As bad as the Cliff Lee trade looked and felt, this one looks and feels worse. Victor Martinez spent too many years with the Indians and was too good a player and valuable a teammate for it not to be bad.
Boston acquired one heck of a good hitter, and the Indians have traded away two Cy Young winners and an All-Star catcher and gotten not one ready-for-the-major-leagues-today player. Wow. There's just no way to put a smiley face on that fact.
But … about a month ago an Indians type told me that the way the team was constructed as it contended in 2007 would only last one more year past this one. Evidently he was looking at the contracts that expired in 2010, and the reality that the team might not be able to sign the key players. After 2010, there would be a rebuild on the fly … with different core players.
Clearly that timetable has been moved up. And it was brought about by the financial realities the team is facing that we all hate to talk about and hear about. Once the realities were made clear to the Indians that next season's team could not be supplemented at all, the decision was made to tear it down now and start to act on things immediately. To start building again with young players, and hope that these young players could grow into a team the way the young players did in the 1990s and the mid 2000-zeroes.
The process sure stinks, though.
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Terje, while I agree with everything that you're saying, just a quick explanation, please. What is a "ginger"? I'm sure that Shapiro deserves everything we are saying about him, but is he a ginger, or an incompetent ninny making abysmal trades?
he's both a ginger and an incompetent ninny making abysmal trades.
here's the best reference for the term ginger:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Kids
And I only thought that the purpose of this blog was as an outlet for all my anger about the Indians. Who knew that you could get an education at the same time? Thanks, guy, I'm adding "Ginger Snap Shapiro" to "Sugar Daddy Wedge" in my blog vocabulary.
terje, that's bull and you know it. You don't offer one single rational explanation for why people didn't show in 2005 or 2007. It's the weather. It's 9/11. It's the economy. It was a fluke. It's Wedge's mustache. It's Wedge's silly rabbit nose twitch. It's Shapiro's stupidity. It's Dolan is a cheap bastard. It's this. It's that. Everything but "It's the Jews." And I don't doubt that there's a few morons out there who would offer that special one up, and actually be serious when they say it.
It's a lousy baseball town. There's your reason. Dolan gave people a reasonable payroll for this market. No, check that. Better than reasonable.
Adjusted for inflation, Dolan's payroll from 2001 would be the equivalent of $140 million. Only the very drunkest of the drunk around here think Jacobs would have EVER forked over that kind of dough if he still owned the team from his current office park in hell, which is located right next-door to Saddam Hussein's comfy spider hole and Adolph Hitler's luxurious bunker, both located in the Antichrist Ramada Inn. A free breakfast buffet is included.
Yes, the organization has let the minor league system slip. No doubt. Scouting has been sub-par. But people were given a winner. That's a fact. But they did not show to see what they were given. Like the saying goes, you get what you paid for. In the case of people who purport to be Indians fans, you didn't pay for a damn thing. So now, you're going to get nothing. You're getting exactly what you paid for.
i told you the reason. the same reason i quit going to see the indians in spring training. eric wedge managed teams look like crap.
terje, you live in Montana, so you're getting a pass. You can bitch and holler, but of course nobody expects you to hook up a pack of Siberian huskies and travel into the bowels of Ohio and buy Indians season tickets or see individual Indians game. So you get a free pass. But the rest of the folks here? The rest of the folks making asses of themselves on talk radio? The entire local cheerleading media that has spent the last six years of their lives fawning over LeBron James and playing pocket pool inside Dan Gilbert's trousers? They neither get a free pass nor deserve a free pass. A region full of empty vessels and hypocrites of the highest order.
"But people were given a winner"
ONE YEAR? 2007 (i guess? is that really a winner?). that's it. don't even bring up 2005. that was the equivalent of crapping yourself at the prom. that's it. one season of playoffs and two seasons with a winning record. that's a winner in your book. by that standard you owe danny ferry an apology, a box of chocolates and a hard night's work on your knees.
i may live in montana but i used to go to winter haven or travel to see the team in ft. myers, dunedin or wherever else they were playing while i was there. i put in what i could. when i actually lived in cleveland i couldn't even get a ticket to the 1994 opener. i stood outside the right field gate and watched clinton throw the first pitch. i still have the program for that game with c.c. on the cover. i have a framed photograph of gate d and the chief on my wall and 3 shelves of baseball books. i paid for mlb radio when they couldn't even figure out how to make it stream properly over the internet. i put in my share. they f-ed me over because the fly by night fans that came out in the 90's bailed.
i'm not alone. there are plenty of people like me who used to enjoy baseball. it's over for me. you can't do what they are doing. it's one thing to tear down the team. it's another thing to do it stupidly by not timing it right, letting the other teams know you are desperate and telling the fans to piss off while you go golfing in pittsburgh. f- that. i'd spit in larry and paul dolan's face if i ever met them.
left field gate i meant.
terje, give me a break. You can't pretend 2005 didn't happen. That's totally disingenuous.
