Whenever people are critical of the Dolan ownership of the Cleveland Guardians (and we are among that group), one of the retorts from the Dolan supporters is they leave the front office do their job without interference.
The secondary theory is if a new owner that was willing to spend more cash were to buy the Guardians, they would get rid of Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff, despite the way they produce winning seasons on a shoestring budget.
Talk about living in your own fears.
If anything, wouldn’t the new owners want to see what kind of magic Antonetti and Chernoff could perform if they had an extra $30-$40 million to spend? Because we would. That’s only logical.
Baseball’s new villain, the Los Angeles Dodgers are a great example to look at, $350 million payroll notwithstanding.
When the Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman as president of baseball operations following the 2014 season, they did so based on the job Friedman had done in his tenure as vice president of baseball operations with small market Tampa Bay.
Friedman took over the Rays following the 2005 season, and took the downtrodden franchise to its first playoff appearance in 2008, as they made it all the way to the World Series.
He also was in charge as Tampa made the post-season in 2010, 2011, and 2013.
The Dodgers felt like if Friedman has this kind of success guiding a team with a small revenue stream, imagine what he could do with all of the money a team in a huge market has.
Now no one can be sure, but we would bet when the Dolans’ sell the team to minority owner David Blitzer (or someone else, who knows?), the new person holding the purse strings would take notice of the job Antonetti and Chernoff have done and would think (we think correctly) they could do more with more money to spend.
Especially if Blitzer takes over because he’s seen the results first-hand.
And that would be seven playoff appearances in the last 12 years, including going to the seventh game of the World Series in 2016. That team ranked 17th in the majors in payroll.
Cleveland got as high as 11th in players’ salaries in 2019, a season in which the Indians went 93-69, missing the playoffs after three consecutive playoff appearances.
When they missed, the payrolls were sliced, dropping to 20th in ’20, 27th in ’21 and ’22, the latter season being a division title team, 29th in ’23 (following a division winner, a forebearer to this off-season) and last season.
NOTE: Payroll numbers are from baseballreference.com
We know the Guardians’ owners have justifications for reducing the cash spent on players, but frankly, we don’t believe them. We believe the money is there.
Some of the reasons for supporting an owner that doesn’t spend or better yet, doesn’t seem to have an overwhelming desire to win a title, are crazy. We have said before that the Dolans seem to be nice people, and we are sure it makes it difficult to be critical, especially by media members.
We also understand the goal of owning any business is making a profit but also think winning and making a profit aren’t mutually exclusive.
In fact, if the Guardians won the World Series, the owners would make even more cash.
But giving them support because you think they will fire people who are very good at their jobs seems silly. Come up with a better reason.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 