Twins 7, Indians 5: Finding New Ways To Lose Every Night
August 8, 2012Trent Richardson to Meet Dr. James Andrews
August 8, 2012I realized something during the 14-3 shellacking laid on the Indians Monday night. I’ve written about this team since the beginning of the 2008 season—not quite five full seasons. This is the third losing streak of at least ten games that I’ve covered.
This seems like a lot, right? I mean, three losing streaks of at least 10 games in less than five seasons? I don’t know. Seems like a lot to me, anyway.
And when I tweeted that fact, someone asked me if this most recent one didn’t feel a bit different. A bit rougher. A bit more disheartening. He suggested that it might be because this losing streak did not involve many close games—that we were getting clobbered most nights, rather than losing by the slimmest of margins.
On the one hand, he was quite obviously right. The team has been destroyed during the losing streak in historic fashion, as laid out nicely by Jordan Bastian. But that isn’t why this streak has been particularly hard to endure. At least not for me.
No. This streak is different for me because of the context. In 2008 and 2009, the team was supposed to be bad—it had been designed that way, starting with the Sabathia trade and culminating with the Cliff and Vic trades a year later. But even more than that, the badness seemed to signify a plan toward a future that was…well…less bad. We were forced to endure those years because we had restocked our farm system with talent that had to mature. We watched helplessly as players like Mark Grudzielanek and Russell Branyan and Tomo Okha and Niuman Romero and Wyatt Toregas slowly sucked the life out of us. But at least there was a supposed point the misery. At least it felt purposeful.
All we have now is the detritus of a failed plan. A window that slid shut without warning, while we were hanging our heads over the sill, idly thinking playoff thoughts.
And this is what’s got me so down these days. The Indians have started to DFA the older players, signaling a changing of the guard. But there’s no Santana to call up, as there was in 2010. We have no Brantley waiting in the wings, no Pomeranz to dream on. There will be no #FreeRussCanzler campaigns. Or if there are, we really need to get a life.
The upper levels of the farm system are as barren as they’ve been in years. We’re staring down the barrel of losing our best position player to free agency without any viable replacement. Our starting rotation has an ERA over 5.00, with no projectable arms anywhere above the Carolina league to help them out. Our best pitcher was obtained in a straight-up trade for two months of Austin Kearns, and he allowed ten runs in one inning on Monday night. Our best prospect is 17 years old, and even by the most optimistic assessments, he’s a half decade from reaching the Majors. God only knows whether that will coincide with a contention window. We just can’t think that far ahead.
I hate to sound so hopeless. As much as I think this season is an emblematic failure for the front office, I’m also hopeful that next season doesn’t have to be such. Things can turn on a dime, as we’ve seen in the last few weeks. It wasn’t so long ago that I thought this team had a strong core of players, and hey, I can guarantee I’ll think it again before too much longer. They’re called hallucinegenics, and I highly recommend them.
But I think it’s still pretty telling where we find ourselves in August of 2012, halfway into the contention cycle initiated by the Ubaldo trade last July: no team in the American League has been outscored by a bigger margin than the Cleveland Indians. Another way to write this would be to say the Indians are currently the worst team in the League. When they were primed to contend.
I’ve written about some pretty crummy baseball in Cleveland over the last five years. That’s nothing new. But for the first time, I’m starting to feel defeated by it—not because of what I see in front of me, but because of what I don’t.
77 Comments
Depressing, but all true. Another stellar read Jon.
It all comes down to Antonetti going on all in a guy who the Rockies were willing to deal with two+ years left on a club friendly contract. Red flags were everywhere. Then he backed up this plan with Grady Sizemore, Casey Kotchman, and Johnny Damon and had nothing in AA and AAA ready to come up and contribute other than Chisenhall, who naturally got hurt.
If anyone deserves to lose their job, its Antonetti.
completely agree if you add in that Radinsky deserves to lose his job just as much (how can every single starting pitcher signficantly get worse from 2011 to 2012?). the stable FO that has been around in some slightly-changing fashion since the late 80s for the Tribe should be blown up now.
and Jon, you summed up my feelings on why this is so disheartening.
