While We’re Waiting… Delonte West Video Freestyles – KFC, McDonald’s and Chipotle
August 4, 2009Is Braylon’s “Injury” Actually a Holdout?
August 4, 2009
Listen up all of you Dolan haters. I’m going to do something you aren’t going to like. I am going to take the contrarian view from the majority of the Wahoo Nation and look at the great fire sale of 2009 from the Mark Shapiro standpoint. It’s time to play devil’s advocate. Like it or not folks, that is what you are going to get.
Lets get some of this nauseating facts out of the way right off the bat:
- Cliff Lee is the second Cy Young award winner in two years to be traded by the Shapiro regime.
- The Lee/Ben Francisco combination did not net the Indians pitchers Kyle Drabek or JA Happ.
- Lee’s first start in Philadelphia was a complete game, four hit, one run, win in San Francisco.
- Victor Martinez told reporters at the all star game that he wanted to spend his entire career in Cleveland.
- Martinez was dealt three weeks later and sat at his locker in tears while packing his things.
- On Sunday, his second game with Boston, Vic The Stik had five hits and four RBI.
Would it make you feel better if I told you that heading into last night Ryan Garko was 2-16 with zero RBI’s since joining the Giants? Probably not. Look, I know it hurts. I know so many of you want to give in to the fight. I’ve received emails from friends and comments from readers telling me that they are done with the Indians until the Dolan family sells. Take this one from example, from one of the most intelligent Cleveland sports fans I know:
I reserve the right to change my mind, but the current thinking is that the Tribe is dead to me. I will waste no emotional energy on them until the Dolans are gone.
I have been losing my interest for awhile – steroids, not living in Cleveland, ridiculous economics favoring large market teams, my son doesn’t play baseball, etc. – but trading Lee and Martinez, both essentially under contract through 2010 at relatively reasonable salaries, was the last straw. I did not mind when they traded CC in his last year since I know that $18mm was not something that we could afford, but this is different.Anyone who buys tickets next year should really be checked for their sanity. My advice would be to go to the Class A and donate 50% of the savings to a charity of your choice.TD – I would stub hub every game if I were you.
Why is it that so many people want to jump ship on the Indians when things go south, yet your beloved Browns get 50,000 chances? I know “this is a Browns town, man!” Hey, I still support the Browns even though they haven’t loved me back in years. Why not return the favor with the Tribe?
Off the soap box for now.
——-
On to the nuts and bolts of why I’m here today. While all of you want to drown in a sea of tears over losing the two best players we have, try to look on the bright side. Nobody loved Vic The Stik more than I did. He was the unquestioned leader of this club and a man who genuinely loved this community. I’m not under-playing what Cliff and Victor meant to this organization, I just want you to try and look at this through your magic Shapiro glasses.
The Indians as an organization had a major hole in the power arms department. Other than their one magic bullet in Hector Rondon, you couldn’t name one single hard-throwing arm in the high minors that was on the fast track. I mean, after all, your Columbus rotation at one point featured Kirk Saarloos, Zach Attack Jackson, Jack Cassel, and Ken Ray. The drafts over the past decade plus have been atrocious, especially in regards to pitching (Jeremy Sowers, Alan Horne, Jeremy Guthrie, Dan Denham, JD Martin, and Adam Miller).
Then you have the ownership, the attendance, and the payroll. These three factors are all intertwined. The 2009 Tribe started opening day with a payroll just over $80 million. That figure was already too rich for the Dolan family blood. But with what they thought would be a contender on their hands in the weak AL Central, they ponied up for additions like Kerry Wood and Mark DeRosa. The figure the organization had to reach was 2.2 million fans to break even financially. Ah, the best laid plans….
The under-achieving Indians stumbled out of the gate and put the ownership behind the eight ball. The fans stopped showing with the Tribe circling the drain, TV ratings were down, the economy is in dire straits in a dying city, and the reality was something had to be done. The first salvo was fired when DeRosa was dealt to St. Louis for Relievers Chris Perez and Jess Todd. Nobody seemed to care at the time. DeRosa was a bonus addition. Three months of him got the Indians two prime relievers who are on the cusp of (or in – in Perez’s case) the majors. While Perez has the power arm Shapiro craves for the back end of the bullpen, Todd is the one who has turned heads so far. In his first three appearances in Columbus spanning four innings, he hasn’t allowed a run while striking out seven and walking none.
