Why should I still be an Indians fan?

Manny Acta, scapegoat for the
2012 Cleveland Indians.
Photo Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons 

Seriously, why?

Where should my motivation come from to continue to support this team?

The 90s? A period of time I barely remember because I've only been living for 21 years.

The promise of Jason Kipnis and...who else on this current roster?

Certainly not Justin Masterson—not after he's going to finish the year with an ERA hovering around 5.00. Not Chris Perez either—if they almost designated him for assignment after he criticized the Dolans for not spending money in August, you can bet your fanny they'll trade him this offseason. Not Asdrubal Cabrera either—he can't stay healthy through a second half.

Vinnie Pestano perhaps? Sure let's get behind a guy who's an unproven closer.

Or maybe Carlos Santana? He can sure hit a garbage time home run.

Ah, I know—Sandy Alomar. Of course, the Indians current interm manager (who'll probably lose that "interm" tag sooner than later) will keep my fandom because this season's historic collapse was all Manny Acta's fault. That's it.

Give me a freaking break.

I don't know that I've ever been so mad at a Cleveland sports team in my life. It's not that I thought Acta should keep his job—I certainly didn't. Any team that goes through a month with a record of 5-24 deserves to have its leader canned. No doubt Acta knew this, and was prepared for it.

But what I don't understand—and what I'll perhaps never understand—is how General Manager Chris Antonetti is going to keep his job. His horrendous offseason last winter cost the Indians a chance to contend this year. And his poor talent evaluation has cost the Indians mightily in both the CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee trades.

It doesn't matter how many people were clamoring for Matt LaPorta. He's been a nothing short of a collosal failure, and that blame has to lie somewhere.

Oh, and by the way, not that it directly falls on him, but the team can't draft players either. Or sign them in Asia and Latin America for that matter.

Antonetti said it himself in today's press conference, "We all share in the responsibility of how things turned out this year—myself, the players, Manny and the coaches."

But when it comes down to it, who put together this roster that lost 24 games in August and has lost 91 so far with six games left to go?

I wrote about this in August, and it's more apparent to me today than ever before—the Dolans care far more about loyalty than results.

I'm not going to sit here and write that they don't care about winning. I believe that they do. But facts are facts. This regime of Mark Shapiro and Antonetti have combined for two playoff appearances since 2001. We can make it sound worse and say one playoff appearance in the last 10 years. And yes, I know the '05 team could've made the playoffs this year with this weak division, but the bottom line is it didn't happen. That team flamed out in the last week of the season instead of winning the Wild Card.

92.3 The Fan's Daryl Ruiter pointed this out today and I think it's the strongest argument I have for just giving up on this team.

With Shapiro & Antonetti in charge, #Indians are 849-927 (.478);2 winning seasons over that span. 0 since 2007; Yep Acta was the problem

— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) September 27, 2012

By keeping Shapiro & Antonetti, ownership is telling an already angry fan base that .478 baseball is OK w/ them

— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) September 27, 2012

A winning percentage under .500. No winning seasons since the year the team probably should've won the world series. What am I suposed to hang on to?

And I don't want to hear, "Well, the Royals and the Pirates haven't had a winning season in 20 years!" Does Cleveland look like Kansas City or Pukesburgh? Are we supposed to lower our standards just because someone else isn't good?

Neither of those places are my city. I don't follow those teams. I don't care about their standards for winning, or not winning. And if you think I'm going to sit here and be complacent after this team fires its manager for losing 90+ games in a year during the, "Window of Contention" then you're out of your mind.

Where are the Indians going? What's the plan? Rince, ring out, repeat? Is the front office really going to try to put together another team with shoe strings and gum and then tell me it's going to contend?

Really?

I've written it before, but apparently I've got to write it again:

Blow it up.

Everything.

Perez, Masterson, Asdrubal, Joe Smith—anyone with any kind of value should be traded this winter. The cupbords are bare. There are literally no prospects in the upper echelons of the minors. The best you can hope for with the team as its currently built is .500. And I feel the need to emphasize this, that's at best.

