibility and annual average values may be low or sound optimistic, the 2018-2019 off-season looks to be ideal for teams looking to add complementary players. With Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, Josh Donaldson, all hitting free agency at the same time, as well as the imposing nature of the luxury tax, mid-level players will be squeezed a bit, offering value to the Indians ability to find complementary pieces. Further, with numerous teams tanking and not even playing in the free agent pool, there is a narrowing pool of competitors for mid-level talent to put around Lindor-Ramirez-Kluber-Carrasco-Bauer.

The Indians can hide the loss of losing one of Andrew Miller or Cody Allen by paying $12-15 million for one of the top end guys and maybe even retaining one of those guys at that rate. With the remaining financial flexibility and prospect capital, adding a complementary outfielder or two should not be a difficulty.

This can all blow up, Kluber, Lindor, Carrasco, Ramirez, any one of them could go the way of Grady Sizemore but having flexibility for a loaded free agent class in the time of the luxury tax gives the Indians an excellent opportunity to maintain there position as serious World Series contenders in 2019 and 2020. The Indians have a lot of elite talent under contract through 2020, a system with the parts to add long-term pieces, and the financial flexibility to take advantage of next off-season. There is a window but it is not shutting on the Indians fingers just yet.