“I’ve written about this team since the beginning of the 2008 season”
wait a second. this isn’t the Indians fault. it’s the curse of Jon! every single move since 2008 has failed (ok, almost though). and what is the one constant? Jon has written about them.
unplug Jon’s computer = problem solved
(just kidding of course but we need some levity, no?)
“In 2008 and 2009, the team was supposed to be bad”
Hate being the hater, but we weren’t supposed to be bad in 2008. Maybe after the CC trade, I guess. But we traded him at the end of that ten game losing streak.
I agree with everything Jon wrote. Incredibly depressing, especially after the encouraging start.
I still like most of Antonetti’s moves, they just didn’t work out. If there was one criticism of Shapiro’s time as GM, it was that he never made a splash by bringing in a star-quality player. At least Ubaldo and Sizemore had the potential to be good. What more can you do with a tight budget?
We have busted. We don’t have an average team with a few good players to trade for more possible blue chip prospects, nor do we have a lot of lower level talent to call up to take some swings. I fear that we may be very poor for the next 5-6 years, which sucks after the last 5 years. We would almost have to be washington bad and have a lot of luck with drafting to get back on our feet.
There’s nothing wrong with a little levity when we’re short on thoughts and long on brevity.
Because I’m here for you all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yop62wQH498
And no this isn’t Brandon Weeden’s daughter!
You need to stick with the stats this was like a Kotchman grounder to the pitcher!
Even with that funky release, and every scout saying possible durability concerns as well as recent decreased velocity, I was still excited to get him at the time even if I knew deep down that there was a good chance he would not work out. CLE never gets the big name player over other teams, unless he has question marks or the price is too steep.
I still catch myself thinking this a lot: Kipnis, Cabrera, Brantley, Santana, and Chisenhall is a decent core of players to keep in place for the next couple years. The trouble has become the pitching staff. If Masterson can find himself again, Ubaldo can not totally suck, McAllister can become solid, and Carrasco can come back strong from surgery, maybe the stars line up and they compete next year.
But that’s the problem…everything has to go perfectly for them to even have a chance. Average players have to overperform, good players need to have career years, and the Dolans need to go sign a couple impact FA’s this off season (stop laughing and indulge me for a moment). It’s not just one of those that has to happen…they all have to happen at the same time. There is no margin for error.
So now, I’m stuck wondering if they should try to stick with what they have, but likely end up in purgatory for the next 4-5 years, or do they trade off what valuable pieces they have and do another total rebuild?
Well a lot of the lineup problems would be solved if we just batted Santana 2nd.
But I agree with the article, I am not sure we have a good or decent core of people at this point. I think Asdrubal has probably peaked, Choo is gone after next season, not sure if Chisenhall is anything to write home about, the pitching staff is a disaster, we probably should have traded Chris Perez before he turned into a dumpster fire (which hopefully doesn’t last past these last few games), it is all just very depressing. I don’t know how this team will compete at all without the Front Office being turned over.
As much as I want to blame the owners, and I do, the failure of this Front Office to evaluate talent in trades and drafts is worse than the owners not opening the wallet. If we had an awesome farm system stocked with players, maybe the owners would see that and be willing to open the wallet. And maybe not. But there is no hope on the horizon. I have already tuned out baseball now and it’s first week of August.
Being a fan isn’t supposed to hurt so bad and be freaking tough. But holy crap, from the Tribe, to the Browns, and the Cavs, just one low point after another. How much longer can I take this?
While I actually agree with you that Antonetti deserves to lose his job, I don’t buy the characterization that it all came down to the Ubaldo trade.
Even if we don’t make that trade, even if we did something other than resign Sizemore, or even if we got somebody else than Kotchman/Damon, this would still be a mediocre and flawed team.
We currently have no MLB caliber pitchers. We have half a bullpen, no 3B, only two outfielders, no bench, and no first basemen. In short, I don’t buy that this was caused by one bad off-season (though, to be fair, this past off-season was horrendous). The whole long term plan was flawed and poorly executed.
Basically, I’m saying that it is Shapiro’s fault as much as Antonetti’s.
How does batting Santana 2nd solve the problems that are Kotchman, Lillibridge, Marson, Duncan, & Hannahan?
Perfect, Jon.
