No, I get it. I really did cry when I got home yesterday and discovered he’d actually been traded. Everybody was a little bit in love with him, even if they didn’t really know it.

I feel so… bereft.

Yup. Well written Ryan.

Chuck, I’m still not over Vic. Sorry. However, I’m also starting to feel strangely bad about Lee leaving too. I think you’re right about him. You have to admire all he’s been through and that he’s done so without being a disingenuous prick.

That’s a long time to change his mind. It wouldn’t exactly be a Thome move if he signs elsewhere.

Chuck, you need to go ahead and believe him now.

I don’t mean to rub salt in everyone’s wounds, but a year and a half from now, Victor Martinez and the Cleveland Indians are probably — hopefully, I’m going to reluctantly say — just not going to be a good fit.

Vic is a great player, but the upgrade that 2011-2014 Victor Martinez will provide over 2011-2014 Santana/LaPorta/Wegz/etc — fingers crossed — is probably not going to be worth anywhere near the amount he’ll be due on the open market. In order for the Indians to sign him, and for the deal to make the team more and not less likely to win, he will have to willingly sacrifice double-digit millions of dollars.

Sure, that will be his choice, but… come on. I honestly believe Martinez would be willing to go pretty far out of his way to stay with the Tribe, but I don’t think the team can afford to meet him even halfway, and I don’t think the team should… and I don’t think we should think any differently of him when he signs his next deal somewhere other than Cleveland.

Unless it’s with the effing Yankees or Ped Sox. Eff those guys.

Excellent post.

Since the mid-90’s I really have approached my baseball fandom from a detached point of view, in that I root for the uniform more than the players.

Maybe it’s becoming an adult .

Maybe it’s the realization of the economic inequities of the game.

Maybe it’s because I saw first-hand a lot of stuff in the mid-90’s that diminished a lot of these guys in my eyes as “heroes.”

That said, it was hard to be detached about Victor.

He seemed to have a genuine joy for the game, losing seemed to gnaw at him more than any other player, he seemed to have a strong family life, he was active in his community, and yeah, he put up the stats we all so desperately cling to.

If I had a favorite Indian of the last 10-15 years, it was probably Victor.

And that’s it will kill me to see him get the standing ovation in Fenway.

Even though he deserves it.

Very well said. I agree completely.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat – Teddy Roosevelt

“Your future’s all used up. Why don’t you go home?” – Marlena Deitrich fortune telling Orson Welles in “A Touch of Evil”

I would much rather be in Shapiro’s shoes this AM than in Ricciardis. While Shapiro knows that he can either soar or burn, Ricciardi has to know that he is locked himself into a limping descent in to a tv booth somewhere…

Regardless of what words are coming out of his mouth, no doubt Shoppach’s main frustration is the fact that he’s hitting .200, and he knows he played a small part in this disaster.

Reading Livingston makes one just a little dumber. No thanks.

that was probably the first non-Pluto Plain Dealer column I’ve read in more than a year. Livingston is a hack.

I tried, but I couldn’t even finish it. It’s no wonder that Cleveland sports fans act the way they do — they have idiots in the media leading the charge.

Any chance we could trade Livy to KC and bring Posnanski “home”?

I wanted to quote some of his article and point out how stupid it is, but some people here have made a conscious effort not to read his stuff, so I won’t spoil their hard work.

It’s mindblowingly dumb however.

He was in the TV booth for the 5th inning yesterday, and he seemed a lot “looser” in his discussions with Underwood and Manning than he usually is. He did talk about how, after all the weeks of working to trade Victor, he finalized a deal that would improve the long-term outlook of the team, patted himself on the back, and then realized what he had done. I’m personally certain he felt like a monster, and I thank him for it. You have to be a cold-hearted bastard to be a good GM.

Vichan and I are going to be at tonight’s game as well. Apparently bleacher tickets are selling like crazy. (I don’t know, she bought mine for me because i am just that awesome.)

This just proves that about 25 clubs are farm teams for the Yanks and Red Sox.

All small to mid market teams are farm systems for big market clubs. That’s the nature of the game unfortunately.

Trading established talent for high ceiling prospects as always been the equalizer. But when the economic market hits a major downturn it causes the double effect of both making high ceiling prospects harder to pry from other teams while also forcing small market teams to cut salary, and encourage them to jettison players like Vic.

It’s a perfect storm of suck.

Well, at least they’re paying big signing bonuses to their draft picks and then sending them to us on the cheap.

i think that whether you see masterson as a starter or reliever is pretty much dispositive with regard to whether you like this trade.

and of course, that turns on whether you think masterson can start getting lefties out.

i am a glass half full guy with masterson . . . i guess i’ve always seen the lowe comps and read the glowing scouting reports. plus, i’m a velocity/tools whore when it comes to most young pitchers (with the notable exception of laffey). masterson is a big, durable dude who throws hard and gets a lot of grounders and strikeouts. he’s also got that funky arm angle and needs to develop his third pitch, the circle change, if he’s going to be more than a marginal starter. i hope that the development of that changeup plus his natural physical development (which, i suppose, is near finished) will help him maintain his velocity as a starter and be effective enough against lefties.

Even when it works out, I’ll never support giving Torii Hunter five years, $90M. I"ll keep the thoughtful, reasonable, objective GM.

Is “Sharpo” intended to be an insult that I am just too obtuse to understand, or just a consistent misspelling?