Over the weekend, Cleveland made a point of locking up another one of their young core players, signing Jose Ramirez to a five-year, $26 million contract that gives him significant guaranteed income in exchange for control over his first three free-agent years. Ramirez joins Corey Kluber, Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley, Yan Gomes, Carlos Carrasco, and Carlos Santana as members of the team’s core who have signed long-term deals with the club before reaching free agency, and Cleveland’s ability to get these guys signed before they get expensive is one of the reasons they were able to sign Edwin Encarnacion to be a $20 million DH this winter.

Cleveland isn’t a traditional big spender in free agency, but with so many players signed to early-career contracts, they had the flexibility to be a buyer this winter, and they took advantage of it. While they’ve done a lot of things right, this is one of the primary reasons Cleveland has built a contender out of a modest payroll and a farm system that hasn’t generally been ranked among the game’s best. The thing they’ve done very well is develop good players from guys who weren’t considered great prospects, and then get them signed long-term as soon as possible.

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Previous editions: AL East / NL East.

Opening Day is just over the horizon, though we have to navigate the remainder of the World Baseball Classic and the entirety of March Madness first. In the meantime, let’s continue our look at the upcoming season, with the third of our six divisional previews.

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Three years ago, seven major-league position players who had yet to reach salary arbitration agreed to contracts with their teams, conceding multiple free-agent seasons in the process. Most of those deals have turned into bargains: Matt Carpenter, Jason Kipnis, Starling Marte, and Mike Trout have all played at a high level since then. This came one year after Paul Goldschmidt and Anthony Rizzo signed contracts that have proved to be incredibly valuable, as well.

In the last two years, however, just four players have signed similar extensions. There are quite a few potential reasons, the most likely being that players are more reluctant to sign deals that give away free agency so easily. It’s also possible that teams haven’t found as many potential candidates who are worthy of a long-term investment.

When I looked at potential extension candidates last year, I noted that there weren’t a great many players who were ideally suited for extensions. Only Gregory Polanco and Kolten Wong ultimately signed extensions, so my hypothesis seems to have been accurate. Teams have made up somewhat for lost time this winter, though, as players like Ender Inciarte, Carlos Martinez, and Wil Myers — all of whom were mentioned as candidates last year — reached extensions this offseason. The guarantees doled out by the teams — in particular, the $83 million to Wil Myers and the $51 million to Carlos Martinez — illustrate why signing players to extensions before they reach free agency is much more advantageous for the teams. While the deals for Myers and Martinez could still prove to be bargains, compare the figures they received to the deals signed by position players in the three previous offseasons.

All of these players signed away two — or, in some cases, three — years of free agency in exchange for a decent guaranteed contract. While a couple years might seem like just a small delay to free agency, teams generally received a 60% surplus on every dollar invested in contracts like these, and the recent extensions seem unlikely to break that pattern.

Most of these guarantees are around $30 million or so, which is significantly less than the deals for Myers and Martinez that were signed one year along in service time. Players take a significant risk by turning down money between their second year and third year in the league, as they have to play that season on a near-minimum salary. Once they hit arbitration and benefit from the security that comes along with a million-dollar contract, there’s less incentive to take a guarantee, especially with free agency just a few years away.

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The Indians have had a successful offseason, as noted by Craig Edwards last week and they kept winning the offseason on Thursday, agreeing with left-handed reliever Boone Logan on a one-year deal with an option, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal.

Entering Thursday, Cleveland had only one lefty in its bullpen, albeit perhaps the game’s best left-handed reliever in Andrew Miller. Now they have two who can miss bats, and presumably Logan can fit a matchup role that will free Miller to be used in a more versatile manner by Cleveland manager Terry Francona.

Last season with the Rockies, Logan held left-handed hitters to a .139/.222/225 slash line and since 2014 he’s limited lefties to a .236/.330/.392 slash line.

Francona said earlier this winter he didn’t just want any lefty added to the bullpen, he wanted an effective one. And according to T.J. Zuppe, Logan was on the Indians’ radar last trade deadline.

Logan didn’t make the cut of FanGraphs’ top-50 free agents this offseason, but he did come in at No. 50 on at CBSSports and ranked 37th according to MLB Trade Rumors. So for Cleveland to sign Logan in February to a one-year deal with an option seems like a winning transaction for a club, which is projected to win the AL Central and return to the postseason.

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Sit ’round the fire, children, and let me tell you a tale. Once there was a man named Wily Mo Peña. He did things like this.

