Treading near the stable equilibrium of mediocrity
by APV on Dec 9, 2011 10:30 AM EST
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PrintI have had an incipient feeling of dread regarding the Tribe's offseason. The reason, I believe, is a fear that the Indians might be entering into a cycle of mediocrity that is hard to escape. Think Toronto, which has sat between 75-87 wins every season except 2004 (67 wins) since 1998. Certain teams just seem to get stuck in the 75-86 win range - not terrible, but not really viable contenders - year in and year out, uncertain whether they are contending or rebuilding, but really just sputtering in the unproductive middle ground. There are a variety of paths that can lead to the mediocrity vortex, but for the Indians the path seems to have begun with the Ubaldo trade, leveraging the long-term future (i.e. Alex White, Drew Pomeranz) for the near-term future (Ubaldo 2011-2013). That move was a gamble, and one that you can mount a strong defense of. But the risk is that Ubaldo is not enough, the core around him is not enough, and that all the trade really did was put the Indians in the "close, but not quite" range of contention. And that would be fine if the Indians had resources to continue to push forward, but do they? We obviously aren't making major payroll additions, which eliminates free agency for us. After trading White and Pomeranz, and with injuries to the team's core veterans (Sizemore, Choo, Hafner), the team can't really afford to leverage much more in the way of young talent.
So the only real option that seems to remain is getting lucky with what we have. To be fair, it isn't really "luck." Lonnie Chisenhall, Jason Kipnis and most especially Carlos Santana, are all extremely talented young hitters. Justin Masterson's performance last season was a credit to the organization's belief that he could be a front-line starter (and his own work effort). Ubaldo has been an elite pitcher in the very recent past (+12 WAR in 2009-2010).
It just seems like the Indians really need all of that to come together for it to work. The injuries to Sizemore, Carrasco, Hafner and company have hugely thinned the Indians talent base. The failure to get adequate replacements in the Sabathia (LaPorta, Brantley) and Lee (Carrasco, Knapp) trades have added to this challenge. The question is whether the critical mass of talent in play for the organization over the next two seasons is enough? The Indians haven't been so terrible as to merit a spot in the true sweetspot of the draft, so no Bryce Harpers or Stephen Strasbourgs have come their way. And yet the organization lacks the funds to spend their way into contention. My fear is that we won't, under the current circumstances, have that opportunity until the next cresting wave...after we have traded away the hopefully productive young careers of Santana et al., bottomed out in a few nice draft picks, and then had time to develop the returns...in a decade.
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The first one is a vote for the current 25-man roster, essentially. The second one is a vote for the 40-man roster plus key guys in the minors right now (i.e. Scott Barnes, Nick Weglarz).
I guess I’m just thinking that of course you should just vote for the second one—that allows you to claim both the 25 plus unknown assets. I’m splitting hairs, though.
I think the Indians basically need one or two more key guys, basically peripheral to the core. Like, Barnes and Aguilar or something. If they can get that, I think they can contend in this division.
That final point is what I’d bring up about the Jays—the Indians can be the new Twins for a while if they get lucky.
also you have to look at the competition… Being in the central really helps us in the fact that we can adjust our tactics accordingly. Having the teams that have to regularly go through a rebuild mode just like us, instead of having the Yankees and Red Sox who just increase salary when its time to rebuild. Makes keeping up with the Jones’s easier, and allows for a few maves to make a big difference. This is what makes us different from the Blue Jays, the have been stuck in the middle of a rebuild and a spending spree, with their big contracts backfiring on them. We had our “big” contracts backfire on us (Hafner and likely Sizemore’s extension) but because of our division, we are able to still put a good team out there, built through good young players, and leveraging our average expensive players into stars (Thanks to the Dodgers and Mariners)…
Don’t you think you’re overlooking the development of Kipnis and Chisenhall into impact players? I know they’re still young, but considering their pedigree and performance up to this point, it seems a bit premature to declare us non contenders for foreseeable future.
