May 23, 2013

Acta: Offense Needs More Help To Compete

August 14, 2012 by 57 Comments

Just saw this doozy of a tweet come across my timeline:

 

I have yet to hear the context or the audio for that matter, but I say good for Acta for speaking out. He is the one ultimately responsible for his team’s play on the field, but its hard when you are bringing paper plates to a China party. That is on his boss, Chris Antonetti.

[Related: Contention Windows and Depth Charts: Analyzing the Cleveland Indians’ Future]

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  • mgbode

    which is why we need him to agree on a much smaller contract. i’d rather give the $3mil to Hafner for 90games of production than to Kevin Slowey (which we did this year)

  • Dee P

    When put in that context…I don’t see how a rational person disagrees.

  • sgtkickarse

    I guess it would depend on the bats, but honestly I still think if we played Canzler and Laporta, they may not be awesome, but would be definite upgrades over what we had out there this season. And then at that point, I think you need a power bat at DH, and I just don’t see Hafner as the guy since he can’t stay healthy enough.

    The problem is though, where do we get a big Right Handed power bat to hit DH that we can afford? I think we will have to trade Choo this offseason or at least by the trade deadline. So who is out there for the FO to grab to hit DH? By playing Canzler and Laporta, some of our LH batting order would be solved.

    The starting staff is another matter. I do think we need two starters to compete, but one of them has to be an Ace type as others mentioned. Which means we are looking at the two most pressing problems are a big power hitting RH bat, and an Ace. And with this payroll, I don’t think that is happening.

    With an Ace in there, the staff starts to look better. Masterson is not an Ace by any means, but can be an effective 2? I think Carrasco could actually pan out as a pretty good number 3 starter. Then you throw McCallister, Hernandez, or Ubaldo as your 4 or 5 and long relief.

    That team could contend. But I have zero faith in the FO or Ownership to pay the price to get an ace and a big bat. Which means many more years of flaming out as the season wears on.

  • mgbode

    an Ace and a big bat would cost around $50mil/year on the open market. we had a payroll of $65mil to start this season. you are correct that we will not be doing that (but you can hardly blame ownership. a team w/ a $20mil/year local TV deal and in the bottom 10 in attendance every year cannot afford a $100mil payroll).

  • sgtkickarse

    I know. As much as I want to be hard on the Dolans and blame them for everything, the reality is that I wouldn’t want to be losing money every year either. And maybe under the current market, no one can.

    I have read comments here and elsewhere that the Dolans need to spend money first for the fans to show up. And while I sort of agree, it isn’t that simple. Our biggest problem is the complete disaster that our talent evaluation has become. If we knew how to draft and how to evaluate other team’s minor leaguers for trades, we would have a better young nucleus than we do now. Our high minor teams would be well stocked. Then we could bring up a bunch of youngsters, hope the fans fall in love with these guys and start showing up.

    Then the increase in attendance and tv revenues would hopefully give the owners a little more faith to roll the dice and spend another 40 million to augment your young scrappy team with an Ace and a big bat, and you can suddenly contend.

    That is asking a lot, but these guys are paid millions to evaluate talent and they have completely tanked with it. That to me is the biggest problem we have.

  • Steve

    I have no idea where you’re going with this, I already said Jimenez busted. But the reason the farm system looks down is for the right reasons – they traded for, what at the time looked like, a front of the rotation pitcher, and called up two good young hitters with a few other young ones still under team control.

    And they didn’t make a move this year because they couldn’t find the right one. I think Pence was moved cheaply enough that they should have tried to make a move, but he is vastly overrated, so I would never demand him.

  • SDA

    what I’m saying is if you had watched him play prior to the trade you would probably seen the same thing I did. Again hoping I was wrong at the time but I saw an over priced number 3 pitcher at best. The low era was an enigma. His starts close to the trade were not good. So instead of trading for a proven pitcher they tried to catch lightning in a bottle. Not that I would not have made the trade but here again make a move for something proven just once in a while. Its the old saying buy low sell high.

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