After A Great Season, Guards’ Ownership Cuts Spending

Regular readers of this site can figure out our age by when we started following sports in northeast Ohio. The starting point for us was 1965, and we recently were thinking about our relationship with the Cleveland baseball team in that period.

From 1965-1990, the Indians were poorly financed and poorly run. The ownership and front office wanted to win, but they had no money, forcing management to trade many young players because they couldn’t afford them.

Think about players like Chris Chambliss and Graig Nettles, who became mainstays of a couple Yankee World Championship clubs. They had Dennis Eckersley, Buddy Bell, and Julio Franco who were all either great (Eck is in the Hall of Fame) or very good, but were traded for prospects or the dreaded “we’ll get three average players for one real good one” move.

From 1991-2001 were the halcyon days. Jacobs Field opened in 1994, and attendance was at a franchise peak for a sustained time. The Indians were well run, well financed, and ownership was motivated to break the at the time 40-year drought between post-season appearances.

Cleveland was in the top ten (some years top five) in payroll. Big name free agents signed here, first veterans like Eddie Murray, Dennis Martinez, and Orel Hershiser, and later coveted ones like Jack McDowell, Kenny Lofton, and Roberto Alomar.

And then we have from 2002 to the present. There is no question the team is well run. The front office, especially with Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff is charge does a solid job. Financially, in spite of the constant whining and moaning about the lack of money, they are solid, the biggest difference between now and the previous two eras is this ownership doesn’t seem to have an overwhelming desire to win.

One of our tried-and-true theories is the everyone likes to win. Who wouldn’t? It’s fun. However, there is a huge difference between liking to win and hating to lose. Our favorite athletes are the one who will do anything to avoid a loss.

As owners, the Dolans are the former, they like to win. However, we don’t think they are obsessed with ending the franchise’s World Series drought, which has now reached 76 years.

This comes up again because of a report that the Guardians payroll being reduced from the beginning of the 2024 season, after a season where the team won a playoff series and got to the AL Championship Series, baseball’s Final Four, if you will.

Also, attendance was up. After years of the ownership saying they would spend when the fans showed up (that’s not the way it works in business by the way), slightly over 222,000 folks went to Progressive Field in ’24, the 6th highest increase in the majors.

And they are spending less on players.

This is not to suggest the Guardians can spend like the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, and a few other big market teams. But reducing the payroll after a wildly successful season is a slap in the face to the fans.

It’s not like this Guards’ roster doesn’t have holes. Impartial observers see problems with both the everyday lineup and the starting rotation.

Even the staunchest defender the Guardians’ owners should be appalled by this development. We’ve already heard the excuse about the television broadcast deal, but it should not stop them from trying to get to another World Series.

We don’t know what will happen during the ’25 baseball season, and we have been a fan of this baseball team for 60 years. We want them to win. We’ve said it before, but wishing and hoping isn’t a plan. Get the payroll to the level of other teams of this size market, like Milwaukee or Kansas City.

Do something to make another team have the longest span since winning a World Series.

Municipal Memories Of The Tribe

Hopefully, the owners and players can come together soon on an agreement to get baseball back on the field sooner than later, and we will have some sort of season this summer.

Until then, we thought we’d write about some Municipal Stadium memories. Games played at the old ballpark that don’t really carry any special historic significance but when friends get together, they always come up.

Here are two of them:

May 17, 1978 vs. the Yankees: The Tribe came into this one at 15-16, six games behind the Tigers and Red Sox who were tied for 1st in the American League East. The Yankees were 19-12, two behind.

Lefty Rick Waits started for the Indians, and he would pitch a much more important game vs. New York later in the season, defeating the Yankees on the last day of the year to force a one game playoff vs. Boston.

Ed Figueroa started for New York and the Yanks got to Waits early, opening with three straight hits, the third, a double by Thurman Munson, plated a run, and a groundout by Reggie Jackson plated a second.

Cleveland scored a run in the second to cut the lead in half, but NY scored two more in the third, a single by Roy White and an error to make it 4-1. And when Waits got in trouble in the fourth, Tribe manager Jeff Torborg went for another southpaw, Sid Monge.

Monge came over from the Angels the year before with Bruce Bochte with Cleveland sending Dave LaRoche to California. Monge was terrible for the rest of 1977, with a 6.23 ERA in 33 games, but he was back for the ’78 season, and had only been in two games, allowing four runs in five innings.

The Tribe drew closer with two in the bottom of the 4th on a two run single by Rick Manning. Meanwhile, Monge was mowing down New York hitters, weirdly, based on his track record. He allowed a lead off hit to Munson in the top of the fifth, but retired the next seven hitters.

The Tribe tied it in the bottom of the seventh on a Buddy Bell single, and Monge kept getting hitters out. Not allowing a hit after the Munson single in the fifth.

