I'd like to begin with full disclosure. I am in fact a Cleveland native. My sporting allegiances lie far outside the walls of the Rock 'N Roll city. However, I am here to give the fans of the Cleveland Indians hope for the season to come.
Larry Dolan has come under a lot of heat lately for he and Mark Shapiro's comments relating to their spending habits over the past couple of years. Yes, they did trade Cy Young Award winning pitchers in back to back seasons. Yes, they haven't been willing to shell out major dollars for players like Victor Martinez. I have acted as an antagonist toward both the Dolans and Shapiro for these maneuvers. But it is today that I realize the validity of these moves and see the promise of the future.
Fact: The Cleveland Indians have made the post season two times in the last ten years. Maybe these aren't New York Yankees numbers, but it certainly isn't the 30 year drought that this franchise had from 1960-1990. Nor is it 18 consecutive losing seasons like Pittsburgh Pirates. In that span of 16 years the Indians have had eight 90-win seasons. three of those in the last decade.
Fact: Since 1995 the Cleveland Indians are 2-2 in playoff series against the Boston Red Sox, and 3-1 against the New York Yankees. These are two of the most storied franchises in league history and the Indians have had their number in recent memory. Most people will argue that they should be 3-1 vs. the Red Sox after going up 3games to 1 in 2007.
The Dolans catch a lot of flack for being unwilling to spend money. First, Cleveland is a mid market city. And secondly, not everyone can spend like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies. Ultimately, you've got to work with the cards you are dealt. The largest means of funding in any sport is ticket sales. The Cleveland Indians ticket sales have declined every year since 2007. And it took until well after the all-star in that 2007 season to achieve regular sell outs. This season they have reduced ticket sales drastically. The cheapest of which being only ten dollars in an effort to fill Progressive Field.
What the people of Cleveland fail to realize is that the strategy of not spending what you don't have is the status quot around the league. It is bad business to deficit spend. And while they don't have people on the payroll making 20 mil a year, the Dolans are still deficit spending. The biggest comparison in Cleveland is between former owner Dick Jacobs and current owner Larry Dolan. Ultimately, these two owners had very similar business strategies. Jacobs never in his tenure with the team never deficit spent. It just so happened that the successes of the Indians in the mid and late 90's were derived from an abundance of attention by the Cleveland fans. They had a record 455 consecutive sell outs. The major contributing factor being that they were the only draw in the city. The football team had been moved to Baltimore and the basketball team was terrible. This gave Jacobs the money to spend on big bats.
This year the Cleveland Indians will field a roster that is very similar to last year's 69-93 team. It is my contention that this roster will be drastically improved from that abysmal record. The improvement will be a direct result of a healthy roster and the emergence of star power from the farm system. baseballamerica.com sites the Indians with the 7th best farm system in the league. The prized possession being last year's first round pick 3rd baseman Lonnie Chisenhall. This lefty can mash. I suspect Chisenhall will be called up by July. His added bat will bolster a lineup that will have a healthy CF Grady Sizemore, and C Carlos Santana. Asdrubal Cabrera will also be back at SS and of course fan favorite Shin Soo Choo returns at LF. Trevor Crowe made strides last year and should make a fantastic OF Utility option for the coming season. The x factor for this year is the health and POWER of DH Travis Hafner. If he is being paid 14 mil for singles there could be problems. This would present a lineup of six potentially great bats. Even minimal production out of Jason Nix, Jason Donald, Austin Kearns, Michael Brantley and Matt LaPorta could make for a greatly improved offense.
Some doubts may rise in the pitching staff. Fausto Carmona returned to form last season and with some extra run support could easily win 15 games this year. The progression of Justin Masterson and Gomez is the wild card for this team. If both can reach 10 wins, you could easily be looking at a team that is .500 or better. And in the AL Central that could be enough to win.
What's the baseline?
Watch out for the Indians this year. The pieces they've received after trading away Cy Young winners, and all-star bats are finally falling into place. A deep playoff run may be a couple of years away, but the Dolans and Mark Shapiro have a system in place that could keep this team relevant for the next 5+ years.
UPDATE: See just-if-i'd hype's additions to this post in the comment section!
Its about time you came around on this. This sounds dastardly like a lecture I gave you a couple of months ago. Let me just reinforce a few points and build upon them.
ReplyDeleteNot only have the Indians reached the playoffs twice in this millenium, but they finished with 93 wins in 2005 while not making the playoffs. For perspective, that's actually 7 games better than they did in 1997 when they came 1 out from winning the World Series.
Mind you, those '90s teams also reaped the benefits of an incredibly weak AL Central. I submit that if you were to take essentially any Minnesota Twins team from the 2000s and place them in the AL Central in '97, '98, or '99 I honestly believe they would at least compete well into September with the Indians, a phenomenon those Indians teams never really faced until they didn't win the AL Central in 2000. That was just one more way that Jacobs and the Indians banked off the 90s "glory days".
If the Indians sold out games in 2007, it was very late in the season. Certainly the playoffs were sellouts, and maybe some of September, but I clearly remember the fanbase here waiting for the first shoe to drop well into August. Cleveland fans hold a grudge over the Dolans ruining their fun all those years ago and don't trust a Dolan run team, even when it really is quality.
Fans get mad the Indians don't spend. News flash, 2/3 or more of the league follows the same practice. We aren't big markets. We don't get millions for the signage on outfield walls because millions see them on TV every single day, and not coming down to the park doesn't generate revenue to spend on players.
One other factor that helped the Jacobs run Indians was the new ballpark. A new ballpark automatically generated interests and I would even say sellouts. Park of the reason the Twins could sign Joe Mauer to such a big contract is because they are gaining the revenues of a brand new stadium, which means little maintenance costs and team interest, meaning ticket sales.
Choo plays RF.
i feel securing saying you can expect more than marginal production from Brantley and LaPorta. i like them both with another year under their belts. and its a big year then in terms of how the Indians did on the CC Sabathia trade.
Hopefully Mitch Talbot's injury problems are over and he can return to form. He looked stellar in the 1st half last year before really falling off.
With all that said, I think 2012 is the year. I think they will be improved, but this is still a 4th place team in an improved AL Central. This is subject to change, but I'd say they're worth a 78-84 record.