"sometimes the internet is hard for me." - ClemsonGirl
by world dictator on Dec 9, 2011 11:50 PM EST up reply actions
Added to this, they probably won’t become impact players overnight.
I think current Indians fans have a distorted perception of this since Grady and Jhonny arrived as almost instant superstars in 2005, with Victor and Hafner arriving almost as quickly.
Following LGT is a double-edged sword. I love the educated opinions of all of the people here, who tend to have more knowledge than I do about the sport and team that I love. It does, however, take a toll on my child-like optimism based on blissful ignorance of facts.
by kennesawmountainwahoo on Dec 10, 2011 3:58 PM EST up reply actions
Hey, do you know where we put Nick Johnson? I checked the coat closet—didn’t see him.
I want to find him and yell at him for 2010. What a mess he made of our playoff chances.
I voted for the fourth option, though I admit that it is likely a reaction to a current bout of pessimism around the team owing to injuries and inactivity. A bounce-back from Choo, an unexpected resurgence from Brantley or LaPorta, and numerous other things could turn that around.
Inactivity has partially led to your pessimism? We made an interesting buy low trade that almost no one saw coming and signed one of the highest upside FA out there. What were you expecting?
You are right. I am pretty high on the Lowe acquisition, and openly support the Sizemore one. I suppose the sense that the Indians front office went to the winter meetings to exchange holiday greeting cards with the other GMs is frustrating.
by APV on Dec 9, 2011 2:31 PM EST up reply actions
I understand, I’ve felt that way before too. For whatever reason, this time I do not. Maybe I bought into Shapiro’s tweet a little too much, I don’t know. But if you believe that transactions made at the winter meetings turn into mistakes at a higher rate than normal, the inactivity is a little easier to take. Sometimes the best moves are the ones that aren’t made, right?
if you believe that transactions made at the winter meetings turn into mistakes at a higher rate than normal
Interesting perspective.
by Jay on Dec 9, 2011 9:44 PM EST up reply actions
Very few organizations have the resources to take a low-risk approach to building a likely pennant contender. It takes a ton of money and a good front-office to build a team that doesn’t need good luck to win, it just needs to avoid a lot of bad luck. The resource-rich org can afford to eat salary and dump an unhealthy former star while taking on salary with a productive replacement. An organization like Cleveland can’t do that (well, not usually, not for extended periods of time). They can only build a pretty good club, one that can be expected to be on the edge of contention if things don’t go wrong. Their hope is for things to go unusually right, to get lucky with their high-risk assets and make the leap to a division title and pennant contention.
NYY can afford to spend money on the front-line talent and solid bench that leads to an expectation of 93 wins and results in 87-99 wins 75% of the time. That means they make the playoffs most years and frequently have a dominant team.
Using the same risk profile, Cleveland would end up with a team that has an expectation of 85 wins and results in 80-90 wins 75% of the time. That’s usually a little short of the playoffs – hello, Toronto.
Instead, Cleveland needs to take a riskier approach. Then the 85-win expectation team has a lot more unknowns, a lot more high risk assets. There’s a greater chance they’ll fall well short of expectations if things go badly, but on the other side there is the chance they get lucky and win 92-95 games. Maybe the 75% interval is 72-95 wins for this type of approach.
I think that’s what they’re doing. That’s why you resign Sizemore. That’s what you do when you have too much sunk into Hafner and can’t afford to buy risk reduction. That’s what you do when you know you’re likely to lose Choo if he performs well. If things go well for this team, if several gambles work out in their favor, they could win a pennant. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. Anyway, that’s why I voted for #1. It’s probably not going to happen, but if things break right for this team they could win.
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 9, 2011 11:04 AM EST reply actions
This is a complete cop-out.
Yes you’re right if your FO team is mediocre or even only in the top 30 percentile of league FOs. A great FO – like Tampa and the Indians of the early 90s – can over come their resource deficiencies with great scouting and drafting. Which is why Shapiro’s failure to draft well at the start of his term has doomed the Indians to the Toronto performance cycle for the foreseeable future.
