If you haven’t had a chance to see the extensive Q&A session from Bill Lubinger of The Plain Dealer with Indians President Mark Shapiro, it’s a must read. In it, Shapiro addresses all of the hot button issues, including attendance, team profits, player spending, and on-field performance. Below are two of the more interesting answers to questionable moves made by the organization: the Ubaldo Jimenez trade and the Grady Sizemore signing in the offseason.
On if you can grade the Ubaldo Jimenez trade:
“I don’t believe you can grade trades along the way. You grade them at any juncture in time, you are going to make a mistake. What you have is snapshots in time in which you form opinions, and then you wait and evaluate once it’s clear. You’ve got to evaluate on both sides — what did you get, what did you give up. What I’m clear on is that the intent of the Ubaldo trade was our effort to seize an opportunity, our effort to demonstrate a sense of urgency to our fans that we want to win, we want to win now … I think it’s still premature to evaluate the trade.”
On paying Grady Sizemore so much in the offseason:
“That’s not a lot. If you look at the value of a major-league free agent, one win in major-league free agency is somewhere between seven and eight million dollars. When you look at what $5 million can get you on the major league free-agent market, before you say, “Why did you pay him so much?”, go look at who’s being paid $5 million. … We got the right deal at that time and I still feel like there was no player available with his level of upside on the market at those dollars, without a doubt.”