Next out the door was Rafael Betancourt in another salary dump. He brought in A ball pitcher Connor Graham, rated the #4 prospect in the Colorado Rockies system. Garko packed his things a week later, bringing in another A ball Scott Barnes, who was described as a “legit prospect, posting a 2.85 ERA and 99/29 K/BB ratio in 98 innings at high Single-A as a 21-year-old” by Aaron Gleeman of Rotoworld.com.
Are you seeing a theme here?
Those were just small fish trades that brought in four young pitchers. There was more on the way. Lee and Francisco left two days after Garko for Philadelphia. That deal included A ball pitcher Jason Knapp, a 19-year old flame-throwing righty who hits 99 on the gun. MLB.com came out with their list of the top 50 prospects on Friday, and Knapp’s name appeared at #39. (FYI – Kyle Drabek, the Phillies phenom who everyone wants, sits at #26.) In addition, 22-year old starter Carlos Carrasco was in the deal. The one time top Phillies prospect was on the fast track to the majors before struggling this season in AAA. The Indians hope they can turn him back into the guy that was pitching in last year’s futures game. Catcher Lou Marson and SS Jason Donald rounded out the haul. All four were top 10 prospects in the Phillies system with Carrasco, Marson, and Donald all reporting to AAA.
I know Shapiro didn’t pull Drabek, OF Dominic Brown (#24 on the MLB list), or OF Michael Taylor (#20) in the deal, but it’s been reported that the Indians could have had either Brown or Taylor in the place of Marson or Knapp. They passed because they felt like they had plenty of corner OF options coming soon (i.e Michael Brantley and Nick Weglarz). Drabek is untouchable and the Phillies wouldn’t give him up for Roy Halladay. I don’t understand the logic of wanting Marson, a catcher who is supposedly just an OK receiver and hits for little power, over budding studs like Taylor or Brown. Give me talent, regardless of where they play.
But it would all come into better focus just two days later when Martinez was sent to Boston. Marson now will compete for the starting catcher position next season. In the meantime, The Stik brought over pitchers Justin Masterson, Nick Hagadone, and Bryan Price. When the trade first went down, on top of the fact that I was initially crushed that one of my all time favorite Indians was dealt, I couldn’t fathom how Shapiro and his crew made this deal without the inclusion of Sox phenoms Clay Buckholz or Daniel Bard. While Masterson and Hagadone are highly regarded, Buckholz and Bard they aren’t. But again, this shows you how desperate ownership must have been to slash payroll anyway they could.
So instead of the high ceiling Buckholz or Bard coming over, the Indians settled for Masterson and the two other A ball pitchers. Hagadone was being fast-tracked through the system before needing Tommy John surgery in June 2008. But the 6’5″ lefty and former Red Sox first round pick is just 23-years old and has a career minor league ERA of 1.82 in 23 starts. Masterson is already a major leaguer and will most likely be your #3 starter next year. The Red Sox have been touting him as a can’t miss for the past three years, but have kind of kicked him back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen. Here, once his arm is built up, he will be a starter (although, he looked great in his Indians debut Saturday, pitching three shutout innings).
Throw in last season’s deadline deals which brought Carlos Santana (#21 on the MLB list) from the Dodgers organization, 1B Matt LaPorta (#13), and OF Michael Brantley from the Brewers system, and you have added 13 young players to your mix (I won’t add Zack Attack or Rob Bryson as both were throw-ins). Are the Indians better off right now on the major league level? Of course not. Will these trades help build up the team for the next cycle of contending around 2011? You would hope so and Shapiro is banking on it. And in a division as weak as the AL Central, who says it isn’t possible?