Gund's teams were slightly better than mediocre, too. But nobody really showed up. Season ticket sales blew. So Gund finally got fed up and did the exact same thing Dolan is doing now when he got fed up. Only Paxson was the poor sap who was left to his own devices to make up stories instead of Shapiro.
You get what you pay for. If not for the flip of a coin, the Cleveland Cavaliers would no longer exist. Guess what, there's no coin flip coming for the Cleveland Indians. Dolan is 78 and in relatively poor health. People had really better shut their mouths and finally start to support this team, or his son will eventually sell out to the first Arab that offers him a suitcase of money.
there's a big difference between paxson and shapiro. paxson was smart enough to tank a season to get lebron james. the guy built the foundation for everything the cavs are today. he also performed a small miracle when he found a sucker to take shawn kemp. his trade for gooden and varajao was fairly decent too. he's was a much better g.m. than danny ferry and mark shapiro wouldn't even qualify as his piss boy.
ATLEAST YOUR INDIANS WON TONIGHT
That's probably all true, terje. Paxson's failure was his inability to judge college talent. Not all that different from his successor, now that I think about it. Although his successor can't do anything else right, either.
You know, honestly I've never really thought about it until now, but Paxson may have actually put together a champion or two or three, since draft picks were never going to enter into the Cavaliers equation, anyway. He was fairly competent at everything else, with the obvious exception of being conned by that Boozer/Boozer wife thing. I really wonder how he would have judged free agent talent and whether he had the brains to know to conserve cap space and don't vomit and crap in it within five minutes just because you have it. We'll never know. But really, other than that, he was OK. I guess you don't know what you got til it's gone. Or until you hire a real idiot.
I can't speak for Shapiro's ability to be a piss boy, though. That is, if I knew what a piss boy actually is. I'm really not sure. Are you now resorting to making golden shower references in a sportswriter's G-rated blog?
LEE THRU 7 INNINGS 0 RUNS 1 HIT 2 WALKS, THANK YOU CLEVELAND, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!
Alan, you just made Terje's point for him by bringing the Cavs into this discussion. If memory serves me the Cavs had abysmal attendance for several years because the team not only stunk, but they were not entertaining to watch. I remember sitting at a playoff game against the Nicks, the first playoff series in years, and being blown away by all the empty blue seats. They made a playoff appearance that year but I don't recall anyone rushing out to buy season tickets for the following year because nobody found the team that interesting. Then they drafted LeBron and suddenly the Gund/Q was packed most of the time. If you give Cleveland fans something to be excited about they will come. The Cavs proved that.
Expecting people to rush out and buy tickets because a boring team filled with players who were shuffled around every year or two happened to find their way into the playoffs is unrealistic. People didn't jump on the Tribe bandwagon because even though they were winning, they were still uninteresting. And as Terje pointed out, when the Tribe was in contention did they go out and trade for a Cliff Lee or a Martinez? No, they traded for Kenny friggin' Lofton! And the fans are supposed to support that? You watch your team trade for a 40 year old outfielder, then watch them choke in the ALCS while they sign garbage free agents like Delucci in the offseason and you're supposed to get excited about that? I'm sure Red Sox fans would be packing the stands if they dealt with similar circumstances. Give Cleveland fans something worth watching and they will show up, just like they did at the Q.
That would be a playoff game against the Knicks, not the Nicks, who I'm guessing would be the team put together by a jilted female singer.
I think it's kinda funny, in a people are always unintentionally funny and life is always funny kind of way. Everybody ripped Lee. Lee sent to the minors. Lee kicked off the playoff roster. Lee sucks. And Shapiro sucks for acquiring him. Less than 20 months later, and now all of those very same people are doing a whole other kind of sucking on Lee. And Shapiro sucks for trading him.