Cleveland won it in the 10th on a triple by Paul Dade and a single by Manning.

Monge would up pitching 6-1/3 innings allowing one run and two walks. He made two starts shortly after, but as a reliever, he went 4-2 with six saves and a 2.34 ERA.

September 28, 1984: The Indians weren’t on NBC’s Game of the Week very often in these days, but they were to be the next day because Kansas City and Minnesota were neck and neck in the AL West standings, and the Tribe was playing the Twins.

We were sitting a couple of rows in front of NBC’s Tony Kubek for the Friday night game, and Minnesota took a 10-0 lead after two and a half innings of starter Jerry Ujdur and relievers Jeff Barkley and Jamie Easterly.

Our group yelled back to Kubek jokingly that the Tribe was coming back, but several guys in our group decided to spend the rest of the night in The Flats.

Frank Viola was on the hill for the Twins, his last start in a year where he went 18-12 with a 3.21 ERA.

The Indians got two in the bottom of the third, but erupted for seven in the bottom of the sixth to get back in the game. Andre Thornton homered, Jerry Willard had a two run single, a Brett Butler double, an error, and a two run single by Thornton made it 10-9.

In the bottom of the eighth against Twins’ closer Ron Davis, Joe Carter hit a mammoth home run deep in the lower deck in left to tie it up.

Davis walked two of the first three hitters in the ninth, before being relieved. Mel Hall singled to load the bases and Butler won it with another hit.

The loss knocked the Twins out of the division race, and the guys who went to The Flats? They couldn’t believe it.

Favorite Player Of The 70’s…Eck

If you were a fan of the Cleveland Indians in the 1970’s, you watched an organization that had a lot of very good players that wore a Tribe uniform.

Some, like Ray Fosse, Buddy Bell, and Chris Chambliss were originally signed by the Indians, and made their Major League debuts with Cleveland. Others, like Graig Nettles, Gaylord Perry, and George Hendrick came over in deals, spent some productive years in town, and then were shipped away.

Some were post-season regulars, which made fans in northeast Ohio wince in pain during the playoffs every year, thinking about what might have been.

Sometimes things never change.

That brings us to our favorite Tribe player of the 1970’s, Dennis Eckersley.

Eckersley was another star young player who came up through the Cleveland farm system and was ultimately traded away to a bigger market, in his case, Boston.

Eck was drafted in the 3rd round of the 1972 draft and spent two years in Class A Reno before moving to the Texas League (AA) with San Antonio, going 14-3 with a 3.40 ERA, striking out pretty much a batter per inning.

There were no Top 10 Prospect lists at the time, so Eckersley was under the radar as spring training started in 1975 under new manager, Frank Robinson. The 20-year-old side arming right-hander made the team out of camp and pitched out of the bullpen.

He made 10 scoreless relief outings, totaling 14-1/3 innings, and followed that by throwing a shutout in his first big league start against the World Champion Oakland A’s.

He finished that rookie season with a 13-7 record, a 2.60 ERA, and allowing just 147 hits in 186 innings. He did walk an uncharacteristic 90 batters.

And his cockiness was appreciated by the younger fans, and opposing hitters didn’t like it so much.

His second year in Cleveland, he went 13-12 with a 3.43 ERA in 199 innings, striking out 200 hitters. He was struggling mid-season, his ERA was 4.93 at the All Star break, and made some relief appearance in July, but in the second half Eckersley went 9-4 with a 2.41 ERA and 138 punch outs in 119 frames.

In 1977, Eck threw a then career high 247.1 innings, and led the AL in strikeout to walk ratio at 3.54. He also authored his only career no-hitter beating the Angels 1-0.

What is forgotten is that in his previous start, Eckersley went 12 innings against the Mariners, and didn’t allow a hit after the fifth inning, so he had thrown 16-2/3 hitless innings.

The start after the no-no came on June 3rd, again vs. Seattle at the old Kingdome. The Mariners didn’t get a hit in that contest until two outs in the 6th, meaning the righty fired 22-1/3 hitless innings. That’s very close to the major league record of 24, set by Cy Young.

And he did it as a starting pitcher.

Unfortunately, the Indians dealt Eckersley to Boston following the season for four players, notably the hot prospect, Ted Cox. The best player the Indians ultimately received was catcher Bo Diaz. Eck won 20 games in his first year with the Red Sox.

GM Phil Seghi felt Eckersley’s sidearm motion wouldn’t hold up long term. And there was the other matter of teammate Rick Manning falling in love with the pitcher’s wife.

Seghi made the wrong choice on which player to move along, and Eckersley wound up pitching until he was 43, becoming a dominant closer. He was elected into the Hall of Fame in 2004 after winning 197 games and saving 390 more.

His stay with the Indians was brief, but we were always a fan. It would’ve been nice to have him with the Tribe a little longer.