Think about it. Shapiro has done his best work with trades, while his drafts have been suspect at best. You can still say he is living off of the Bartolo Colon deal of 2002, but had any of you heard of Cliff Lee or Grady Sizemore? Some knew of Brandon Phillips, but even so, at the time you thought “how could the Tribe trade a potential ace for three prospects?” How did that one work out? Shappy also snagged Travis Hafner for Einar Diaz and Ryan Drese, Shin-Soo Choo for Ben Broussard, and Asdrubal Cabrera for Eduardo Perez. He turned Bob Wickman into Max Ramirez, then turned Ramirez into Kenny Lofton in 2007, who was the missing ingredient in the push to get to within a game of the World Series.
Keep in mind, I’m not saying I agree with every thing here, just want you to see the other side of things. There are two sides of every coin, my friends. Shapiro is just playing the hand he has been dealt.
75 Comments
the only thing I hold against Shapiro is keeping Wedge around for so long. Hopefully he fixes this after this year
@44- The MLB can have a salary cap like the the NFL. Just a straight heres the limit, dont go over, dont need to match contracts or w/e. I don’t see that really happening though because of the Yankees and Red Sox. (the loss of immediate income for those teams and the MLB would protect them)
Also, I would question the notion that Cleveland is a small market team. Detroit is pretty equal with cleveland, but they have an owner that will spend. Same in St. Louis. We have a small market Owner, and thats the big difference. I don’t know who can honestly say they like being true competitors only every few years because it is a ‘strategy.’ I would want the team I root for to win every year. Would anyone like the Cavs to start trading players to build for a few years? No, they want to lock good young players, then add the few veterans every now and then to form a competing team year in and year out.
TD
Excellent article. We all want instant gratification and the Cliff Lees and Vmarts provide that. However, the new prospects strengthen the team for several years and if by perchance the Indians are competitive next year, they have the money to make a deadline trade. I have season tickets for 28 games next year and I am not canceling.
Many of these prospects are close to major league ready and their success rate is over 50%. The 20% figure includes prospects at lower levels and lower skills, not the top five.
At the very least, the Indians are a whole lot better than any AAA team and major league teams like Pittsburgh,Baltimore,K.C., Oakland and San Diego.
Don’t people go to minor league parks? So why not go to to see this major league team playing in a beautiful stadium, which has tickets at prices less than ten dollars.
@ #52:
Sure, the MLB’s implementation of a salary cap could be different from the other sports. My point is that the lack of a salary cap isn’t what keeps the Indians from competing, or that we shouldn’t desire a salary cap because it would help the Indians. I don’t think it would hep them.
I agree that the character of the owner matters a lot for a team. That said, the Indians seem to have lost the base of fans they had in the mid- to late-90s, and then LeBron James came along to rescue Cleveland from the sports basement. A lot of the city’s sports entertainment dollars are going to him, I bet. True or false: LeBron James: worst thing to happen to the Cleveland Indians? (That’s tongue-in-cheek, but I think he is affecting the economics.)
I don’t know who can honestly say they like being true competitors only every few years because it is a ’strategy.’
I respect the desire to compete every year. I just don’t think that trying to compete every year gives the Indians the highest chance to win a championship. Better to build a class of solid prospects, bring them up together and really go for it for a couple years. Then, of course, all your good players get paid by bigger spenders and you rebuild. My view is that being really good for a couple years, even if it seems to be statistically unlikely, gives a higher chance of a championship than trying to compete with a middling payroll every year. Even with a very large payroll, it takes a lot of luck to win a championship.
We like the moves the Tribe are making.
Signed,
Berea
what is this nonsense about “drinking the kool-aid” cr*p? I’m pretty tired of the saying because it doesn’t really make any argument…just sounds like a juvenile deflection…
if you want to disagree with the moves, fine, but the kool-aid argument is not really valid…are people using that to say that we have been hoodwinked? how exactly does that happen? the indians are not an evil team, hell-bent on alienating their fan base…theyre doing what they think they need to do to run a successful team/franchise/business…
if you disagree with it, as was stated earlier, and you dont like what theyre doing, theres no one holding a gun to your head and making you root for the Indians…the Yanks, BoSox and Phils are always accepting fans…
@56… YES… we are saying that we were hoodwinked to believe we would contend back in 2002 when they traded Colon for 3 prospects and Lee Stevens.
