Have The Guardians Gotten A Bit Stale?

There is no question that the time since Jacobs/Progressive Field opened in 1994 has been the golden age of Cleveland baseball. Yes, there was that period of when Bill Veeck owned the team and the GM tenure of Hank Greenberg from 1947-1959 where the Indians went to two World Series and won the last one for the franchise in 1948.

Since 1991, the franchise has basically had three men in charge of the baseball operations. John Hart was hired by Hank Peters in 1989 as a scout and assumed the GM duties in 1991 and remained in that spot until 2001. Mark Shapiro took over and was in that spot until 2010, when he moved to team president and promoted Chris Antonetti.

Antonetti became the president of baseball operations in 2015, and Mike Chernoff was promoted to the GM spot then. Really, the franchise has had three people running the baseball team on the field since ’91. That’s 35 years.

Going further, the promotions all came from within. Shapiro was hired by Hart in ’91, became Director of Player Development, and then assistant GM before taking over in ’01. Antonetti has worked for the team since 1999 and was named Shapiro’s successor in 2010.

Chernoff was hired as an intern in 2003 while still enrolled at Princeton, and rose through the organization becoming assistant GM under Antonetti in ’10.

There have been people hired from outside in various positions, but really, the franchise hasn’t hired anyone outside of the organization in a top leadership position in the front office in 37 years. An era where they have won three American League pennants, the same number they won from 1901-1994.

Stability is a good thing. That’s one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it has it become stale.

We know about the recent success of the franchise. Since Antonetti was put in charge, the Guardians have made eight playoff appearances and went to the World Series in 2016. Unfortunately, they haven’t built on that success, winning just one playoff series (the 2024 Division Series) since.

Look, we understand the executives, particularly Antonetti and Chernoff, have been hampered by the lack of financial support by the ownership, but that is a story for another time. The biggest move from outside the organization was the hiring of Terry Francona as skipper following the 2012 season.

Francona brought some outside thoughts to the organization, and he might be the last person to do that with this group.

After the World Series appearance in ’16, the ownership ponied up some cash (perhaps carried away with the excitement) and signed slugger Edwin Encarnacion as a free agent. That’s the last large signing of a player from outside.

Last season, the team finished with one of the worst offenses in the sport and still made the playoffs. The front office didn’t go out and get any bats in trades or free agency, instead saying they wanted to give their young hitters a chance. The Guardians still rank among the worst teams in baseball in scoring.

They seem to be unable to make judgments on their own prospects, holding on to some of them until all the value is sapped from them and thus, have no value to other teams on the trade market.

They seem to overvalue defense, sacrificing offense at times, when the minor leagues are full of players who have good gloves but cannot hit.

Even their production on television is worn, seemingly turned into a group of “yes men” continually telling viewers how great everything is, which is an insult to the people who understand the game a bit.

Maybe the Guardians will duplicate last year and go on a run to make the playoffs again, but it doesn’t seem likely. And maybe the current organization will not have to make any tough decisions until 2028 because of an impending lockout next year.

Maybe you don’t have to have a catcher who cannot contribute offensively because defense and handling the pitching staff is ultra important.

This era of Cleveland baseball has been great for a long time, and it can continue, but it seems to need a jolt, some fresh ideas. Perhaps the last two months are a blip on the radar, but it could also be the same old ideas are lost in a world of change.

Guardians In The Mix, Not Unusual Really.

Last season, the Cleveland Indians finished under .500 for the first time in manager Terry Francona’s 10 years at the helm. They finished 80-82, the worst mark since the 2015 team went 81-80.

When you think about it, since the team moved out of Municipal Stadium, they have had a very good record for success. The most games the franchise has lost was 97 in Eric Wedge’s last season as manager in 2009.

They’ve lost over 90 games just three times since 1993, and that was done three times in a four-year span: 2009, 2010, and 2012. The last of those seasons led to the firing of Manny Acta and bringing Francona aboard.

Cleveland has had just three men heading up baseball operations in this timespan: John Hart, Mark Shapiro, and Chris Antonetti. And as you can see by the records, they have never had to tank to get back into contention.

They have made 12 post-season appearances, three of them resulting in World Series appearances. We have said many times that in our youth, when publications did the composite World Series records, Cleveland sat at 2-1 since 1954.

They are now 2-4, but the 1990 version of us never thought the 2-1 would change. But this team has been in as many Fall Classics in the last 27 years than they were in the first 54 seasons they played.

Hopefully, there will never be a 41 year drought between American League pennants again.

Because the Cubs and Astros bottomed out and quickly won a World Championship, that became the way for other teams to be competitive again. Really though, how has that worked for other franchises?

The Tigers haven’t made the playoffs since 2014, and have had just one winning season (2016). And it doesn’t appear they are closer to being over .500. Pittsburgh made the post-season in 2015, they’ve been over .500 just once since then.

