What a difference a series makes.
At a certain point you do have to wonder, if the Indians were so bad, why have all of our players been traded to teams in the middle of playoff races? Garko and Betancourt are going to battle each other for the NL Wildcard, DeRosa is fighting for first in the NL Central, and now Cliff Lee and Ben Francisco are going to be extending the Phillies lead in the NL East (and I've just now noticed that we have only dealt guys to the NL, which is interesting).
I give credit to Mark Shapiro on at least one point, though: he's being honest. While I don't know that I completely agree that the Tribe couldn't compete next year (even with a command from on high to cut payroll), he would certainly know better than I. At least he's not pretending and trying to sugar coat this. He doesn't think we have the pieces to compete next year and, in the interests of full disclosure, he told us that we don't even have the money to get those pieces. So it's time to rebuild (and that's what it is -- screw this "reload" B.S.).
Could we have gotten more for Lee and Francisco? It sure seems that way. It is odd that, for a team so desperate for pitching, half of the guys we got were position players? Definitely. Is it even stranger that one of them is a catcher, when we currently have three catchers on the major league roster, two catchers on the AAA roster (one of whom, Toregas, has better numbers than the new guy), and one of the top catching prospects in all of baseball on the AA roster? Hell, yes. But, for as much as Shapiro wants to keep things a secret, it's clear that those players are around for other reasons -- either as replacements for guys who are going to get dealt or as pieces to sweeten another deal.
All eyes are on Victor Martinez. And everyone should be looking at Victor Martinez, but let's not forget about Jhonny Peralta, Jamie Carroll, and Carl Pavano. If the Tribe is serious about rebuilding for 2011, all four of those guys should be dealt in the next two days. There's absolutely no reason NOT to.
I expect Martinez to go to the Red Sox in some kind of deal that gets us Justin Masterson. That's my best guess, though. I have no real inside knowledge on this.
So where does that leave us, going forward? Well, assuming we deal the guys I listed above, and working under the completely darkness of not knowing who we might get for any of them (I'm willing to guess we'd make a spot in the bullpen for Masterson, if need be), I'm suggesting this, beginning this weekend (after the trade deadline):
Infield:
Marte (3rd)
Cabrera (SS)
Valbuena (2nd)
LaPorta (1st)
Gimenez (C)
Outfield:
Choo (RF)
Sizemore (CF)
Brantley/Crowe (LF/4th OF)
Bench:
Shoppach (because I don't think they'll deal both of our experienced catchers)
Hafner (DH)
Barfield or Donald (utiltiy INF)
Brown (1st/OF/DH)
Rotation:
Carmona
Laffey
Huff
Sowers
Carrosco (from the Lee deal)
Bullpen:
Wood
Perez
Perez
Todd
Lewis
Sipp
Smith
There's no reason to hang on to our mis-matched bullpen. Veras, Gosling, Abreau -- these guys are not the future of our bullpen. Sure, Sipp has had problems and it's hard to imagine giving R. Perez and J. Lewis another shot, but by the hell not? If they need to work themselves out (and they've been perfect in AAA), let them do it at the top level.
I'll be honest: I'm fine with this. Oh, I'm not saying I won't get really misty-eyed if/when Victor is traded, but I would much rather we be upfront about it than pretend otherwise. The Tribe is a mid-market team in a city with more teams than it can support. I understand that this is how it works.
It's just really sad that this generation of Indians -- Sabathia, Lee, Martinez, Peralta, etc. -- are headed out, having come SO close to getting us that championship we've been waiting for all these years. It was a heck of a ride.
There will be a few holdovers, though, thankfully. Sizemore is signed through 2011 with an option for 2012, which HAS to be picked up. Hafner is signed through 2012 with an option for 2013 (much less likely to be picked up as I don't know that he'll be needed). Cabrera is arbitration eligible starting in 2011, but I would expect all these moves to be a precursor to signing him to a long term deal.
