Tag: bert blyleven

Trading Good Young Players? For Tribe, We’ve Seen How It Works

Since we started following the Cleveland Indians, and we go back to the mid-sixties, one thing has been a constant, trading good young players for a bushel of prospects.

That almost never works out.

So, when people ask us why we are adamant that the Indians are doing the wrong thing by trading Francisco Lindor, we have a boatload of history and memories to support our thinking.

One of the best players on the Tribe’s early 1970’s teams was third baseman Graig Nettles.  The left-handed hitter played three seasons in Cleveland, totaling 71 home runs, 218 RBI, and a 750 OPS.

In 1972, one of the Indians’ top prospects (in those days, perhaps their only prospect) was Buddy Bell, who also handled the hot corner.  Bell played the outfield in ’72, but the Indians were anxious to make room for him at third, so they dealt Nettles to the Yankees, where he blasted 250 homers and played on two World Championship teams.

Who did Cleveland receive?  They got John Ellis, Jerry Kenney, Rusty Torres, and a prospect OF in Charlie Spikes.

Nettles accumulated 44.4 WAR in his career with the Bronx Bombers.  The best player the Tribe received was Ellis, who had a 3.2 WAR in his tenure with Cleveland.

Two years later, the Indians had a first baseman who won the Rookie of the Year Award in ’71, and again they dealt with New York, sending Chris Chambliss there along with Dick Tidrow and Cecil Upshaw for four pitchers:  Fritz Peterson, Steve Kline, Fred Beene, and Tom Buskey.

Chambliss accumulated 4.0 WAR with the Tribe, but 15.4 with the Yanks over seven years, playing on two World Series champions.

Peterson went 23-25 for Cleveland, Kline 3-8, while Beene went 5-4 with an ERA over 5.00 in two seasons.  Buskey was the least accomplished pitcher coming to the Indians (just 12 big league games), but was the best of the quartet going 12-13 with 25 saves in four seasons.

Dennis Eckersley was just 23 years old and coming off 40 wins in his first three seasons with Cleveland when he was dealt to Boston for prospect 3B Ted Cox, catcher Bo Diaz, and two starting pitchers, veteran Rick Wise and Mike Paxton before the ’78 season.

Eck spent eight years in Boston, winning 88 games, and of course, later in his career became the most dominant reliever in the game, and was elected to the Hall of Fame.

Cox was brought in despite the presence of Bell (who was dealt the next year for another third baseman in Toby Harrah), and Wise had one good year with the Tribe and one bad one before leaving in free agency.  Paxton had a solid year before developing arm problems and was out of the game by 1980.

Diaz, who was kind of a throw-in, wound up being the best player, making the All Star team in ’81 with Cleveland, and was a regular for Philadelphia’s World Series team in 1983 and played until 1989.

In 1985, Cleveland traded another pitcher on the way to Cooperstown, moving Bert Blyleven to Minnesota for SS Jay Bell (who they didn’t really give a shot to) and three pitchers, Rich Yett, Curt Wardle, and Jim Weaver.

That trio won 29 games for Cleveland, while Blyleven won 50 over the next three and a half years, including one that ended in a World Series title for the Twins.

After the 1988 season, Cleveland dealt Julio Franco, who batted .297 with a 752 OPS in his six years as an Indian to Texas and not for prospects, but instead three mediocre big league players in Pete O’Brien, Jerry Browne, and Oddibe McDowell.

Franco hit .307 over the next five seasons with Texas, winning a batting title, and putting up an 822 OPS.  Only Browne played more than one season with the Tribe, two as a regular and the other as a reserve.

That isn’t to say all of these deals didn’t work.

In 1983, Cleveland moved Len Barker to Atlanta, and received Brett Butler and Brook Jacoby, both of whom were long time regulars with the Indians, while Barker was finished after the 1987 season.

And dealing Joe Carter after the ’89 season netted Cleveland two major building blocks of the great 90’s teams in Sandy Alomar Jr. and Carlos Baerga.

We also all remember the Bartolo Colon deal in 2002, which might be the last deal of that kind because of the return the Indians received.

The point is trading very good (or excellent) young players is extremely risky.  The best bet is to keep them and watch them keep improving into possible Hall of Fame players.

MW

Best Tribe Era Ever: 1994–???

The first baseball year we can remember is 1965.  As a lifelong Clevelander, our dad was a fan of the Indians, and we have never changed allegiances.

It wasn’t easy to stay loyal.

In that ’65 season, the Tribe finished 81-81 in fifth place in the ten team American League.  Little did we know that was kind of the norm for the first 29 years we followed the Cleveland Indians.

1968 was the year of the pitcher, and it was also the best finish by Cleveland between the time we started being aware of the team and when they moved into Jacobs Field in 1994.

The Tribe went 86-75 in the last season of the true pennant race, when you won your league and went to the World Series, or you went home.

Even then, Cleveland finished 16-1/2 games behind the Tigers, so they weren’t really in contention.

The closest to being in the race we experienced was 1974, when the Indians were in first place as late as July 12th, and were just two games out on August 6th.

However, they went 20-35 the rest of the way and finished 4th, 14 games out of first.

The Indians had good players, guys like Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Buddy Bell, Ray Fosse, Bert Blyleven, Graig Nettles, and Chris Chambliss, but of the franchise’s top 20 players of all time in WAR, only McDowell played in Cleveland between 1965 and 1990.

Remember, the franchise played in three World Series in its history from 1901 through 1994.

Since the move out of old Municipal Stadium, everything has changed.  First, the Tribe has appeared in three World Series in the last 22 seasons.

We’ve seen great players, such as Jim Thome, who likely will be the first Cleveland player who spent the majority of his career as an Indian to be elected to the Hall of Fame since Lou Boudreau in 1971.

Other great talents wearing a Tribe uniform in that time frame are Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle, Omar Vizquel, and Kenny Lofton, and it continues today to Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Michael Brantley, and Corey Kluber.

We have already said if Lindor plays the majority of his career in Cleveland, he will be regarded as the best player ever to where an Indians uniform, and Kluber may rank behind just Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Bob Lemon as the best starting pitchers in the Tribe history.

There were no players of that caliber when we watched the Indians growing up.

Since 1995, we have seen ten teams (including this year) that will advance to the playoffs.  We understand baseball is different now, they split to two divisions after expansion in 1969, and to three divisions in ’94.

And while just two teams made the post-season before ’69, now ten teams in the majors advance.  However, outside of the major market behemoths in Boston and New York, the Cleveland Indians have made the post-season more often than any other American League team since 1994.

That’s a tribute to the organization and it’s really incredible considering that from 2002 to 2012, a period of 11 years, they made the playoffs just once.

So, to older fans, these are the glory days for the Cleveland Indians.  Great players, very good teams, excellent organization.

There is only one thing missing…eliminating the shadow of 1948, currently the longest World Championship drought in the game.

MW