I went with #5
Our best players wear suits.
OK, you’re saying that you need to have a front office better than the 30th percentile. 15 teams in the league, so you need a front office no worse than 4th best. Of course you’d expect the best GMs to go for the best jobs and the best pay, which are undoubtedly the same teams that can afford to buy their way out of the roster problems. Maybe there is one of those great front offices left over for the rest of the clubs.
Your approach is to simply identify that one great GM that’s available, hire him, and watch him magically convert draft picks to star players, ignoring the fact that even first round picks have only a small chance of being successful major leaugers? You don’t think there is flaw in that?
Take the 15th pick of the draft, the middle of the first round. 1965-2006, 42 years, only 22 of those guys ever made the majors. Only 8 of them were what I’d call successful. About a 1 in 5 chance of success. Maybe your great front office can up that to 1 in 4. So over 20 years, your club gets 5 Scott Kazmirs/Royce Claytons instead of 4. You think it’s obvious which GM got that because of skill instead of luck? You think that extra Royce got you a championship?
Maybe. But that seems like a very difficult and unlikely approach to overcoming the resource deficiency. I think you’re more likely to overcome that advantage with the gambler’s approach.
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 11, 2011 12:38 PM EST up reply actions
So you think that Cashman is the best GM in all of baseball? Or maybe Jim Hendry?
Our best players wear suits.
OK, they’re not. GM’s don’t change jobs every couple of years – where is that mid-market team with the brilliant GM establishing a dynasty? If it is so easy for a smart GM to overcome those resource deficiencies, why do we keep seeing that 50-75% of the playoff teams are from a very limited high-payroll group?
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 11, 2011 10:43 PM EST up reply actions
where is that mid-market team with the brilliant GM establishing a dynasty
Oh, I dunno, maybe somewhere in Florida?
Our best players wear suits.
The Rays? Yeah, they’ve won their division twice in the last four years. Dynasty.
They put themselves into position to do that by finishing last 9 times in 10 years from 1998-2007, and consequently getting no worse than the 8th draft pick overall each year from 1999-2008.
I don’t think the Rays future success, if they have any, is due to an overwhelming intellectual advantage as much as really, really favorable draft position. The Longoria contract is better evidence for their intelligence.
I think you are massively underestimating how difficult it is to make up for $50-100 million of payroll difference by ‘being smarter.’
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 12, 2011 7:50 AM EST up reply actions
Let’s see how they do in 2012 and 2013. My guess is that they finish with at least 10 wins more per year than the Tribe and might even finish in front of New York one of those years.
Our best players wear suits.
The question isn’t whether the Rays are better than the Indians over the next couple of years, it’s whether their front office is good enough for them to make up for a difference of a few tens of millions of payroll between them and NYY/BOS/LAA. And now you seem to be saying that the only example of this smart front office, a standard you have implied should be pretty east to meet, might (might) be able to do that once in the next few years, after reaping the advantage of an unprecedented bonanza of top-10 draft choices.
Complete cop-out?
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 13, 2011 8:10 AM EST up reply actions
Boy have you got it wrong. It’s very, very difficult to be a great FO in ML baseball. And you seem to (conveniently) forgetting that the Rays lost their best power hitter and closer and still competed.
What I’m saying is this: winning the GM of the Year Award doesn’t make you a great GM. Touting your “secret” spreadsheet evaluator doesn’t do it either. Building and maintaining a winning organization does it. Shapiro has failed at that. Friedman – so far – hasn’t. If that’s what you call a “cop-out” so be it.
Our best players wear suits.
Nice reversal. Went from better than the top 30% to very, very difficult in a short time.
Longoria was, is, and likely will continue to be the Rays top power hitter. Zobrist is probably #2. I guess you’re referring to Pena, who left after slugging a sub-LaPorta 407 in 2010.
