The annual General Managers and Owners Meetings are underway in Orlando, which means baseball’s Hot Stove is beginning to heat up. The first big name off the board is Marlon Byrd, who agreed to a two year, reported $16 million deal with the Philadelphia Ruben Amaros (also, I still can’t believe I used ‘Marlon Byrd’ and ‘big name’ in the same sentence). Even before the dollar figure was announced there was a swift reaction on twitter to denounce the signing as an overpay.

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The Indians have been here before. Yet, they haven't quite experienced this before.

They've put themselves in this position before, but they haven't quite had any opportunity to show us what they are made of in regards to the situation.

So with a team that has become increasingly easier to read in how they like to operate over the years, we've now reached a situation where it becomes difficult to understand how Chris Antonetti and company are going to approach this situation.

Now, the whole Terry Francona involvement, as well as that financial windfall from last offseason have definitely augmented the way that the Indians operate in the offseason and has thrown in some new aspects that disrupt the norm. But the underlying principles of this front office remains the same.

Calculated moves, low-risk high-reward signings, trading when the time is right and trading for less-known commodities, the way that this team operates will never change as long as Antonetti is in charge. There's a way that they go about making their moves.

And one way that the Indians have operated in the offseason even back through the Mark Shapiro days has been how they've signed starting pitchers. The last time the Indians signed a starting pitcher to a free agent deal more than one year (Brett Myers and the one year deal with an option aside)?

Are you ready for this?

Good old double winder Paul Byrd, when the Tribe signed him to a two year free agent deal worth $14 million.

Since 2001 the Cleveland Indians have signed pitchers like Scott Elarton, Brian Anderson, Jason Johnson, Brett Myers, and Carl Pavano, but they've signed them all to one year contracts. Myers and Johnson had option years, neither of which became exercised due to the failures of each pitcher in their one year of opportunity with the Tribe.

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If you have been a regular reader of mine for a long time, you will probably remember how I used to do offseasons in Cleveland. Or you probably don't. I seriously don't remember vividly. I know I used to do some offseason awards and then some other random things that a younger, less-busier version of myself had the ideas to do.

Here's the deal. I'm one man, one man with graduate school, an assistantship, a part time job, big boy chores that you have when you live on your own, and of course, the good old actual life. The thing is, I have time to sit around here and profile players, get a chart laid out, list targets, all that fun stuff that I used to do.

If anything though, I didn't do it to do it, I did it to keep myself in the know. And that was great. I sat down to get started on some of this stuff and then it hit me.

I don't want to do any of that. I also don't need to do any of that. Because here's the thing about this here offseason with the Cleveland Indians. It is sort of predictable. Yet, the parts that you can't predict are usually the ones that I sit here trying to figure out.

So I'm going to take the same approach that I did last season. Come to me if you want to hear about the news that happens or if you wanna see me rant about a particular thing that I read about and link to. Come to me if you want that different look at the Indians and their offseason as it progresses. And just come to me if you want to see me make a whole bunch of ridiculous analogies, which I will do in this upcoming piece on Scott Kazmir that will be up this week.

If you want to see a profile of someone the Indians may target, there are plenty of excellent places out there doing that. If you want to see a plan of attack as well as some well-thought out awards and season recap posts, you have places to go. Fact of the matter is, I keep abreast on that through the other blogs that are already doing that, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel so to speak. 

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You know what sucks the most about the baseball season ending? This cold weather. Just as baseball ends, the weather gets cold and that to me is symbolism at its finest. When spring gets her, flowers bloom and baseballs come out of them. This is scientific fact. When baseball ends, they explode into falling cold snow.

This is all true. I've studied it using science, so don't try and debate me.

Even more annoying than the cold is the space between news items. I suppose I could sit here and talk endlessly about one thing, but the cold makes me not want to. That's why whatever is going on right now with the Indians and all this flurry of topical items makes me warm.

See what I did there?

So I suppose that I should stroke this fire that is going on instead of continuing on with my dumb banter. As fun as my dumb banter is. 

[QUALIFYING PRINCIPLES]

The reason that this part of the offseason is so active for the Indians is because that for once in a great while, the Indians have these things called free agents. I know it is a novel concept here in Cleveland, but with a competitive team to the very end, the Indians were not sellers and therefore have players in a position to leave the Indians the way most players leave a team.

And with that comes the trickiness of the new process in Major League Baseball when it comes to free agents. Here's all you have to know.

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