Last weekend, the Cleveland Indians held their annual fanfest, bringing in former and current players, along with manager Terry Francona to meet and mingle with the fans.
Once again, it was a very crowded place to be, indicating once again that there is plenty of interest in the Tribe, but unfortunately it doesn’t translate into larger crowds filling Progressive Field.
Let’s face it, for all of success on the field the Indians have had over the last two seasons with Francona at the helm, they are a boring franchise in terms of making news.
With all of the wheeling and dealing that occurred within major league baseball this winter, the Indians made one trade, bringing Brandon Moss from Oakland for minor league infielder Joe Wendle.
And while watching MLB Network last week, they showed a list of least money spent on free agents during the off-season, and there were the Indians sitting in the top five, with only Gavin Floyd’s $4 million deal as of right now.
That really isn’t moving the fan base to dig into their pockets and buy tickets, which by the way, aren’t even for sale yet in terms of single game purchases.
So, even if there were a reason to buy tickets, you can’t unless you are interested in a season ticket program.
And the biggest thing the front office has been promoting this winter is the renovations to the ballpark, which will not seat approximately 10-15% fewer fans come April.
So we can add not very good at promoting itself to being boring in terms of making news.
We asked the people at the website, MLB Trade Rumors, if they even had someone monitoring the Indians since not only do they not make any moves, they also aren’t really involved in any rumors either.
By the way, they laughed at our question, and said in their opinion, Cleveland can look forward to a very good season.
We agree, that’s why it’s a shame more people can’t see that, and why the organization has such a hard time promoting itself.
We wrote an article a few weeks ago that gave nine things about the team that the front office should be pointing out, instead of saying how the team has limited money to spend, and talking about market size.
That lack of self-promotion is probably the biggest problem with the Cleveland Indians.
Because there is interest in this team. We know that because the local ratings for the games is very high. If you are on Twitter during a game, there is plenty of comments, both pro and con during the contest, the same as there is for a Browns’ or Cavaliers’ game.
And some of the players, particularly the young core of talent, are starting to be recognized by the fan base. You can see allegiances being formed with Michael Brantley, Corey Kluber, and Yan Gomes.
Many people are looking forward to this season so they can finally see one of the sports’ top prospects in SS Francisco Lindor.
We don’t know why the Indians are so bad about this aspect of the game, and along with the appraisals they do in regards to the men who are playing, they should examine why they cannot connect with the people who buy tickets.
They are like the terrible sales person who has a great product to sell, but because their spiel is so poor, they can’t get folks to try it.
That makes it a priority for the team to get off to a fast start so people will sit up and take notice. It will be especially difficult this spring because it is likely the Cavaliers will be in the midst of a playoff run, and that will consume the fan’s interest.
Here’s hoping the message can be received some how, because it appears the Cleveland Indians will be in the middle of a playoff race again in 2015.
KM
Cleveland Sports Perspective 