We need to look on the bright side and consider the joy that Dolan/Shapiro are giving to derek and thousands of other Phillies fans.
You know as well as I that is the nature of pro sports Alan. A guy sucks one season and he's a bum and everyone wants to get rid of him. He comes back and has a great season and he's a hero and everyone wants to give him a 10 year contract. Pro sports are all about "what have you done for me lately."
Please. LeBron James was like the 90s Indians, a perfect storm. A once in a lifetime event. Usually a never in a lifetime event.
Cleveland is a lousy sports town. It's Los Angeles, but without any ability to attract the celebrities and the showtime. Spoiled rotten. Needs a winner. Needs constant entertainment, needs a winner every year. Like a spoiled kid always needs the best toys.
Read Embry's book, specifically the part concerning Sean Kemp and why he was forced to acquire Kemp or somebody like him by Gund and Gund's semi-retarded snaky stooges, including Fratello. The star experiment failed.
The mid 90s were a wild Indians aberration, and LeBron James is the aberration of 10 lifetimes. Cleveland shouldn't need the mid-90s Indians and LeBron James to survive. Why in the hell is Milwaukee, the smallest market in the majors, unable to keep Sabathia, has a .500 record, but still able to average 38,000 folks a game? Is LeBron suiting up in Milwaukee, too? Is he now a two-sport star, like Danny Ainge?
"baffled" finally makes a point I can support. There *may* well be a percentage of people avoiding the Tribe due to "boring baseball." I have long decried the team's horrendous smoke-and-mirrors offense. We go weeks and months at a time scoring 3 runs or less. It's excruciating to watch. The 90s teams had exciting power-hitters and could change a game routinely with one swing. Now, we can't score a runner from 3rd to save our lives.
It all goes back to lack of talent, ergo the "evaluators." We had historic-level pitching in '07 to cover the offense, yet added no bat. Big mistake. And standing pat after '07 when our deficiencies were obvious to any moron…huge, franchise-changing mistake. That's all Shapiro.
Nevertheless, if Clevelanders truly want to KEEP their baseball team (and I know they do), then we'd all best stop the badmouthing. Because Alan's point about selling to someone who will move the team is MUCH closer to reality than you can possibly believe, folks. This is an era when money is king, and a move can and will happen unless you support your product.
That, where does a general manager simply pick up a big bat or five, at Big Lots? Power hitters don't grow on trees, particularly now that the power hitters have only human growth hormone and designer steroids if they don't want to get caught with tainted pee. So how is Shapiro supposed to magically pick up these power bats without signing them to fat contracts? He tried that with Hafner, turned out Hafner minus steroids actually sucks. He tried that with Martinez, and we all know how that turned out. Nobody showed up to see them.
What was Shapiro supposed to do? Power hitters are a rare commodity, particularly now. You have to sign them to fat long-term contracts to keep them, now even more so. Cleveland is not New York City. What happens if that contract backfires? What happens if nobody attends games and attendance is supposed to pay the power hitters' contracts? Is ownership supposed to commit based on nothing but a hope and a prayer, but no actual commitment to season ticket sales? "We promise we'll come and we'll be there in the morning." Yeah, right. Sounds a lot like the lyrics of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."
I meant Thad, not That. Unless there's also a Cousin Itt.
More good points, Alan. Which I suppose underscores the need for teams to draft and develop their own power-hitters, as we did with Belle, Thome, Ramirez and Giles, then trade for relative-power like Fryman, Baerga, Alomar, Murray and Sorrento; and supplement that with speed and defense like Vizquel and Lofton. I mean, can you even fathom that lineup?
Stacked up against the garbage offense we've suffered thru since the 2001 re-build, it's little wonder that fans just cannot get over the '94-'97 teams. That was once-in-a-lifetime magic, man.
alan t.,
You should speak up more.
Most of your points make no sense whatsoever. What mid to small market team has fans in line for tickets when the team is not winning? Detroit? Phoenix? Seattle? Oakland? Cincy? Tampa Bay? Miami? Dallas?
Baseball is not what it once was. It's what the NBA used to be – onece your team is out of the race of the playoffs, the TV's get turned off. MLB national ratings in the playoffs and WS have been going down the past 3 decades. I just read that 9 of the 10 teams in the large markets with the biggest payrolls are currently in 1st or 2nd place.
The younger people know that MLB is a joke.