As far as the rest of your argument, it seems like a complete non sequitur, and the cop-out reference was in response to your original characterization of my position.
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 13, 2011 8:40 PM EST up reply actions
You’re misconstruing the 30 percentile reference. What I said – or meant to say – is that being in the top 30 percentile of FOs won’t make a small market team consistently competitive. It just ain’t good enough.
So maybe Shapiro etal was one of the 4 or 5 best in all of baseball. That ain’t gonna cut it. They hafta be the best, year in and year out. It’s not good enough to be the Victor Martinez of GMs, you gotta be Albert Pujols this year and every year. That’s what I’m looking for.
Our best players wear suits.
I don’t see that Friedman has achieved much of anything that Shapiro didn’t. The difference is trifling.
Here’s the difference. Friedman’s gotta chance to sustain his success. Shapiro’s team is all ready in the toilet.
Our best players wear suits.
Okay, I grant you that.
Now you grant me this: Shapiro has never got even one single Top 5 draft pick to work with and only one in the Top 10. Friedman inherited a club coming off four #1 picks, eight Top 5 picks and ten Top 10 picks in ten seasons.
Ya gotta play the hand you’re dealt. Friedman – in my estimation – has done a masterful job. You already know what I think of Shapiro’s performance.
Our best players wear suits.
So you see no serious difference in the anemic Hart drafts that Shapiro inherited and the pile of choice draft picks that Friedman inherited?
And you consider yourself an engineer?
Of course you’d expect the best GMs to go for the best jobs and the best pay
Antonetti walked away from the Cardinals. I doubt that is an isolated example.
If you’re smart enough to get offered a GM job — which can be more than one type of smarts, by the way — you’re also smart enough to know that not every job opportunity is one that you accept.
One additional thing – I think you’re actually just advocating for a different flavor of the same Kool-Aid. The draft is just another high-risk way to try to overcome economic disadvantages. I feel that it’s not the best way to do so because of the difficulty in evaluating draft performance until a long time after the draft and because you have a lot of uncertainty about when players will develop – it’s hard to get the talent to mature at the ‘right’ times.
As an illustration of the difficulty of drafting, consider the group that put together the undeniably great draft for the Tribe in 1989 (Hank Peters and Dan O’Dowd along with Chet MontgomeryMickey White) and the very good one of 1991. In 1990 their picks in the first 5 rounds were
Tim Costo
Sam Hence
Pat Bryant
Darrell Whitmore
Jason Hardtke
Jeff Brohm
Oscar Munoz
Ugly. They had 4 of the first 50 picks, and Tim Costo (146 career plate appearances) was the best they got.
Maybe drafting well requires a lot of luck.
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 11, 2011 12:49 PM EST up reply actions
Look you gotta find 3 or 4 gems outta dozens if not hundreds of players drafted. Did drafting Thome take luck? Absolutely, but they did hafta identify him as a superior player. How about Belle? was that “lucky”? Kinda, but every team in the ML – including the Indians – passed on him once, But the Indians took a chance on him. Manny’s the only one of that bunch where drafting position played a roll in his selection,
Plenty of other examples of great scouting overcoming lack of resourses. Lofton for Taubensee, Fermin for Omar.
Smart GMs are worth more to the success of a ball club than any Pujols or ARod. Our problem is that we’ve been saddled with our own version of Nick Punto.
Our best players wear suits.
They identified Thome as a player they liked for the 13th round. Not as a “superior player.”
Horse trading and scouting are not the same thing. The latter is a part of the former but not all of it. Shapiro surpassed his mentor in that category by the end of his first year as GM.
No doubt Shapiro could horse trade with the best of ‘em. He just couldn’t draft worth a crap.
Our best players wear suits.
Right. It took him too long to rebuild the disastrous amateur scouting team that Hart left him with.
Think I’m exaggerating?
Take a look at Hart’s 2001 draft.
Or how about Hart’s 2000 draft.
Or even better, Hart’s 1999 draft, which some have called the worst draft in history.
