Week 9 Recap
November 5, 2007Indians exercise option on Paul Byrd, Shapiro wins executive of the year
November 6, 2007Mark Shapiro Wins Executive Of The Year Again
For the second time in three years, Cleveland Indians Geneal Manager Mark Shapiro has been named Sporting News Executive Of The Year. In a vote amongst his peers, Shapiro received 13 of 47 votes. Second place went to Colorado Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd, who received 11 votes.
It’s not hard to understand why Shapiro won this award yet again. Look at the facts…The Indians payroll was 23rd largest in baseball, the team was able to bring up key players from the minors to contribute to the division title, the Kenny Lofton deal was significant in solidifying the outfield, the team won 96 games and finished tied with Boston (2nd highest payroll in baseball) for the best record in baseball, the team won its 7th AL Central title, and they eliminated the team with the highest payroll in all basebal, the New York Yankees, in four games in the divisional round before finally succumbing to the overpowering eventual World Series Champion Boston Red Sox.
“There’s not one moment in the season that stands out,” Shapiro said. “I just remember standing in the locker room after we clinched the division and thinking how many games we had to win to get to that point. Then I looked around at all the different players celebrating and knew we’d done it with people we believed in and didn’t have to compromise those beliefs in any way.
It’s a collective achievement. There are so many people who contributed – coaches, scouts and an assistant general manager [Chris Antonetti] who is more like a co-general manager. Hopefully, we can take some of this hardware and exchange it for the kind we can wear on our fingers someday.”
This award just goes to further emphasize what I was saying last week about the Indians’ front office organization. It is validation for the amazing job this collective group of individuals have done in creating a team that competes hard, wins games, and is a team we can all take pride in. Congrats to Mark Shapiro and everyone else in the Indians front office. You all deserve this award.
2 Comments
That’s pretty funny. I posted an article about this and then decided to check your site out to see if you had a post about Shapiro, and we used the same piture. Hilarious.
Yeah, it’s surprisingly hard to find decent pictures of Mark. It’s even harder to find pictures of Chris Antonetti.