Indians sign Yonder Alonso

I was starting to work on the post discussing the Giants trade that added Evan Longoria to their lineup from Tampa Bay when the news broke of the first domino falling in Cleveland as the Indians attempt to put their lineup together without Carlos Santana after his departure to Philadelphia and the likely soon to be departed, Jay Bruce.

The replacement for Santana at first base (at least against righthanders) will be lefty swinging Yonder Alonso, who split last season between Oakland and Seattle.
The 30 year old Alonso has played for four different teams (Reds, Padres, Athletics and Mariners) and is coming off his career year (. 266 28 HR and 67 RBI) after altering his swing in one of the latest fads in baseball in adding loft to his swing to allow more fly balls and hence more power to a players swing.
How much power did this add to Alonso's swing?
Well, glad you asked?
Alonso hit 28 home runs last season after never hitting more than nine homers in a season and that number of nine had been achieved just once.
In other words, the swing change TRIPLED Alonso's all-time high for homers in a season.
Was that number an aberration or has Alonso found something that has changed his career at the age of 30?

The Indians will be paying Alonso 16 million over the next two seasons (there is an eight million vesting option for a third year as well) to find out if they have found a breakout star at the age of 30 or will be overpaying a player who caught lightning in a bottle for one season by making an adjustment before the game makes the next adjustment.

Cleveland had picked up the option on oft-injured Michael Brantley and had been rumored to be considering moving Brantley to first base to be the lefthanded hitting option with the righthanded Edwin Encarnacion, but with the signing of Alonso, Brantley is likely to remain in left field and the Indians will still continue to shop Jason Kipnis, who might not have an abundance of takers at 28 million owed him over the next two years (with a third year option at 16.5 million), so the Indians are still in the market to make a few moves over the winter before the snow melts.

I'm a little uneasy about the Alonso signing as I usually am when players that are coming in off a season that saw them perform beyond their past performance.
It makes me wonder how likely they are to repeat those numbers and at an inflated cost.
Even still, the contract isn't awful, so I'm open minded about the signing, but I'm not sky high either.

Back later with some thoughts on the Giants trade for Evan Longoria...