So let us be perfectly clear about this. Our drafting problems inarguably began with Hart, forced us into rebuilding mode in 2002 and hamstrung us well into that decade.
Shapiro was too slow to recognize the problem and failed to fix it earlier in the decade, that much is clear. But it does appear that he eventually fixed the problem, bequeathing to Antonetti the scouting group that drafted and signed Chisenhall, Kipnis, Phelps, Pomeranz, White and Putnam.
That now looks like a bigger haul of talent, drafted in just three years, than the Hart-created group could manage from 1996 through 2002.
You keep talking about Hart because – I suspect – he’s an easy target. Let’s talk about my boy Peters. You want screwed up scouting system? Look at the Tribe’s from the 60’s until the late 80’s. Peters took over and things changed- dramatically. And it’s not just luck. Look at Peter’s track record. Now look at Shapiro’s.
We’ll see how Chisenhall et al stack up against Peter’s draftees. Right now I’d settle for 4 or 5 All Star caliber seasons from those guys. Peters has HoFers on his resume.
Our best players wear suits.
Not a “vendetta” I just don’t think he was the guy to take us to the Promised Land. And I think that his 5 years of crappy drafts has put us back to where we were in 1990.
Our best players wear suits.
No, but Hart’s performance weighed heavily on the Shapiro-era Indians. Total neglect of the minor league pipeline once he won that first pennant.
Again, look at the mess Peters inherited. A great GM is a great GM. There’s plenty of wannbes out there.
Our best players wear suits.
Peters’ record does not begin and end with the Indians in 1988-1991. He was GM of the Orioles from 1976-1987. Maybe his draft record from there can shed some light on the brilliant or lucky question.
12 drafts, a total of 12 players with not insignificant ML careers (some of those 12 did not sign with the Orioles).
He had a great draft in 87 which ended a run from 83-86 that produced absolutely nothing of value.
It’s hard to tell who is a great GM.
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 13, 2011 8:22 AM EST up reply actions
You know, I don’t think we actually disagree. Yes, drafting Thome did take luck. Did they identify him as a superior player? Yes, superior to Nolan Lane, who they drafted in the round after Thome. But inferior to Von Wechsberg, who they drafted in the round prior to Thome.
I guess my point is we shouldn’t be so sure that drafting Thome/Belle/Giles or trading for Lofton is a clear-cut example of smart over luck. It takes a long trail of such successes to constitute proof of smarts. I don’t disagree that Peters produced such a trail. But it didn’t become evident for 5-6 years after the drafts in question, after he had already left.
Having said that, I agree that a truly gifted GM is worth more to the club than a star player. But a star player shows his value in a single year, two at the most, by definition. A star player is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ kind of thing. The star GM is more subject to the vagaries of chance and takes a lot longer to show his value. A ‘what did you do for me in 2006’ kind of thing.
by InfiniteMonkeyTypists on Dec 11, 2011 10:38 PM EST up reply actions
I’m not so sure that a smart GM is worth more than a Pujols or A-Rod. One, I think the ‘replacement level’ is a lot higher than you think. Even the mighty Hank Peters is going to heavily rely on his scouts and coaches in evaluating players, and his assistants in determing values of potential trade and free agent targets. And two, I think if they were as valuable as a MVP talent, the market would bear that out, but it goes in the completely opposite direction. Just to use the name you brought up, Nick Punto made more in 2010 than any GM in baseball. Now, supposedly there are ownership stakes and stock-options floating around, but I have to think that if a GM were so irreplaceable, we’d see eight-figure-a-year deals.
Brian Sabean can make absolutely head-scratching decisions then win the World Series. Billy Beane can assemble a 95 win team on peanuts then suddenly is only able to finish ahead of the Mariners. There is a lot more going on than the brilliance or lack thereof of just one man.
Here’s pretty good definition of a market inefficiency: when the cost of something doesn’t match its value. You know like when you pay $4m for a player (Punto) and a top 5 GM (Friedman) a fraction of that.