If the Indians front office honestly thinks the team can reload or retool with some free agents, a new manager (if you honestly think Terry Francona is going to come here, you're lost), and maybe a trade, all its members need to take a look in the mirror and ask themselves, how?

I understand wanting to keep this front office together, but at some point, results have to start to matter more to the Dolans. Winning has to start being the #1 priority.

And until that happens, I just don't know if there's any reason for me to be an Indians fan.

~MAS

"Did you even have a plan?!"

Johnny Damon was just one of the Indians Front Office's
mistakes in personnel "upgrades" for this season.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

How did it come to this?

That's what I found myself thinking as I watched the Yankees beat the Indians 4-2 on a sunny Sunday afternoon in a Progressive Field full of the visiting team's fans.

How in the wide world of sports did the Indians go from a team on the brink of contention to one that's on the road to 90 losses?

You can say players have underperformed, and you'd be right. But the real problem was that this team was not built to win a World Series in the first place.

Before the Indians game Friday night, general maneger Chris Antonetti spoke to reporters and some of his comments speak volumes about the way the 2012 Indians were put together, along with how the front office thought the team could be able to contend.

"Our plan was to try to win as many games as we could," Antonetti said. "That was our focus, to try to maximize the resources we had to win as many games as we could. Obviously, it hasn’t been a successful year to date." 

Maximize the resources we had. What an interesting phrase. I don't want to read into it too much because these weren't planned, written, thought out remarks, but what other team would say "maximize the resources we had" in their plan to contend? The Rays, maybe? But when you talk about resources, that kind of sounds like a money problem—which would more than implicate the Dolans in this disaster. 

But, of course, that wasn't Antonetti's only curious remark. 

"We talked about this at the start of the season, in order for us to have the year we wanted to have, we needed a lot of things to go our way," he said. "We needed to stay healthy. We needed to have our best players perform. We needed to have our young players take the next step in their development. And we needed to get key contributions from some of the veteran guys we brought in to have bounce back years. And I think you can go through that list and a number of those things didn’t happen—certainly not at the level that we needed them to for us to be the team we wanted to be."

That's a laundry list of four variables that the Indians were depending on in order to contend. And sure, the Rays, A's, and Pirates might say the same about three of those four, but if you look at teams that contend year in and year out, they're not depending on young guys and washed up veterans to "bounce back."

That's not even mentioning the fact that the Indians went into the season featuring an all-lefty lineup, and an all-righty rotation. I've asked this question before, but when was the last time anyone saw a World Series winner without a right handed hitter? And that's not even taking into account the fact that fans have been clamoring for a big right handed bat since 2005.

But because Antonetti talked about players needing to stay healthy, one reporter asked what the GM would say to fans who think the Indians wasted $5 million on Grady Sizemore. 

"In retrospect, obviously that’s certainly true," Antonetti said. "We were hopeful that Grady would be able to rebound and play, and obviously that has not happened. So we knew there was a risk obviously when we signed him, and it didn’t work out."

No, Chris, it didn't work out. Neither did any of the other moves you made in the offseason—Casey Kotchman, Derek Lowe, Jose Lopez, Kevin Slowey, and Johnny Damon (who was signed in season, but you get the point). 

I think everyone would agree that the front office severely failed in putting together a roster that would seriously contend for the division. Even when things were going "well," the Indians were either winning 4-2 or getting blown out—which is why they've almost always had a negative run differential this season. The high water mark for this team was May 24, when they beat Justin Verlander and the Tigers to get to eight games over .500 at 26-18. 

Immediately after that, they got swept by the White Sox and lost a series to both the Royals and Twins. 

Now I'm on record as saying the Dolans need to send a message to the fans that mediocrity isn't good enough by firing Antonetti, but at some point they also have to look long and hard in the mirror and ask why are they even in this business if they're not making money and all they do is lose? It can't be fun to be the whipping boy of every fan and sports radio host in Cleveland. 