A game is televised on cable between the Indians and Red Sox, and the Indians get $250k, and the Red Sox get $1.5M. make sense? You and I write a software application and sell it for the IPhone. I get 1/6th of what you get because I live in Cleveland and you live in Boston.
Were I an owner of a mid market team, I would get all mid and small market team owners together and tell the large markets that they would no longer be able to televise games from my park unless all proceeds were split evenly. They don't want to do it – fine. I lose $250k of revenue, they lose $1.5M of revenue. Let's see how they can overpay for players. And I would tell the Players Association that like GM, I can no longer do business with a concept like arbitration, and will not agree to it when the contract woth the Union is up. Let them start their own league….I'm on strike.
All that said, the fact is that the Cleveland Indians restocked their farm system by trading established players – because (as was noted above) – the existing shapiro administration has done an absolutely awful job of drafting. There's no use bringing up this player or that – look at 7 years that they've been in charge. This organization is no better then it was when they took over. 7 years and one playoff appearance. And I'm sorry, but the record shows that 2007 was a fluke. No leadership on the field. I've got to read that Johnny Peralta is mad about this and that…..funny, Johnny and his teammates don't seem to be upset about losing enough to do something about it. They seem to play just fine when they're out of a pennant race. So the Shapiro front office can quote us all the wonderful statistice they run up when the games don't count.
The younger people don't care about MLB. It is not the NFL or NBA where the rating go UP nationwide as the playoffs extend (MLB's ratings go down). If NASCAR has not replaced MLB in popularity by now, it surly will in the next 10-15 years. Baseball is a wonderful sport and will never die. But I go to my grandchildren's high school and college games and I love to see the Aeros for $8 (I'm a senior) on a summer night because there's nothing like it. But you can't get me to go up to Cleveland to watch that garbage if you offer free tickets.
I will support MLB when the owners take back the game from the agents, the players, and ESPN – that run the sport. maybe if the owners take back control they'll put the fans first again.
"I can't speak for Shapiro's ability to be a piss boy, though. That is, if I knew what a piss boy actually is. I'm really not sure. Are you now resorting to making golden shower references in a sportswriter's G-rated blog?"
think mel brooks "history of the world pt. 1".
Ryan Garko is a kook. He went on Jim Rome after his trade to SF and said the Indians could never recover after losing their only "leader," C.C., last year.
#1…how pathetic is THAT, that a team is so dependent on one player (a pitcher) to be a leader.
#2…his entire argument is bogus, as the Tribe had the BEST RECORD in baseball following the C.C. trade.
Try again, Ryan. Frankly, it's no wonder Wedge didn't like you much. You're full of B.S.
Just heard that the Indians have 18 starting pitchers under contract for next year. Shapiro evidently had no confidence in his own minor-league system whatsoever, importing other teams' no-names. This Carrasco guy, for instance. He's gonna be in our rotation next year? And he's 7-9 with a 5.00+ ERA at AAA? Don't we have any guys with similar numbers already in Columbus or Akron? Odd.
Seems to be quantity over quality. How do you possibly give that many pitchers a fair look and choose the five most-effective? I agree, I'm intrigued by Masterson (only 36 hits in 72 innings). Guess we'll just have to trust the baseball guys on the rest. Why stress over it? If we're contenders in 2010, great. If not, maybe 2011. But I'm encouraged by 17 hits last night following the week of trades. Perhaps an infusion of young talent will light a fire. The inconsistency just has to stop. There are too many players waiting in the wings to take the place of ineffective hitters and pitchers.
Was curious about Hafner, the albatross.
Did you know he signed a 3-yr. deal for 2005-07, with a club option for '08?
Yet, despite no power in 2007 Spring, and a complete lack of hitting up to the break in '07, Shapiro still gave our DH a 4-yr., $57-mil deal thru 2012?
That decision, at that moment, is the deal that broke our backs. If Hafner had continued to post 40HR, 100RBI years, that's another story. But he has been a total liability since his injury in Sept. of 2006.
Hopefully this was a "live and learn" lesson for Shapiro. No more insane contracts, esp. when the production has suddenly ended. The excuse that "Travis is pressing because of his status" is nonsense. If players are thinking contract in the batter's box, then we don't need that player.
No more insane contracts??? How do you think you're supposed to keep guys before they leave?