You guys are always talking about exploiding market inefficiencies, well here’s one. Rather than pay Sizemore $3M to play or not play baseball, wouldn’t it make for sense for Dolan to spend that money on somebody that could actually improve the team for years to come?
Our best players wear suits.
Is there any evidence that that person exists?
Give Shapiro or Antonetti eight #1 overall draft picks and we’ll see how he does.
Somehow you’re going to have accept that I find it skeptical that you’ve discovered the market inefficiency that financial analysts are worth $25-30 million to a baseball team yet no one around the game has come even close to that realization.
I never advocated paying $25M a year for a FO GM. Far from it. I don’t think that any individual is worth that much to any baseball club. But then again, if I were Dolan, I’d be much more likely to pay Freidman $3M a year than Sizemore. I think the club would be much better off with a great GM than a gimpy washed up part-time CFer.
Our best players wear suits.
Smart GMs are worth more to the success of a ball club than any Pujols or ARod
So how much are either of those guys worth then? There’s a lot of room between those two and your impression of Sizemore.
Well I’d put the market value of a great GM above that of the highest valued (not paid) player on the team. So somewhere in the $8-10M range.
Our best players wear suits.
To the Indians yes, that’s about right.
It’s not the absolute dollars that you should be looking at, it’s the percent of payroll. A guy who the Yankees will pay $25M a year is not worth anywhere near that to the Indians.
So was ARod worth $25M a year to the Rangers? Obviously not. But he is worth that much to the Yankees.
Our best players wear suits.
So what of the Indians offering Sabathia and Lee $20 million a year, and giving Hafner $14 million and Westbrook $11 million? How does this mesh with your idea that Pujols is only worth $8 million to them? Did you they go ‘you know what, they’re not worth it, but these are some nice gentlemen that we want hanging around’?
The percentage of payroll thing makes little sense to me. How you allocate your budget should only depend on maximizing your win total.
I think Chuck is saying that the percentage-of-payroll thing is a key signpost en route to maximizing your wins. I think he’s basically right, although as a quick metric, it’s far more simplistic than it needs to be.
But what does the signpost say? Where is the breakeven point where even Pujols is taking up too high a percentage of the payroll? I think there are too many moving parts to tie yourself too closely to that. It sounds nice in theory to say something like “we shouldn’t dedicate 20% of our payroll to 10% of our marginal wins”, but I think you have to be prepared to throw that out the window when the right circumstances come up.
You wanna build a WS winner on a budget? You’ll need at least 5 of your starting 9 be offensive players and 3 of your 5 starters be in their pre-FA years. Those are the guys who can potentially give you the biggest bang for the buck.
And how do you find ~8 young All-Stars. Why you hire the best damn GM you can find. You’ll end up paying ~$75M for ball players and $8M for a GM. That’s a lot better investment than $90M worth of second tier FAs.
Our best players wear suits.
I voted, sadly, for the last option. The Carrasco injury really bums me out whenever I think about it.
We’re not playing the same game as the haves.
I like ex-Phillies prospects.
by Gradyforpresident on Dec 9, 2011 11:08 AM EST reply actions
Me too on Carrasco- the biggest disappointment of the year for me, other than LaPorta. On revenue issues I am putting my faith in mlb.com. If, over time, more broadcasting revenue shifts from locally owned network revenue to shared mlb.com and mlb network revenue we might see a bigger slice of the pie.
Wish I had your optimism on the revenue issue as the size and, more importantly, the length of the local TV deals being handed out recently leads me to believe that the disparity is going to grow, not shrink.
The Angels as-yet-unannounced TV deal nearly doubles what the Rangers signed last off-season, and the Rangers deal looked HUGE at the time.
by The DiaTriber on Dec 9, 2011 12:10 PM EST up reply actions
That’s where the “over time” hedge plays. My children all watch TV with an HDMI cable connected to a monitor. None of them have cable. Aren’t those internet packages sold via mlb.com and mlb network? Hopefully, the revenue split is equal (like mlb.com) and not mirroring local market size.
