This time of year, one of the more precious resources for baseball clubs is the 40-man roster. Teams need to add players from outside the organization to improve their chances next year, but at the same time, they need to protect home-grown prospects from selection in the Rule 5 Draft. The Indians have taken advantage of this over the past couple weeks, as they’ve acquired some players they wouldn’t otherwise have had the chance to because of all the free agents that they’ve lost (thus creating more openings on the 40-man roster). If you include the trade with the Pirates (in which the Indians acquired two players on a 40-man roster while giving up one), they have added three players precisely because their former clubs needed the roster space.
- I wrote about the Gonzales-Moroff-Luplow trade earlier, so I’ll not dwell on it much, other than to note that each of the players they acquired has an option year remaining (while Gonzalez did not).
- On Monday the Indians acquired RHP Chih-Wei Hu from the Tampa Bay Rays for IF Gionti Turner. Hu made his major-league debut in 2017, making 11 appearances over the past couple seasons. Turner was a 2018 draft pick and played in the Arizona League this past season. Hu could start (he has a five pitch repertoire), but more likely he’ll be used as either a long man, or a taxi reliever (going back and forth from Columbus to Cleveland). The Indians need to rebuild their bullpen, and although Hu isn’t exactly an established veteran, he does give the team another potential solution to work with. Turner is yet another teenaged prospect that they’ve dealt over the past 3-4 months. In this case, the Rays were looking for a prospect that had promise and didn’t have to be protected for Rule 5. The Indians traded Turner likely because he’s 3-4 years from helping the big-league club, which seems to be a trend of late; they have traded quite a few raw but talented prospects from that Arizona roster since July. And Turner wasn’t even the most recent ex-Indian, as on Tuesday…
- They acquired RHP Walker Lockett from the San Diego Padres for RHP Ignacio Feliz. Like Hu, Lockett has been primarily a starter in the minors, but has the potential to help out of the bullpen. And like Hu, Lockett has an option year remaining, so the Indians has the flexibility to send him to the minors if he doesn’t make the Opening Day roster. Feliz was another standout on the teams’ two Arizona Leagues team this past summer, the fourth player from those two teams to have been dealt in the past week.
The Indians then protected three players from their own organization:
- 1B Bobby Bradley, the highest-rated prospect of the bunch. Usually first basemen aren’t targeted in the Rule 5 draft, but given Bradley’s talent, to take that chance would be unduly reckless.
- LHP San Hentges, who in his return from Tommy John surgery showed the type of stuff that he showed when the Indians took him in the fourth round of the 2014 draft.
- RHP Jean Carlos Mejia, who was the lowest-level prospect protected. He pitched mostly with Lake County this past season, showing very good command for a prospect with so little full-season experience.
Those six additions filled up the 40-man roster, and here’s what it looks like now: 
I’ve added a section of players who are eligible for next month’s Rule 5 Draft in the bottom right-hand corner. The highest-rated prospect available would be OF Oscar Gonzalez, who played mostly in Lake County. The Indians are probably relying on his lack of upper-level experience to scare away teams. I think LHP Rob Kaminsky has a good chance of being selected. He’s a former high draft pick who has transition to the bullpen and has shown some promising signs, as not only has his velocity increase, but he’s more than held his own in the Arizona Fall League against some of the best hitters in the minors. And given a left-handed reliever is one of the easiest roles to hide a Rule 5 pick in, he’d be a very tempting selection.