Folks want to shoot for the stars, but when a GM tries to shoot for the moon and unfortunately the rocket explodes into pieces like Apollo 13, people cry home to mommy.
If. If. If. If. You're right, what IF Hafner continued to hit big, juiced or not?
Please tell me where you think Shapiro is supposed to acquire power hitters for minimum wage and a totally one-sided commitment, because I, as an Indians fan who would have bought season tickets if I didn't now live so far away, would just love to know.
Hey, here's a better hypothetical: What IF people had stopped acting like complete imbeciles before any of this happened and put 38,000 different asses in the seats every game like Milwaukee does despite a .500 record in a market the size of my backyard? What IF people had done that?
Well, *if* people had filled more seats, esp. when the team was winning, this sell-off would not have occurred. Obviously. But these NEO fans don't want to bear any responsibility at all.
Draft and development, or smarter trades (i.e. your Cy Young winner for a proven minor-league power hitter) is the route this franchise must take. We may only be able to afford him/them for 4 seasons, but that's long enough to draft and develop a new crop. It's been proven over and over, the longterm, $18-million per year contracts spell disaster.
Of all the players we just received, I sadly do not see one single hitter with an ounce of power. So Shapiro has not read the stats or learned that his team only wins when homeruns are flying. He can't see the need, and that's a real problem.
I'm sick of reading "The Myth & Legend of Dick Jacobs." Livingston, Pluto, Shaw, and all the other nimrods. I've been doing my own research, which none of those clowns would ever do, they're too busy licking that guy's grave.
Did you know, that adjusted for inflation, Dolan spent more money on payroll than Jacobs???!!! Exact numbers will be posted up here shortly. Did you also know that Hart's final starting lineups included only ONE guy under the age of 30? ONE!!! Did you know that in Hart's final season, despite Dolan paying more for players than Jacobs ever did, and despite the fact the Indians came in first place that season, that fan attendance ( = REVENUE) had already begun to drop by almost 10%???!!!
But we have these Northeast Ohio columnists, and we have the typical dopes like that guy "Realism" who occasionally posts here singing the praises of Delicious Dick while ramming a Vick prod up Cheap Bastard Dolan, who write what the facts show are actually damned lies. Indeed, if ignorant columnists and fans really want to get down and dirty, the plain facts show it could just as easily be Delicious Dolan and Cheap Bastard Dick. Jacobs (and his people) *intentionally* left Dolan and Shapiro in a horrible no-win position. They robbed the bank, they spent all of the money, and then they dropped off an empty suitcase.
Dear Pat and Sheldon,
Why don't you take the big, bold first step and prove Alan's above assertions about Jacobs vs. Dolan payrolls. Assertions which I believe are wholly true. Maybe if the nimrods in NEO see the plain facts in black and white, they'll be forced to admit how wrong they've been in calling our current owners "cheap."
The radio show windbags will have to be confronted with the actual truth, instead of parroting the easy line: Dolan's Discounts. Please, ABJ columnists, this info can't be hard to obtain, and it would make a very interesting and revealing feature. Expose the lies the fans keep trumpeting, and maybe it'll be the first step to regaining some peace and acceptance of this franchise and the owners who are trying to do the right thing.
Here ya go, Eric. Took me awhile to do the calculations.
Dick Jacobs: The Fake Myth, The Bogus Legend. Easy to see why his business career was so successful when he wasn't otherwise stealing prime real estate and building monuments to himself. He didn't really "save" the Indians as much as he shoved money in his pockets to now give to his son Jeff.
Oh, and pay special attention to the Jacobs totals for Year 5 and Year 6. The weasel knew he was going to get a stadium built for him, so public opinion wouldn't be held against him, nor would any media person make a peep if he cut his payroll by nearly half. Doesn't matter, everybody was too scared of him, anyway, he could have done anything and they wouldn't have said anything.
I'm sorry, but this guy Jacobs was a crook and is now laughing underground and mocking each and every moron now calling Dolan a name.