The cable companies (FOX, Time Warner) know this and realize that live sports is one of the last things that people will pay to watch live. The out-of-market pie may be cut up evenly via MLBAM, but the local TV deals are based on local market size and, logically, how many people have to subscribe to THAT channel via cable/satellite/whatever or are able to get a particular channel in their home market to watch the game live.
More TVs in LA mean a bigger pool for FOX to get $X dollar on each cable/satellite bill, thus more money to the team to broadcast those games. Additionally, the Internet packages are something that has to be bought by an individual, whereas the FOX West is going to be in every home, whether they want it or not, with the dollars rolling in (locally) accordingly.
by The DiaTriber on Dec 9, 2011 12:23 PM EST up reply actions
MLB.tv is a 30-way split, as is MLB Extra Innings.
by Jay on Dec 9, 2011 9:48 PM EST up reply actions
That’s what I had heard. The Rangers was $80M/year…so those are some game-changers.
by The DiaTriber on Dec 9, 2011 12:37 PM EST up reply actions
Why? Carrasco had like a 5 + ERA before he went out. He never showed he was going to be anything more than a back of the rotation starter.
Him sucking or him being injured is pretty much the same.
This is both ignorant and also just flat out wrong (4.62 ERA in 2011 before injury)
by TKilbane on Dec 9, 2011 2:12 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
It is because not only has he shown the potential to be more than a back-of-rotation starter, the injury comes at a horrible time for both his maturation as a pitcher and for what most believe is the Indians new contention window.
This is true. However considering that he only had a small stretch where he pitched really well (was it June?) and he’s a young pitcher, I’m not all that surprised or shocked that he got injured. It’s not like he was CC Sabathia and went down. He’s just another young pitcher that didn’t live up to his potential and got injured. It happens all of the time.
The timing sucks, but I’m also not ready to close the book on him yet either. There will be a few moments during 2012, perhaps when the playoff hopes are looking grim, that I’ll have completely forgotten Carrasco’s existence and it will cheer me up when I remember that we have something potentially very exciting to look forward to in 2013.
He was more than “just another young pitcher” for this team. He has a unique skill-set in that rotation, and had a very good upside that was starting to flash. He had quite a bit of development to do, and this was the best year for it to happen. That’s why it is a big blow to the team. He was an X-factor, capable of really asserting an influence between mediocrity and excellence. Tomlin doesn’t have that upside, either does Lowe.
This is just it. I think we really need to learn to temper our expectations for young pitchers. They are mostly going to fail.
Strong performance and certainty cost money. So until the Sheik of Abu Dhabi buys the Indians, this might be something to get used to.
More to the point about Carrasco. He didn’t just come out of nowhere, he’s had great stuff for years. He just didn’t harness it, but he started to.
Noted Indians hater Keith Law on Carrasco last summer:
Dan (Cleveland, OH) Can Tomlin and Carrasco improve or is it pretty certain they will plateau as back end guys?
Klaw (1:55 PM) I mentioned this on Twitter – Carrasco’s the one guy on that team whose massive improvement could easily be real. The biggest problem I had with him was his capacity to melt down when anything went wrong on the field (and he had some off-field maturity questions too). That seems to be gone. Also seems like he’s locating the fastball better, and setting it up better with the changeup. We could have bet on the latter, but the former … I never know how to project a guy to grow up when he’s 21 or 22 and hasn’t done it yet.
Maybe one of the reasons Carrasco melted down is that he grew frustrated with an unreliable but golden arm that’s been injured since he was 14.
by Bogalusa Bomber on Dec 9, 2011 8:31 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
while the offseason is underway, lets wait and see where we end up before running this poll. The disappointing LaPorta gamble and our thin depth at the major league level make it hard to bet on the current roster over a 162 game season, even if you think (as I do) that several players (like Choo) will have bounce back seasons. But, with a good pick up or two, adroit roster managment and some dumb luck, contending is possible. Forced to choose, I’d go with #2 and hope for additional offense to show up before spring to make me look right.