It’s not limited to just smaller markets either. The Los Angeles Angels have played three post-season games since 2009, and haven’t reached the break even point since 2015, despite having the best player in the game in Mike Trout.

Our point is that it’s real easy to do what the Cleveland baseball organization has done in the Jacobs/Progressive Field era. And they’ve evolved in how they built the team over team.

In the ’90’s, they were a hitting machine with players like Albert Belle, Hall of Famer Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Kenny Lofton and Omar Vizquel.

When the Dolan family bought the team, they wanted to build around pitching, and in the Francona era, they’ve done just that. There are been four Cy Young Awards since 2007 for organization, starting with C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee in back-to-back years, and two more in the teens for Corey Kluber.

Offensively, it appears they have shifted to players who make contact and put the ball in play. They have struck out the least amount of times in the American League. And at least this season, it has worked because the Guardians are leading the division, something no one predicted at the beginning of the year.

Can they win the Central? They have a chance, and that’s something fans could have said pretty much every season since the new park opened on the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

A lot of other fans bases would love to have that consistency.

Overall, Not Spending Means Not Winning In MLB

When people talk about Major League Baseball teams that compete on small budgets, the most common names that are brought up are the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland A’s. Obviously, the Cleveland Indians want to join that club by slashing their payroll over the past three seasons.

In 2020, two of the teams that ranked in the bottom five in payroll made the playoffs. The AL Champion Rays were one, and the Miami Marlins were the other. The other three were all under the .500 mark, led? by the Pirates, who had the worst record in the sport at 19-41.

The others were the Orioles and Royals.

The last season in which 162 games were played, which is a better comparison because more teams made the post-season in ’20 due to the shortened season. Only the Rays, among the five lowest payrolls in the sport, made the playoffs. The other four teams, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Miami, and the Chicago White Sox were a combined 117 games under the break even mark.

We understand that sometimes payroll is tied to a team’s success. For example, rebuilding teams, organizations that choose to tear down their rosters to go with young talent instead of declining veterans, will have low payrolls. And in the 90’s, when the Indians had perpetually contending teams, we remember GM John Hart defending his high payroll by saying the Tribe had a lot of good players, so they should rank high on the list of teams with big salary expenditures.

In 2018, the lowest payrolls belonged to Tampa Bay (90-72), Oakland (97-65 and made the playoffs), White Sox (62-100), Miami (63-98), and Pittsburgh (82-79).

And the lowest payrolls in 2017 belonged to San Diego (71-91), Oakland (75-87), Milwaukee (86-76), Cincinnati (68-94), and of course, Tampa Bay (80-82).

Because we wanted to show five full seasons (not counting 2020) of data, in 2016, the teams spending the least on players were Tampa Bay (68-94), San Diego (68-94), Milwaukee (73-89), Oakland (69-93), and Miami (79-82).

When people talk about being successful with small payrolls, they are really only talking about two organizations: The Rays and the A’s. That’s two teams out of 30, which isn’t a good percentage. Only Tampa Bay last season made the World Series. So, having a low payroll doesn’t exactly translate to success in the post-season.

The other organizations which were mentioned several times earlier included Pittsburgh, which had one season over .500 and that was 82-79, and Miami, which probably only made the playoffs in 2020 because they expanded the post-season last year, and would they have made it if the season were 162 games?

It also seems like there is room for only one small payroll team in the post-season each season. So, this year, the Indians and their slashed payroll have to compete with Tampa, because as of today, the A’s have moved out of the bottom five for 2021.

The White Sox were in the bottom five many times in this piece, but again, they were in rebuild mode, waiting for their young prospects to be good, and then spending to complement them, and San Diego pretty much did the same, although they collected a ton of prospects and then traded many of them (not all) for established players.

Yes, we understand the success that Tampa Bay and Oakland have had, but they are the only two organizations have success. Can the Indians join them as teams that don’t spend and still can compete? The odds say no, and that’s way it’s a huge gamble.

If it doesn’t work, the folks that will pay the most are the people who buy tickets. The Dolan ownership has already burned a lot of bridges with the baseball fans here, this move could be the final straw.

Tribe Baseball In The 80’s–Juuuulllliiiiioooo

In the strike season of 1981, the Cleveland Indians had one of the game’s top prospects in 3B Von Hayes. At Class A in 1980, Hayes hit .329 with 15 homers and drove in 90 (905 OPS).

The following season, Hayes batted .314 with 10 HR and 73 ribbies at AAA, and was called up, batting .257 in 43 games, walking more than he struck out.

In his first full season in the bigs, 1982, Hayes, a left-handed hitter, batted .250 with 14 homers and 82 RBI, while stealing 32 bases with a 699 OPS. He finished 7th in the Rookie of the Year voting, and looked to be one of the bright stars of the game at 23 years old.