But whatever happens, the entire Indians organization needs to realize that whatever the "plan" was to contend this year failed miserably. And they'd all be wise to never try to implement a plan like that again. 

~MAS

Why the Dolans Are Soft

What if...Indians ownership wasn't okay with
being mediocre?
Photo from brianpenzone of Flickr

Let me start out by saying that if you haven't read Terry Pluto's interview with Paul Dolan on Cleveland.com, read it now. It will give you all the context you need for everything I'm about to lay on the Dolans.

Perhaps I shouldn't say the "Dolans" though, since Pluto's interview was only with Paul. But my opinion still remains—the Indians ownership needs a serious attitude adjustment if it intends to make the organization one that can contend for World Series titles.

Let's start with the obvious. Pluto quotes the Indians payroll as $71 million, 26th out of the 30 teams. The average MLB payroll is $105 million. I'm not going to argue that the Indians payroll should be over 100 million, since that's just not going to happen, but there really is no reason in the world the Indians payroll can't be $80 million. I've been saying that since the last offseason, and I still believe it's true.

And yet, Dolan said to Pluto that "there is no expectation the payroll for next year will be substantially different from prior years."

I don't think anyone is asking for something unreasonable. Fans just want the payroll to be competitive with the rest of the league.

But what really, truly frustrates me is what Dolan said about the trio of Chris Antonetti, Mark Shapiro and Manny Acta. Keep in mind that this Indians team was supposed to compete for division titles in 2012 and 2013. The Antonetti-led front office made that clear by trading for Ubaldo Jimenez at the deadline last year.

Regardless, Pluto reports Dolan had this to say about the three amigos:

"We assess everyone at the end of every season...As painful as this has been, I don't want to get into some knee-jerk reactions."

Oh really? I think Scott Radinsky might disagree with you on that, Paul. Unless he doesn't count as "everyone."

Nevertheless, Dolan also had this to say specifically about Antonetti.

"It's not fair just to judge [Antonetti] on the last year or so...He has been with us for a long time [since 1999] and has been the architect of some deals that turned out very well—long before he became general manager."

You see, the way people in the Indians organization use the term "knee-jerk" makes me think that they don't exactly realize what it means. Does Dolan really think it's unfair to judge a GM over a body of work that extends past two years? I'm talking back into 2010, when it was announced Antonetti woud officially take over the GM role after the season, after being trained to do so for a few years.

Well fine then. Since Antonetti came to the organization in 1999, the Indians have made it to the playoffs twice. Two times in 13 seasons. And really, I don't think the 2001 playoff appearance should even count (the 1999 appearance most certainly doesn't, which is why I didn't even consider it). That was John Hart's team, and if anyone gets an assist it's Shapiro.

From 2000 and beyond, the Indians have a combined record of 1,017 - 1,039. That's a winning percentage of just .495. That, to me, paints a bold picture of mediocrity.

Is that what the Dolans want?

And if even if you don't just want to go from the last couple of years, let's take a look at what the team has done since it finished one game short of the World Series in 2007.

From 2008 and going into Friday's contest against Boston, the Indians have a record of 347 - 413. That's a winning percentage of just .456.

Why is this good enough?

When the GM puts together a team with nine left handed hitters and five right handed starters that he claims he "expects to contend" that ends up losing 11 games in a row, at some point you've got to think about a change.

This is not a "knee-jerk" reaction. A winning percentage below .500 since 2000 and significantly under  .500 since 2008 should not be acceptable. I don't care how many good trades he might have made, he undeniably blew the CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee trades. In fact, an argument could be made that he blew the Victor Martinez trade as well.

And this gets me to why the Dolans are soft. Nancys. Sissies. Wussies. Or another word that you could probably guess, but I won't write it here.

To them, loyalty is more important than results. Loyalty to a team President in Mark Shapiro and a GM in Chris Antonetti that have had one playoff appearance since 2002.

What if...a winning percentage under .500 wasn't good enough?

What if...the Indians had an owner that wasn't satisfied with mediocrity?