Wily Mo could hit the ball just about as far as anyone. He didn’t make contact very often, but when he did, the ball flew as if someone had set off a brick of C-4 behind it. Wily Mo Peña was a human launching pad, but a flawed one. In 1,845 big-league games between 2002 and 2011, he accumulated just 0.4 WAR. That’s because Peña generally can’t play defense, and he doesn’t walk very much either. He’s a one-trick pony of the highest order, a poor man’s Dave Kingman. It is not surprising that he took his talents to Japan. There he thrived. Now, he has returned.

After taking 2016 off, Peña has signed a minor-league deal with Cleveland, and there’s a clause in his contract that stipulates that he can make $700,000 if he makes the big-league team. He’ll serve as an insurance policy for Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Santana, given that both sluggers are over 30, though he’ll need to contend with Chris Colabello. Peña should be adequate as a stopgap DH should the big club need him. Ken Rosenthal reports that he and Encarnacion are close and that Cleveland signed him after watching him work out with Encarnacion.

This is a move of little to no significance. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Wily Mo Peña plays a crucial role for Cleveland during the playoff push, to say nothing of imagining a Wily Mo Peña home run winning a World Series game. Peña is a dinosaur sort of player from a bygone era. He is a 90s’ kind of slugger in a younger more athletic game, a game in which the man who led the National League in homers in 2016 may have to retrace Peña’s steps to Japan.

Sports are entertainment, though, and we should celebrate that we may once again be entertained by Wily Mo Peña. Goodness knows the fans in Japan did.

It would be surprising if Peña got more than 150-200 plate appearances with the big club, if any at all. We can only hope that we’re blessed with even just one more massive home run. He may be capable of peppering the massive scoreboard at Progressive Field. All that remains to be seen if he’s given the chance to do so.

Money still matters in major-league baseball. Sure, the small-market, low-payroll Cleveland Indians just made the World Series. And, sure, the small-market, low-budget Kansas City Royals won the World Series the year before, after making it the previous season. And while, sure, the relationship between money and wins did seem to be going down for a time, the capacity to spend has consistently helped a team’s chances — and, last season, the relationship between wins and money was quite strong. This is a generally troubling trend for a team like Cleveland. Nevertheless, the club has done very well to capitalize on the free-agent market and put themselves in good shape for next season.

While it might not be fair to say that Edwin Encarnacion fell into the team’s lap, it would be appropriate to note that, at the beginning of November, the prospect of Cleveland being able to afford Encarnacion didn’t seem realistic. Right after the World Series, I mapped Cleveland’s path back to the playoffs and presumed more modest intentions:

Cleveland doesn’t need to sign a load of free agents to contend again next season, and the expiring contracts of Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher serve as a reminder of what can happen when a club gives out multi-year contracts to middling players. Many of the pieces are already in place, and a few minor additions should bolster a roster ready to compete. With the Detroit Tigers sending signals they want to rebuild, the Kansas City Royals’ run potentially closing, the Chicago White Sox mired in perpetual mediocrity, and the Minnesota Twins licking their wounds from a very tough 2016 season, the Central division will be Cleveland’s to lose — and it might not take as many wins to get to the playoffs next year.

I mentioned names like Carlos Gomez, Matt Holliday, Austin Jackson, Jon Jay, Adam Lind, and Mike Napoli as players Cleveland could add to good effect. Instead, Cleveland went out and signed perhaps the best free-agent hitter available and had to commit only three years to do it. While the recent signing of Austin Jackson won’t make waves, he provides more flexibility in an outfield that could be usefully mixed and matched to provide average production despite a handful of seemingly below-average players. Against a right-handed pitcher, Cleveland can send out lefties Michael Brantley, Tyler Naquin, and Lonnie Chisenhall, while against lefties, they can sub two of those three for Austin Jackson and Brandon Guyer, maximizing the platoon advantage.

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While perhaps not universally accepted, it is generally acknowledged that Ozzie Smith is the greatest defensive player of all time. With 13 Gold Gloves at the most important defensive position that doesn’t require extra equipment, his ability to generate outs was second to none. Back when we had few defensive stats, eight times Smith led the league in assists and still has the record among shortstops with more than 8,000 in his career.

Omar Vizquel was not quite Ozzie Smith as a fielder. He did receive 11 Gold Gloves. He also played in 200 more games at shortstop than Smith, which is the record, and he’s third all-time in assists by a shortstop — around 700 behind Ozzie. Vizquel comes up on the Hall of Fame ballot a year from now, and he’s likely to be regarded as nearly, but quite, Smith’s equal as a defender.