Apparently, the Philadelphia Phillies thought the same thing, and traded five players to the Indians for Hayes. Among the haul for Cleveland was All Star second baseman Manny Trillo, top pitching prospect Jay Baller, and a young shortstop, Julio Franco.

Franco did get into 23 games with the Phils the previous year, getting eight hits in 29 at bats.

In his first year as a regular, Franco hit .273 with 8 HR and 80 RBI (.693 OPS). Those numbers climbed with age, until he had his best year as an Indian in 1987, with a .319 batting average, eight dingers and 52 RBI in 128 games (818 OPS).

Franco’s defense at short was erratic at best and in 1985, the front office, led by GM Joe Klein, tried to move Franco to second base, replacing with the light-hitting Johnnie LeMaster, acquired from San Francisco.

LeMaster went 3 for 20 in his brief tenure with the Tribe and was quickly dealt to Pittsburgh for Scott Bailes, in what turned about to be a great deal for Cleveland. Franco went back to SS.

The following season, the Tribe led the American League in runs scored (they were second last in ERA) with tremendous seasons by Franco and his keystone partner, Tony Bernazard.

After the ’88 season, Franco moved to second full time, and hit .303, his third straight season over that mark, he was dealt to Texas in a deal much like the one that brought him to Cleveland, quantity for quality. The Indians got 1B Pete O’Brien, OF Oddibe McDowell, and 2B Jerry Browne in return.

The Tribe made many deals from 1970-90 in a similar vein. Get a good player, and when it is time to have to pay them, trade said player for prospects.

NOTE: This wasn’t a successful business plan. Please take note for the future.

In Texas, Franco blossomed, making the All Star team three straight years, including winning the game’s MVP in 1990. He won the batting title in 1991, batting .341, with 15 HR and an 882 OPS.

After an injury plagued 1992, he became a full time DH with the Rangers in 1993 (.289, 14 HR, 84 RBI, .798 OPS), he became a free agent and signed with the White Sox, where he batted .319 with a career high 20 homers.

With the strike extending from the end of the ’94 season into ’95, Julio went to play in Japan, hitting .306. At this point, he was regarded as a professional hitter.

“Juice” returned to the Indians for the 1996 season, and the familiar “Juuuuullllliiiiioooo” chant was back at Jacobs Field. Franco hit .322 with 14 dingers (877 OPS) as a first baseman and designated hitter for the AL Central Champs.

The next season, GM John Hart tried to put Franco back at 2B at the age of 38, and he hit .284 with just 3 homers, before being released in August. He finished that year with the Brewers.

He played until age 48 with the Braves as a right-handed platoon bat, hitting .309 with an 818 OPS in 2004 at age 45.

In 2007 with the Mets, he homered off Randy Johnson, becoming the oldest man to hit a home run in the big leagues.

Overall with the Indians, the team he played the most games with at 1088, Franco hit .297 with a 752 OPS.

Unorthodox batting stance, pure hitter. Perhaps he should be put in the Indians’ Hall of Fame.

Tonight Could Be The Night For Tribe

We have been fans of the Cleveland Indians as long as we can remember, which is 1965. That means we’ve been waiting for 51 years for what may or may not happen tonight at Progressive Field.

The Tribe has a chance to be World Champions.

Think about that for a second. It’s only happened twice before, once in 1920 and again in 1948.

And that’s it.

We have written about this before, but for a long time (from ’65 through 1994) the Cleveland Indians were for the most part a terrible, perhaps mediocre squad, where an above .500 record was celebrated, not expected.

But we still had our favorite players. Sam McDowell, Chris Chambliss, Buddy Bell, Dennis Eckersley, Len Barker, Joe Carter, Mel Hall, and Tom Candiotti. Many of those guys got to experience winning elsewhere.

We also had the great stars who came to Cleveland at the end of their illustrious careers, like Hawk Harrelson, Boog Powell, Frank Robinson, and of course everyone’s favorite, Keith Hernandez.

Contending for a division title? That was a pipe dream, something other franchises thought about, not Tribe fans.

There were four 100 loss seasons in that time span, amazingly, the franchise bottomed out in the last 1980’s, losing more than 100 games three times in a six season span (1985, 1987, and 1991).

Right around then, Hank Peters was brought in to run the franchise and surrounded himself with two young executives, John Hart and Dan O’Dowd, and rebuilt the moribund Indians by a forgotten (at least around here), but tried and true method.

They developed a fruitful farm system.

Suddenly, the Indians developed into a powerful club, with the foundation being home grown players like Albert Belle, Jim Thome, and Manny Ramirez, with great trades bringing in Sandy Alomar Jr., Carlos Baerga, and Kenny Lofton.