If the team isn't for sale, then the Dolans are going to have to show that they actually want to win. Firing Antonetti—and perhaps Shapiro as well—would send a message to the fans that .500 isn't good enough.

And that's exactly the message this fan base wants to receive.

~MAS

'You want free agents? You'll get Casey Kotchman and like it!'

Kotchman last year with the Rays
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

So I've been hearing a lot of positive reaction to the Indians signing Casey Kotchman, and I've gotta say that I'm not totally in favor of this deal.

"What? Why wouldn't you want an upgrade over Matt LaPorta, someone you have constantly hammered?"


Yes, yes, I know, I don't like Lappy.

But here's the thing—is Kotchman really an improvement?

First of all, we signed him for a 1-year, $3 million deal. For most teams, that's absolute chump change. For the Indians, it's a fairly significant investment. So let's take a look at what we're getting.

Kotchman is coming off of a year where he hit a  10 home runs and 48 RBI with a career best .306 average. Can't say those stats exactly set the world on fire...although none of the Indians hitters broke .300 on their final averages last year. What's even more "blah" to me is that he only had a total 36 extra base hits in 146 games! That's 10 home runs, 24 doubles and two triples.

What's more is that in 2010, Kotchman had a pretty awful season with the Mariners, batting just .217 with 9 HR, 51 RBI, and just 20 doubles in 125 games.

Honestly, Kotchman has never been much of power hitter—he's only hit a total of 96 extra base hits over the last three seasons, and average of 32 per year. This would would be fine, but he's a corner infielder. And our other hot corner is going to be manned by either youngin' Lonnie Chisenhall or the veteran Jack Hannahan—who, as much as I absolutely love his glove, is never going to be confused for an offensive specialist.

So what am I saying here?

Well, let's take a look at the numbers of Matt LaPorta. I have never been a LaPorta apologist, and I really think he should be replaced, but for comparisons sake, let's just look at the numbers, huh?

In what can be considered his second full season, Lappy played in 107 games, hit 11 home runs, drove in 53 runs, and had 23 doubles.

Wait a second, that's 34 extra base hits in just 107 games—not even counting his one fluke triple!

...see where I'm going with this?

I know LaPorta is not that good, strikes out way more than he should, has a biological clock clicking like a time bomb at age 27, and honestly has been a terrible disappointment from the CC Sabathia trade, but are we really improving that much with Kotchman?

I don't know that we are.

To be completely honest, I'd almost rather see the kid we just bought from traded Tampa Bay for cash for, Russ Canzler, get a shot at first base. At least he's younger—only 25—and has shown that he can get some extra base hits.

But at least for now, it looks like we're going to be stuck with Kotchman.

Wow.

And since we're on the subject of free agents, correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that Kotchman is the only free agnet the Indians have been able to reel in on a major league deal. Yes, they've made a heck of a lot of depth moves, and that's fine with me. But...this is it, guys.

(Okay, aside from Grady Sizemore, but he was re-signed so that doesn't really count.)

However—and this is not something I was ever expecting to say—I really don't think this is the Dolan's fault.

Stay with me on this—the Indians have been reportedly interested in at least three big name free agents, and they've all said they're not interested. I'm talking about Roy Oswalt, Carlos Pena and Carlos Beltran.

According to the PD's Paul Hoynes, the Indians offered Pena a 1-year $8 million deal and got told no. They offered Beltran 2-years, $24 million and were told no from him as well. Oswalt told them no before they even got to the negotiating table.

It's not like GM Chris Antonetti isn't trying, it's just that guys don't want to come here. That's the sad reality.

Honestly, right now it looks like the only way the Indians could get a "big name" free agent to sign here is if they severely overpaid—and you know the Dolans aren't going to do that.

Do I want the Dolan's to sell the team because of that? I'm not sure. But I do know this—if the Indians can prove to the world that they can stand up to the Motor City Fat Cats (see what I did there?), they will probably have a much easier time singing free agents better than Casey freaking Kotchman next winter.

But hey, just over 60 days left till Opening Day. Can't say I'm not excited.
~MAS

Prince Fielder to the Tigers? Son of a—What do we do now?