Antonetti has been bad but he is stuck with the rotted fruit of laughingly bad drafting. Of course, he had a hand in that before he was GM, I think. Think of it this way: every team lucks into good or great players in the draft occasionally, the Mattinglys and Piazzas drafted nowhere. And the top pitchers with electric stuff can be easy to spot. But the Indians methodology has been so flawed that they’ve managed to beat the odds and miss on almost everyone, in dozens of rounds, year after year. They would have done better with a plan that called for no scouts and just drafting prospects with grade-A butthole personalities, or only those with freckles on their necks. We have virtually no position players in the system; that’s not bad fortune, that’s utter incompetence, a philosophy so far off the tracks that they need confiscate the laptops, douse them in kerosene, light ’em up and call in the next generation of moneyball wannabe nerds. It’s the only way to tunnel out, and we’ll be digging with a short-handled spoon for a long time. This is the Shapiro legacy, not ’07.
The front office has put this team in a position where we don’t even have a chance at being good in the next 3 to 5 years. We’re going to be stuck in nationals/pirates level of suck until we can get a few years of SOLID drafting in high rounds under way. If we don’t get some solid drafting, well restart the cycle of 3 to 5 years of suck. This is the beginning of some dark dark days.
Kush flavored brownies anyone?
Ive definitely been a Shapiro apologist over the years, but its time for the Dolans to hold his feet to the fire. Sweeping changes and contention in 2013 or else. He’s been given more than enough time and has operated with seemingly infinite job security. His hand picked successor, Antonetti, has been a disaster, the drafting has been awful. We had a chance to contend this year and didnt make a single move to improve the team. Now we have a deeply flawed roster with no real prospects coming up through the system. Time for Shapiro to clean house, and if things dont dramatically improve next season he’s gotta go too.
You’re absolutely correct; after 2007, the expectations locally and nationally were very high for the Tribe in 2008. The players spectacularly combusted in April that year (as they had the previous autumn). While the front office certainly deserves blame for certain bad moves, I still blame the “talent” first and foremost for coming up small when they were either on the precipice of something special (2005, 2007) or expected by everyone to be good (2006, 2008). The expectations were only high for the Tribe after good starts in 2011 and 2012, after which the talent came up small again. It’s weird. (And please, no comments that the front office should be doing better picking talent that doesn’t choke when called upon; this is on the players themselves.)
False – Sizemore had the potential to not play all year – which is what we got.
I have heard that “moving Santana to 2nd” argument so many times, it really makes me laugh now. Of all the problems we have, THAT is the one that has caused the disaster.
Not crapping on anyone’s opinion….just think that this is way down on my list of things that plagues the team. To me, arguing about the lineup is something you do once you have a solid team in place…let’s try to get that first…
the “hindsight” team:
don’t sign Sizemore or trade for Lowe (+ $10mil)
don’t pickup the option on Carmona-Hernandez (+$7mil)
trade Pomeranz/White for Gio in the offseason
give Willingham that 3rd year ($7mil per year)
sign Jason Kubel ($7mil per year)
*either JW or Kubel to 1B*
sign Erik Bedard ($5mil per year)
sign Paul Maholm ($5mil per year)
sign Bartolo Colon ($1mil for 1 year)
that above is a net +$8mil in payroll from last year. obviously, complete hindsight. but there were lots of bargain basement FAs who turned out good to be had. we just happened to not get any of them.
on that +$8mil – it’d be less than $8mil added to what we actually put on this years payroll but I didn’t feel like subtracting out the Damon, Kotchman, etc. of the world.
perhaps we put Baseball America’s top prospects for each round on a wheel and spin it when our pick is up to see who we write down?
I’d add trading some minor league AAAA pitchers for Seth Smith.
i put that hindsight team together and saw how many “impact” FAs actually were relative bargains for their team last offseason.
how do we manage to miss out on getting ANY of these guys every single year? (at least lately)
I agree with the first part completely. It’s tough to keep in mind that these players are still progressing (meaning none have reached the magical “27-year” mark yet). Their production curve is still rising, and it’s a solid core. Now it is only 5/9-ths of a lineup, and more needs to be added, but those five are not as bad as what we have witnessed recently.
As for the pitchers, in my eyes it’s all about momentum. They feed of each other, and when it goes bad, it goes real bad. However, there are such things as having bad years (at least in Masterson’s defense) and players have them and rebound from them too.
