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Now that January has come and is almost gone, it is time to vote for your third grade for the Cleveland Indians offseason so far. December was a busy month with the Winter Meetings happening and all, but January has been mostly dead. As always, these grades should be relative to what other teams are doing, but even on that scale the Indians have not done much of anything.
Mike Napoli was technically added on January 5, but we knew about his signing as early as mid-December, so I am not even counting him this month. His only impact, in terms of my grade, is the fact that it led to the Indians designating (then trading) pitcher Kirby Yates, which was not a good thing.
Trading for Yates was one of the reasons I liked the Indians offseason in November, and trading him away is one of the reasons I like it a bit less as of January. He was an easy bounce back candidate who the Indians got for essentially nothing -- which was great -- but then they traded him for just as little.
The other big thing Cleveland did in January was avoiding arbitration with every eligible player. Going by estimates from MLB Trade Rumors, the Indians "overpaid" quite a bit on Cody Allen, but other than that they came out paying less than MLBTR thought they would in arbitration court:
| Player | Estimated | Actual |
| Cody Allen | $3,500,000 | $4,150,000 |
| Lonnie Chisenhall | $3,000,000 | $2,725,000 |
| Jeff Manship | $700,000 | $765,000 |
| Zach McAllister | $1,000,000 | $1,300,000 |
| Bryan Shaw | $2,800,000 | $2,750,000 |
| Josh Tomlin | $3,100,000 | $2,250,000 |
| TOTALS | $14,100,000 |
$13,940,000 |
Since we still have a month left in the offseason, I am not ready to ding the Indians for not making a bigger outfield splash, even though most signs point to them being done. However, there are still plenty of options out there so I feel fine dropping the Indians done only to a B from the B+ I gave them in December.