Then when it comes time to pay the prospects that got good, we can’t afford to keep them and dump their salary.
It doesn’t mean we think the Indians are evil… it just means we’ve heard the same thing over and over with this regime and last time I checked, we didn’t win a darn thing !
If you are saying that Shapiro is good at past trades, why do you only highlight the Choos and other good trades? Why do you ignore all the trades that turned out bad? There are more than you realize. Any one else know Ed Mujica’s ERA is this year?
@DK 56: The reason why it could possibly be perceived as drinking the Kool-aid is because it seems some times like teams want to make their money from revenue sharing and 12,000 fans a night, rather than commit $80,000,000 to compete and wait for the money to come in from big crowds and lots of merchandise.
So they never allow their payroll to get anywhere (Marquee signing!!!Dave Delucci!!!) and always talk about being good, when they have no intention of ever being consistently good.
Here’s what everyone is forgetting…the Indians COULD compete next year. However, it would require making decent trades and spending some money on free agents, two things that Dolan and Shapiro can’t do.
I wouldn’t mind a team with a core of Lee, Martinez, Sizemore, Cabrera, Choo, and Derosa. You build around that, but we’re dealing with an owner who isn’t rich enough to own a Major League franchise….unfortunately for Cleveland.
And will you fans please stop blaming the “small market”. Do you honestly think that Dan Gilbert would run the team this way???
DKH- I would have to disagree in saying that getting prospects up for a max 2 year window to win a championship is the best statistical way. If they are competing year in and year out at the top of the AL central then they are a few (8) wins out of the WS, and who knows what happens from there. If you can lock these young guys up, such as Cabrera, Sizemore, Victor, Choo, and Lee, then put in a mix of young and older role players around them, then you can compete consistently. Instead, they gave their money to guys like Westbrook and Hafner. I just wonder if Hafner isnt getting a huge paycheck that he doesnt deserve then the Indians might be more willing to pay these younger, more effective players. A DH who can’t really field should never be given a ton of cash cause if he slumps, or busts, your in trouble.
@23….
You need to get outside of Cleveland more then…
@59 – it still doesnt explain the use of “drinking the koolaid”…who even says that other than when a mom talks to her son or daughter during their afternoon snack?
and do you people forget that they DID sign free agents this year and it STILL didnt work…HELLO…we were 18 games under 500 when they made the trades…the only reason people are upset is because of name recognition…if having those guys on this team RESULTED in being 18 games under 500 and we are 2 yrs removed from a playoff team, with no appreciable minor league power arms/guys MLB ready…then why stick with what isnt working? the same people that complained about the indians not being worth the price of admission are the same people complaining about the trades…seems like theres no pleasing 75% of cleveland fans…you try to lock up talent that seems good to build around (hafner, westbrook), sign them to contracts that will keep them here, only to have them get injured or underperform…
damned if you do, damned if you dont…
The Browns have not reached the ultimate goal in a while. They have been mediocre (which keeps you interested) alot. But since 1999 Management has been kind of lost. But you only have 16 games to folow and we are never out until half way.
The Indians on the other hand went to the World Series and fielded some very good teams. Now we have turned into a minor league squad for the rest of the league. We start slow every year. We are pretty much out of it by All Star break. And we still have 80 more games. That is a long time to follow a team that is selling off stars for A and AA players.
I watch the Browns, follow the Cavs and read about the Indians. I am 52 years old and have been a Cleveland fan all my life. Fell in love with the Browns forever when a guy from my high school (Paul Warfield) made the team.
Can I add something into this discussion? Take a quick look at Clay Buchholz’s numbers in the majors:
Career he is 6-11 with a 5.29 ERA. 12 HR given up with 58 walks and 105 strikeouts. Couple into the equation his last start at Baltimore where he was rocked, and I am OK with not getting him. In 118 innings pitched in the majors he has given up 135 hits, and in his last 100 innings alone he has allowed 180 baserunners!