And let's look at it this way, too: we have a lot of pitching options in the pipe between now and the start of the 2011 season. There's Carmona, there's Laffey, there's Huff and Sowers. Then we've got Scott Lewis and the newly aquired Carrasco. Beyond that, we have our big star, Hector Rondon, who's pitching next to Chuck Lofgren in Columbus. Two years is enough time for AA guys to make a run, too -- guys like Edell and Graham, who both have ERAs under 3 in Akron. That's ten guys I just rattled off, and I'm not even counting potential bullpen guys or anyone we acquire between now and then.
Do I wish we could have made a go of it last year? Of course -- I wish we could have made a go of it this year. I want a championship to come to Cleveland and I want the Indians to be the first team to do it (I'm looking at you, Cavs). But I'm fine with rebuilding if we're actually going to commit to it.
Sadly, that means trading a few players that I've really grown to like over the years. But that's the nature of the game, isn't it?
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Cleveland Matters
Time flies when your favorite team is awful, doesn't it?
I watched "The Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush" on HBO again today. It's one of those shows that's impossible to turn off when you stumble across it, the story is just that interesting (I should point out that it was followed by "Ted Williams," a documentary about, well, Ted Williams, during which his nephew, named Ted Williams -- really -- claims that, because of the debacle that was Williams' will, his famous uncle will now be most commonly known as "the frozen guy," not, say, "the greatest hitter baseball has ever known." The lesson here is that Ted Williams' nephew, Ted Williams, is an idiot.). The Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1955 rather handily, and waited to see who they would play in the World Series. One of the Dodgers' mentioned that they didn't really care whether they would play the Yankees or Cleveland.
This was, of course, one year after the Indians would get swept in the World Series by the Giants.
Anyway, I think, given the decades of irrelevance that the Tribe has experienced in its history, it's easy to forget why the Indians matter. They don't have the mystique that the Yankees or the Red Sox have, yet in the early days of baseball they were right there, just as important the the league as anything coming out of New York or Boston or even Detroit.
I once read an article in which famed Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully suggested that perhaps the best thing that could happen to baseball would be to cut the league back down to eight teams in each league. It made me wonder, in today's bi-coastal, media controlled world, which teams would make the cut. And I began to worry that my beloved Tribe wouldn't be one of them.
Cleveland's biggest problem these days -- aside from the staggering job loss and crippling depression -- is that it is a one sport town; the people of Northeast Ohio can really only afford to support one team at a time. Who are you going to go see, Ryan Garko (who I happen to like) and Kelly Shoppach (who I happen to not like), or LeBron James (who I like despite his front runner tendencies) and Shaq (who I like despite having played with Kobe)? Honestly, the NFL might want to reconsider extending the season any further, because at a certain point Cleveland fans are going to have to regularly decide between those Browns' tickets and those Cavs tickets', and we all know how that decision would go these days.
It is no coincidence that the Indians dominated after the Browns left and the Cavs got bad again.
So, what, then? Do we wait for LeBron to move to New York before the Tribe can go the World Series and lose again? No, we just hold out hope that we can catch lightning in a bottle again, like we did in '07, and realize that the karma of a city will only allow those years to happen as an exception, not as a rule.
Speaking of karma, does that mean we should trade Cliff Lee? Hey, at least Sabathia had the manners to win the Cy Young while getting our team into the post-season (granted, he actually had help). What could it possibly take to get Lee from the Tribe, given that we have a really cheap option on him next year? And, if we DO trade him, aren't we basically admitting that we have no shot next year, either?
Well, yes to that last one, which might not be too far from the truth. Keeping Cliff Lee means making a number of assumptions, specifically about our future pitching staff. It assumes that Jake Westbrook will be able to return to form after half a season of play this year (he's due back at the beginning of August). It assumes that Fausto Carmona, who was sent all the way to the Rookie League just a month ago, has figured it out, and can be the Cy Young contender he was in '07. It assumes that Hector Rondon's first two starts since getting the call to AAA Columbus are indications of what he'll do the rest of the season, and what he can do next year. It assumes that Aaron Laffey and Scott Lewis, if healthy, can live up to their potential. And it assumes that we can get something out of our AAAA guys, David Huff and Jeremy Sowers, who always seem to be one inning away from being solid pitchers.