I voted for #2. My “incipient feeling of dread” came shortly after the U trade. Kipnis and Chiz were pretty much starting, and I looked at the farm system and thought, “well, that’s it for a while. This is what we have, there ain’t no more”
So, I think the next 2 years should be maxed out in order to put together a team that can be in the pennant race. Make creative trades, supplement the roster with moderate FA upgrades where needed, make the team better. My aspirations raise no higher than that.
I think keeping an upward trend in attendance, however slight the slope, is the absolute most important thing for the front office to focus on. They have to keep putting a watchable, rootable team on the field for fans to come out, get hooked, and come back. That is the only way this team will be able to generate the revenue needed to keep the team in a fairly sustainable reload mode rather than blowup/rebuild cycles which just destroy the fan base.
So, Netti – get us a decent bat for the OF at the minimum. Going into the season with Brantley, Choo, Grady and Zeke is the scariest part of the club right now (and I don’t mean scary to other teams) – much scarier than the1B situation.
I voted number 1 largely on what I believe is a good enough pitching staff to get us there. I still love the deal for Ubaldo and while he may not be everyone’s definition of a true ace, paired with Masterson, gives us a formidable 1-2. The big question is always the bullpen, but I think the group we have right now is pretty good.
Yep. With a young lineup plus Masterson and Ubaldo we are in good shape. Now if we can just get a 1B or OF that can hit…
Of course we are going to contend next year. Why does anyone here feel differently? The trade for Ubaldo was fantastic and really gave me hope for these next few years.
I also loved the Ubaldo move. I find this talk of “contention” to be rather refreshing.
My biggest concern is the offense in general, not just the “power” positions. With young hitters, I’m inclined to worry about them being streaky and not making the proper adjustments as the season goes on. I have a feeling we’re going to have an offense that on the whole is slightly above average, but goes through periods where they pound teams 8-4 followed by a week of 2-0 losses.
I need some clarification here. What do you mean by contend? Are we talking Central Division contenders or WS contenders?
As a slight tangent, I fear that the organization now sees “contending” as competing for the Central crown. I also get the feeling that winning the Central would be a clear victory for the organization, and a cause for celebration, with the thinking being that once we’re in the playoffs “anything can happen”. I don’t necessarily ascribe to this theory. I see us as competing for the Central crown over the next 2-3 years, but I don’t think (although I do hope) that we’re legitimate WS contenders. I want the big enchilada, and I’m getting tired of waiting around to get it.
Once you get into the playoffs, anything can happen.
by woodsmeister on Dec 10, 2011 12:08 PM EST up reply actions
I am presently surprised by the optimism for the near-term. Being in the AL Central – with the Twins implosion, the White Sox looking to white-flat it, and Kansas City being Kansas City – certainly is a big part of that. To the question above about AL Central contention vs. contention more broadly, I think baseball has a long history showing the key to winning the World Series is to first make it to the playoffs…after that, hope for the best. With the new post-season changes that formula may not work as well, but time will tell.
Maybe it’s being a fan of the Browns as well, but if I had to be optimistic somewhere, it’s 100% with the Indians right now.
I’m so glad I’m not a Browns fan. And yes, for Cleveland sports the Indians are the only game in town right now. Cavs are rebuilding (but I have hope for Irving) and the Browns are in a perennial state of suck.
I’m super pumped about this upcoming baseball season in a way I haven’t been since the 2007 season which seems forever ago.
I stopped caring about the NBA awhile ago (which is odd since basketball is my favorite sport), the league continues to embarrass itself.
The Cavs are going to royally suck for another year or two, but if they hit on a couple of those lottery picks it really isn’t a long road back in the NBA.
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools" -Hemingway
by notthatnoise on Dec 10, 2011 12:24 PM EST up reply actions
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