Then take a look at his Triple A numbers and you will see why he is so ‘coveted’. He kills it in the minors. Im glad we got Masterson instead.
DK… did you want the definition of “don’t drink the kool aid” ?
Here it is…
A reference to the 1978 cult mass-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Jim Jones, the leader of the group, convinced his followers to move to Jonestown. Late in the year he then ordered his flock to commit suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. In what is now commonly called “the Jonestown Massacre”, 913 of the 1100 Jonestown residents drank the Kool-Aid and died.
One lasting legacy of the Jonestown tragedy is the saying, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” This has come to mean, “Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the kooky side.” or “Whatever they tell you, don’t believe it too strongly”.
A LOT of people use that phrase… and it definitely applies to the current Cleveland Indians organization… they tell you what they want you to believe… it’s up to the fans to err on the side of caution to not believe EVERYTHING they are saying ! We believed it once and due to ineffective deals/trades etc… we didn’t win a darn thing.
@66 – thanks! that makes sense…I had never heard that until people started using it on here…
the same can be said for any front office in any city though…the browns said the pickups they made after the 10-6 season were gonna put them over the top…the cavs thought Larry Hughes was the answer, yet they get a free pass…i have no problem with them saying what theyre saying, because they believe it will make them better, and i agree…I think all of the moves they made are legit and think most will pan out…
@65 – agreed…i was not impressed with clay…i had not really heard alot about masterson and hagadone, but I am impressed now…
[…] in my euphoric look into the future yesterday (ha ha) is the fact that the current version of the Indians is still a very flawed collection of […]
I gave up long ago. The Tribe may as well be a AAA team for the rest of the MLB. We take prospects, and we take gambles that have yet to prove themselves. The second they are proven, we deal them off for more prospects. This is no way to have a competitive team.
Fans would come to watch a contender. At least the Browns try to contend, that’s why I will continue to support them.
hahahah..theres no comparison…3-13, 4-12. and no TDs for 6 games…and thats trying????
at least theres an even playing field in the NFL…salary cap etc…
apples to oranges…
hahahahah… there is no comparison. There were a weatlh of injuries and coaching incompetence during that stretch of no TDs — I dare you to point to one move the management made that made the Browns worse, intentionally.
You can’t compare sports because baseball is broken and the Indians are on the unfortunate side of that equation. Being a Browns fan is clearly better, but it sure seems like this website is bitter about it.
Maybe everyone is fed up because it’s the same old song and dance routine with the Indians. We raise our home grown talent until they reach a point where they deserve to be paid and then…bye bye. Why trade for prospects which we won’t/can’t sign in the upcoming years. Wouldn’t it be better to trade Lee and Victor for straight up Cash? That seems to be the only thing the Indians and interested in. We traded Colon for up in coming prospects (Sizemore and Lee) and we sent one packing. Look out Grady if you have a career year you’ll be next. Sorry Cliff you performed way to good to stay with the Indians. Instead of trading for prospects we plan on keeping for the future to build and contend the Indians instead use them as bait to sucker the fans into purchasing tickets. The Indians need a owner who is devoted to winning and keeping our home grown talent for fans to cheer for. The Indians have one of the deepest farm systems why not trade any of those guys? Oh wait that’s because we need them to play on the Major league roster when we fire sale our true talent. We need those guys who make the league minimum so Dolan doesn’t have to worry about cancelling his country club memberships. Go Tribe
@72 … please. Jacobs didn’t spend a penny for eight/nine years after he bought the franchise. He couldn’t have cared less about winning. Always near or at the bottom of the major league in payroll. A miser. Those are facts, man, something everybody conveniently ignores or just don’t have the foggiest clue even exists. Compared to Jacobs, Dolan is freakin’ Rocky Balboa melded with Santa Claus.
its all about money the dolans just dont have it never did and never will! get it right its the bottom line that matters the most. go tribe and browns!
To the writer of this website…you are an idiot!!! Keep drinking the kool aid moron………