Also, they sprinkled in some key veteran free agents like Eddie Murray, Dennis Martinez, and Orel Hershiser.

Sounds familiar, right?

This Tribe squad is centered around players originally signed and developed by Cleveland, like Jason Kipnis, Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Lonnie Chisenhall, and Roberto Perez.

President Chris Antonetti and GM Mike Chernoff traded for guys like Michael Brantley, Yan Gomes, Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and of course, Andrew Miller.

Add in free agents Mike Napoli and Rajai Davis, and you have a team on the brink of something not done in baseball here in 68 seasons.

This isn’t talking about a coronation, because there is still a game to win and the Cubs are throwing last year’s Cy Young Award winner in Jake Arrieta and a candidate for this year’s award in Game 7 starter Kyle Hendricks.

The Tribe pitching staff has been so outstanding this post-season, holding down the powerful offenses in Boston and Toronto, and what they have been able to do thus far to Chicago.

They may need two more games of that kind of pitching.

Having a 3-2 Series lead doesn’t abate our nervousness, our sense of anticipation, and even though the Cavaliers won a title just four months ago, our sense of upcoming doom.

Allowing ourselves to think about a fourth win against the Cubs gets the goosebumps going, and emotions flooding our senses.

We’ve waited 51 years for this night. Yes, we had a Game 7 moment in 1997, but perhaps then we were just happy to be in a World Series twice in three years after so long without being in one.

Now the thirst needs to be quenched. The Cavs, the Monsters, Stipe Miocic gave our town a taste of what a title is like, and now Indians’ fans want the same.

Tonight could be that night for the Cleveland Indians.

Our View of Shapiro Based On What He Didn’t Do.

Well, the Indians made it official today as team president Mark Shapiro announced he would be leaving after the year to be the president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays.

There is no question that Shapiro is an exceptional human being. He has created a caring atmosphere with the front office employees and players alike. And all in all, no one can really complain about that.

However, as we wrote last week, baseball (really, all professional sports) is judged solely on wins and losses, and it is there that we find Shapiro’s record lacking.

In 14 seasons where the Princeton graduate has either been the GM or the president of the Indians, there has been only four winning seasons and two post-season appearances.

Our opinion of the executive is based more on what he didn’t do, rather that what he did.

You see, every GM who has been around a long time will make good trades and bad trades. And perhaps, Shapiro would be judged better if one of his earliest moves, trading Bartolo Colon for Grady Sizemore (all-star), Brandon Phillips (all-star, just not here), and Cliff Lee (Cy Young Award winner) wasn’t so successful.

And maybe he would have more support had he not followed John Hart as GM, and whether you like Hart or not, he was in charge during perhaps the greatest era of baseball in Cleveland history.

But when we said he will be judged here for what he didn’t do, we mean that when the Tribe was in the hunt, Shapiro never made the big splash move.

In 2005, the White Sox got off to a great start, but the Indians were in the wild card hunt at the All-Star break. The Indians made two in-season deals, the first moving Alex Cora to Boston for Ramon Vazquez, and the last was dealing Jody Gerut to the Cubs for Jason Dubois.

Not exactly blockbuster moves. The Tribe missed the playoffs by two games, and would have made the post-season by winning just one game during the last weekend of the season.

In 2007, Cleveland was a game out of first at the break, and 1-1/2 out on July 27th, when Shapiro acquired 40-year-old Kenny Lofton for minor league catching prospect Max Ramirez, who was well regarded at the time as a hitter.

Lofton did hit .283 the rest of the season, and contributed, but it was hardly a “going for it” move.

Contrast those moves with those made by Hart at the deadline, who traded for Ken Hill (’95), Kevin Seitzer (’96), John Smiley and Bip Roberts (’97), etc. Not all of those moves worked, but there was the feeling the front office was doing everything it could to bring a title to Cleveland.

To be fair, we don’t know what deals were available to Shapiro at the time. Perhaps teams were asking for way too much for marginal players. But with baseball being the sport that it is, if you get in the post-season, you pretty much have the same shot as anyone else does. Market size no longer matters.

We have said this in regards to Terry Francona, there is a fine line between patience and stubbornness and Shapiro’s patience toward some players has hurt the team at times. Eric Wedge was kept on as manager well after he became a cliché with his “grinding” mantra.

And the franchise kept playing guys like Aaron Boone and the David Dellucci/Jason Michaels platoon after it was proven not to work. That lack of urgency still permeates the franchise, with Michael Bourn and the non-promotion of Francisco Lindor this season as prime examples.

Perhaps it was lack of support by ownership or maybe overconfidence in his building of the franchise, but people can criticize Mark Shapiro on his trade record all they want. To us, it was the moves not made which make up his legacy.