It also assumes that any of those guys could move to the bullpen if they don't land a starting job and, in doing so, save said bullpen from itself.
And, yes, I would go so far as to say it assumes we have a new manager.
That's an awful lot of assumptions to make. That's an awful lot of "what if's."
Sadly, at this point, that's all we have.
I watched "The Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush" on HBO again today. It's one of those shows that's impossible to turn off when you stumble across it, the story is just that interesting (I should point out that it was followed by "Ted Williams," a documentary about, well, Ted Williams, during which his nephew, named Ted Williams -- really -- claims that, because of the debacle that was Williams' will, his famous uncle will now be most commonly known as "the frozen guy," not, say, "the greatest hitter baseball has ever known." The lesson here is that Ted Williams' nephew, Ted Williams, is an idiot.). The Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1955 rather handily, and waited to see who they would play in the World Series. One of the Dodgers' mentioned that they didn't really care whether they would play the Yankees or Cleveland.
This was, of course, one year after the Indians would get swept in the World Series by the Giants.
Anyway, I think, given the decades of irrelevance that the Tribe has experienced in its history, it's easy to forget why the Indians matter. They don't have the mystique that the Yankees or the Red Sox have, yet in the early days of baseball they were right there, just as important the the league as anything coming out of New York or Boston or even Detroit.
I once read an article in which famed Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully suggested that perhaps the best thing that could happen to baseball would be to cut the league back down to eight teams in each league. It made me wonder, in today's bi-coastal, media controlled world, which teams would make the cut. And I began to worry that my beloved Tribe wouldn't be one of them.
Cleveland's biggest problem these days -- aside from the staggering job loss and crippling depression -- is that it is a one sport town; the people of Northeast Ohio can really only afford to support one team at a time. Who are you going to go see, Ryan Garko (who I happen to like) and Kelly Shoppach (who I happen to not like), or LeBron James (who I like despite his front runner tendencies) and Shaq (who I like despite having played with Kobe)? Honestly, the NFL might want to reconsider extending the season any further, because at a certain point Cleveland fans are going to have to regularly decide between those Browns' tickets and those Cavs tickets', and we all know how that decision would go these days.
It is no coincidence that the Indians dominated after the Browns left and the Cavs got bad again.
So, what, then? Do we wait for LeBron to move to New York before the Tribe can go the World Series and lose again? No, we just hold out hope that we can catch lightning in a bottle again, like we did in '07, and realize that the karma of a city will only allow those years to happen as an exception, not as a rule.
Speaking of karma, does that mean we should trade Cliff Lee? Hey, at least Sabathia had the manners to win the Cy Young while getting our team into the post-season (granted, he actually had help). What could it possibly take to get Lee from the Tribe, given that we have a really cheap option on him next year? And, if we DO trade him, aren't we basically admitting that we have no shot next year, either?
Well, yes to that last one, which might not be too far from the truth. Keeping Cliff Lee means making a number of assumptions, specifically about our future pitching staff. It assumes that Jake Westbrook will be able to return to form after half a season of play this year (he's due back at the beginning of August). It assumes that Fausto Carmona, who was sent all the way to the Rookie League just a month ago, has figured it out, and can be the Cy Young contender he was in '07. It assumes that Hector Rondon's first two starts since getting the call to AAA Columbus are indications of what he'll do the rest of the season, and what he can do next year. It assumes that Aaron Laffey and Scott Lewis, if healthy, can live up to their potential. And it assumes that we can get something out of our AAAA guys, David Huff and Jeremy Sowers, who always seem to be one inning away from being solid pitchers.
It also assumes that any of those guys could move to the bullpen if they don't land a starting job and, in doing so, save said bullpen from itself.
And, yes, I would go so far as to say it assumes we have a new manager.
That's an awful lot of assumptions to make. That's an awful lot of "what if's."
Sadly, at this point, that's all we have.
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