Missing Carrasco and Hernandez this year was big….and having them around next year will be even bigger. There are also a few nice pieces in the bullpen as well.
Bottom line to me: Is this team great? No, far from it….but they are also far from being THIS bad too.
I still am optimistic that this season hurts the front office just as much as it is torturing us, and that this will kick-start them to be aggressive with that extra cash they will have this offseason.
The decisions they made this year have not worked, but it was just weeks ago that we all felt relatively good about their chances. They are in an epic nose dive, no doubt, but let’s stay positive about the quality players we do have, and the opportunities we will have this winter to add to them.
This offseason we need to have a little challenge or discussion on possibilities BEFORE the season this way we can all be on the record BEFORE things happen.
I know. Chairs on the Titanic…
Sorry to add to my own post….but we shouldn’t downplay what blown saves do to a team either. Nothing in baseball is more demoralizing than that. The team is in a slump, and twice has had a chance to break out of it and lost from a blown save. That takes a team from bad to worse, and we suffered two in a week.
They simply aren’t as bad as this stretch has shown us.
Problem with that – it’s usually hard to know what’s realistically possible at the time. You can usually say, picking up a guy was wrong/right, but it’s a lot hard to say, we should trade for/sign this guy.
“everything has to go perfectly”
I have said this so many times. There’s no margin for error.
Curse of Wahoo
You can all relax the losing streak is over after a 6-2 win today in the finale with the Twinkies. Choo is really hoping he gets traded this winter!
Oh yea I keep forgetting it’s all about the $$$ first I keep thinking of talent. DOH!
trade sure. but, there are always certain guys who are favorites out there to sign.
That’s easy it’s the same problem when it comes to drafting: poor talent evaluators. I’m glad you realize NOW that there were indeed other options not named Carlos Beltran or even Carlos Pena. I got sick of reading people using these two as excuses for the people who were signed instead.
with our luck, the chairs we’d have on our sinking ship would be made of metal and not wood
that’s the weird thing. how did Shapiro find the marginal guys who had a year or two left in them, but Antonetti cannot? was it all Shapiro? (i would have thought it was the whole staff)
i’ve gone though the Antonetti regime of decisions in FA and trades and it doesn’t look good at all. shapiro had plenty of marginal signings and trades that ended up looking good. guys like Broussard, Casey Blake, Aaron Boone. Guys who did well enough while here and we were able to fllip for even better talents.
the well has done dried up though.
that never affected Bob Feller
I still stand by my premise of having each Cleveland team named for a former star:
Cleveland Browns (whether or not it was originally named for Paul Brown – it is NOW named for Paul Brown)
Cleveland Fellers (gotta get that logo signed over to the team first)
Cleveland Carrs (lots of cool logos can be had with that as well as great alliteration)
is what it is and always has been
I don’t know what Antonetti is thinking and the even scarier thing is I don’t think he knows.
I think the Curse felt that people back then just didn’t know better, unlike today. Odd that 1964, the last year we won a championship, was the year the Civil Rights Act was passed.
Not to the degree that the Indians take it…this isn’t as hard as they portray it to be believe me. Look at the players ‘bode listed and the players Antonetti chose and you tell me if there isn’t a problem bigger then just $$$$.
I never claimed otherwise. I’m just saying that at times it’s hard to say “the Indians should do X” because there’s so many moving parts in the off-season. For example, I’m still not sold we could have gotten Willingham at $21/3yr. We could have offered it to him, but that doesn’t mean his agent wouldn’t have gone back to get the price driven up.
Just saying that sometimes it’s hard to “go on the record” as you say.
I would also add that this one hurts more than the others because everyone is healthy. There are no injury reasons you can point to as to why EVERYONE on the team fell off the planet at the same time.
Sometimes you gotta get out of bed in the morning too but I’m sure glad the Indians didn’t push the negotiations going with plans B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I were so much easier.
I don’t know about this one but I’ve always liked the idea of sharing colors across the city.
the pro teams aren’t a HS or university.
i like the fact that I can have a blue (dark or light), red, orange, brown, cream, etc. colored sports clothing/hats. if they were all the same, then that’d get old quick.
Perhaps drafting by throwing darts at a list of players would be cheaper and provide about as much talent as the Indians have found in the last 10 years,