Being nearly as good as Ozzie Smith might be enough to get Vizquel in the Hall of Fame, given just how good Smith was, but there are considerable questions regarding Vizquel’s bat.

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Rob Kaminsky got off to a rocky start in 2016. His delivery compromised by a balky back, he put up plenty of clunkers. Over his first 10 outings for Double-A Akron, the Cleveland pitching prospect allowed 30 runs in 45 innings of work. He also spent time on the disabled list. All in all, Kaminsky was a wreck.

Then things turned around. Buoyed by mechanical fine-tuning that accompanied his rehab sessions, the young southpaw was a stud from mid-June onward. In his last 17 starts, Kaminsky allowed two-or-fewer runs 14 times. Over that span, which included the Eastern League playoffs, he hurled 103 frames and saw just 30 runners cross the plate.

Despite his rebound — and having pitched the entire season as a 21-year-old in Double-A — Kaminsky is going in the wrong direction with regard to prospect rankings. He’s plummeted all the way to 26th on Baseball America’s Indians list after coming in at No. 9 a year ago. Our own prospect guru, Eric Longenhagen, has Kaminsky 14th, which is six spots lower than he was 12 months ago.

How did the 5-foot-11 left-hander’s season unfold, and what looms in his future? Here are answers to those questions, courtesy of Kaminsky himself, and Dave Wallace, who was his manager in Akron.

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Wallace: “If I had to pick one story from this year — pick a specific player — [Kaminsky] would be it. He was absolutely our bulldog down the stretch, and in the second half in general. But in the first half, there were some games that weren’t pretty. He had some significant delivery adjustments that needed to be made. And they weren’t easy.”

Kaminsky: “I would have benched myself, with the first half I had. Everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. I was pitching terrible, and I was pitching hurt. But there were some days I actually felt alright and still got hit around, so it’s not something I can completely blame on the injury. I need to take some ownership of my performance.”

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Andy Marte died in a car accident in his native Dominican Republic. He was 33 years old. Yordano Ventura died in a separate car accident in his native Dominican Republic. He was 25 years old. Those are the facts, and those are the ages, but the ages are presented as if they mean anything. Any lost life is a life lost too early, and there exists no formula to calculate a level of sadness. The baseball community is in mourning, as it has been too many times.

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It’s true that, if you look at the free agents who remain unsigned this offseason, you’ll find a lot of power still available. Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo: all three produced an isolated-slugging figure greater than .200 last season. All three are projected by Steamer to produce better than a .195 ISO in 2017. All three have yet to find a team for the 2017 season.

Given the general demand for power, you might wonder why so many of these sluggers don’t have jobs yet. A look both at the supply and the demand in the league reveals a possible cause, however: handedness. There might be an obstacle, in other words, to matching those free agents with the right teams.

To illustrate my point, let me utilize the depth charts at RosterResource. What’s nice about RosterResource, for the purposes of this experiment, is that the site presents both a “go-to” starting lineup and also a projected bench. Here’s a link to the Cubs page to give you a sense of what I mean.

In most cases, a team will roster four non-catcher bench players. Looking over the current depth charts, however, I find 15 teams with only three non-catcher bench players on the depth chart (not to mention five additional bench players who are projected to record less than 0 WAR). For the purpose of this piece, let’s refer to these as “open positions.”

Fifteen! That’s a lot. It means we’re likely to see quite a few signings before the season begins. Of course, not all these openings are appropriate for the power bats remaining on the market. Most of those guys are corner types, if they can play the field at all, while some of those 15 clubs have needs at positions that require greater defensive skill.

For example, Anaheim might need an infielder or a third baseman for their open bench spot. The White Sox need a right-handed center fielder to platoon with lefty Charlie Tilson. Detroit needs a center fielder, maybe a right-handed one — and in the process of writing this piece, they got one in the form of the newly acquired Mike Mahtook maybe. If Mel Rojas Jr. can’t play center in Atlanta, they need a (right-handed?) center fielder, too. The Yankees may need a third baseman — and, if not that, definitely someone with some defensive ability on the infield.

So that reduces the number of open positions to 10. That’s 10 slots that could be filled by an offensive piece with little defensive value. Here are the teams that, by my estimation, have an opening for a slugger: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago (NL), Cleveland, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Texas, and Toronto.

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