Honestly, if you're an Indians fan, how can you have any other reaction? We just half-celebrated at the news that beloved former Indian Victor Martinez (who I will always remember how for literally being in tears after being traded from the Tribe to the Red Sox in '09. One of my all-time favorite Indians, definitely top 3) would be out all year with a torn ACL, and then we get this?!

Before you ask, "Did you really expect the Indians to be sign Prince Fielder?" my answer is absolutely not!

But I also didn't think he'd be showing up to work for the next nine years to put on a Tigers uniform, and that we'd have to pitch to him for 17 or 18 games a year.

Is that contract awful? Absolutely yes. Just as I thought about the Albert Pujols contract, nine years and $214 million is just absolutely ridiculous. How can you as an organization believe that you're going to get anything near the same kind of player at the end of that contract? Do you really want to be paying an aging star player probably $10 million more than he's worth at the end of that deal?

Probably not.

But this isn't to talk about how the Tigers will regret this contract in maybe six years. Right now this deal hurts the Indians. Badly.

And again, it's not even that I wanted Prince Fielder—although his fat self would have looked really great manning first base, I know that's completely unrealistic. But when it comes down to it, the Tigers made a hugely aggressive move in free agency to solidify themselves as the frontrunner in the AL Central for years to come. And what have the Indians done?

Well, when Fausto Carmona was revealed to be Roberto Hernandez Heredia, they traded for Kevin Slowey. And yes, I know they said they've liked Slowey for a while, but give me a freaking break, you and I both know they traded for him so swiftly because they needed depth after "Carmona" was officially out of the equation.

You see that, when the Tigers lose one of their key players, they sign someone who could have more of an impact. When the Indians lose one of their key pieces...well, they get someone who has had success in the AL Central, and has some upside, but didn't even win a game last season.

It's a damn shame, isn't it?

So here's where we are—"Carmona" is on the restricted list, which means that he doesn't count on the 25 or 40 man roster, and also doesn't get a paycheck until he reports to the organization. Based on everything I've read, that probably won't be in time for Spring Training, as the process for a visa application can take months. So what do we do?

I'll say this, the answer is not Kevin Slowey.

However, there is a player on the market named Roy Oswalt. Before you get into it about how much more expensive he is, let me just throw out a few numbers.

Because "Carmona" doesn't get paid until he shows up, if he doesn't show up at all this season, the Indians will save $7 million. Now, we've increased payroll by about $18 million just on our own players so far this offseason—and of course those depth minor league contracts. All that is well and good, but if the Dolans are going to spend when the time is right, well, the time is right now.

Oswalt will apparently look for about $7-8 million in a one year deal. I say if you shell out $16-17 million for two years for this guy, and why wouldn't he want to come here?

Even though he had a year that was fairly ravaged by injuries last season, he still made 23 starts for the Phillies going 9-10 with a 3.69 ERA. Okay, so record and ERA aren't all that they used to be with sabermetrics, and Oswalt's WHIP (Walks+Hits per Inning Pitched) was a career high 1.338, and his K/9 ratio (strike outs per nine innings) was a career low 6.0, but Oswalt has proven in the past that he's extremely durable.

The only thing holding back the Dolans from an aggressive move like this is outlined in this tweet from 92.3 The Fan's Daryl Ruiter.

The #Indians spent $111 million between Jake Westbrook, Travis Hafner & Kerry Wood - and nothing to show for it
— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) January 24, 2012

So yes, the fact of the matter is the Dolans have poorly spent in the past, but if they're serious about contending, they've got to put the best rotation possible out there—especially if they want to beat the Tigers.

I have about no faith that Ubaldo is going to pitch any better against the Tigers this year—he had 6.35 ERA against them in five starts last season—so doesn't a top three of the rotation in Masterson, Oswalt and Tomlin sound really great?

Here's hoping the Dolans stop handcuffing Indians President Mark Shapiro and GM Chris Antonetti and allow them to make a move that will show the fan base that they're actually serious about this two year contending window.