This is a comparison of total payroll over the course of their first 10 years of ownership respectively. These totals *are apples to apples*, I have adjusted all numbers to account for inflation and all totals are in 2009 dollars:
Year 1 Jacobs $16,165,000
Year 1 Dolan $95,946,000
Year 2 Jacobs $16,294,000
Year 2 Dolan $113,451,000
Year 3 Jacobs $15,820,000
Year 3 Dolan $94,489,000
Year 4 Jacobs $23,908,000
Year 4 Dolan $56,953,000
Year 5 Jacobs $27,928,000
Year 5 Dolan $39,187,000
Year 6 Jacobs $14,410,000
Year 6 Dolan $45,836,000
Year 7 Jacobs $27,706,000
Year 7 Dolan $59,948,000
Year 8 Jacobs $44,376,000
Year 8 Dolan $64,157,000
Year 9 Jacobs $53,694,000
Year 9 Dolan $79,113,000
Year 10 Jacobs $66,134,000
Year 10 Dolan $82,000,000 (est. prior to trades)
THAT'S FREAKIN' INCREDIBLE! Why would the media not tell this eye-opening story?
The five highest payrolls in team history have occurred under the Dolan ownership, and yet "fans" have the nerve to call them cheap. Incredible.
Where people err is in romanticizing the Jacobs Era because, by sheer chance, we had three Hall of Fame level sluggers develop in our own system at the same time. (Ol' Dick had nothing to do with THAT.) John Hart was then shrewd enough to continue adding offense upon offense, which excites fans. The success had nothing to do with money, just better personnel moves.
Eric, technically that's not true … to be totally fair, Jacobs last three years of ownership went up, but since Dolan hasn't gotten to years 11-13 of ownership, I didn't include those totals. With that being said, here's the dirty little secret for those last three years: not only was the revenue topping because of the novelty of power-hitting, steroid-pumped good teams producing sellouts every game, but in 1997, Jacobs got a HUGE free infusion of capital at other's expense by making the team public and selling that worthless stock. So OF COURSE he could spend a little more. And hell, why not. Not his money.
Regardless, for the purposes of full disclosure, Year 11 was $76,336,000, Year 12 was $80,450,000, Year 13 was 94,483,000. So unless my eyes have glazed over my earlier post, only the top three payrolls in team history are Dolans', not five.
Although, now that I stop and really look at it, check out this additional fact: the Dolan 2009 $82 million payroll prior to these trades exceeded each and every one of Jacobs payrolls, with the exception of only Jacobs' 13th year of ownership!!!!!
Whoops. I meant Dolan has four of the top payrolls in team history, not five nor three.
No, that came out wrong … Dolan has #1, #2, #3 and #5 of the top payrolls in team history. Jacobs has one that was #4, in his final season with the assistance of the public's stock.
The fraud is exposed.
This is more interesting and revealing than I thought … here's a list of payrolls from highest to lowest. As you'll note, Dolan has 5 of the top 7.
1. Dolan
2. Dolan
3. Dolan
4. Jacobs
5. Dolan
6. Jacobs
7. Dolan
8. Jacobs
9. Jacobs
10. Dolan
11. Dolan
12. Dolan
13. Jacobs
14. Dolan
15. Jacobs
16. Dolan
17. Jacobs
18. Jacobs
19. Jacobs
20. Jacobs
21. Jacobs
22. Jacobs
23. Jacobs
I combined it all in one post so you can copy and paste to all your friends, family and neighbors:
Dick Jacobs: The Fake Myth, The Bogus Legend. Easy to see why his business career was so successful when he wasn't otherwise stealing prime real estate and building monuments to himself. He didn't really "save" the Indians as much as he shoved money in his pockets to now give to his son Jeff.
Oh, and pay special attention to the Jacobs totals for Year 5 and Year 6. The weasel knew he was going to get a stadium built for him, so public opinion wouldn't be held against him, nor would any media person make a peep if he cut his payroll by nearly half. Doesn't matter, everybody was too scared of him, anyway, he could have done anything and they wouldn't have said anything.
I'm sorry, but this guy Jacobs was a crook and is now laughing underground and mocking each and every moron now calling Dolan a name.
This is a comparison of total payroll over the course of their first 10 years of ownership respectively. These totals *are apples to apples*, I have adjusted all numbers to account for inflation and all totals are in 2009 dollars:
Year 1 Jacobs $16,165,000
Year 1 Dolan $95,946,000
Year 2 Jacobs $16,294,000
Year 2 Dolan $113,451,000
Year 3 Jacobs $15,820,000
Year 3 Dolan $94,489,000
Year 4 Jacobs $23,908,000
Year 4 Dolan $56,953,000
Year 5 Jacobs $27,928,000
Year 5 Dolan $39,187,000
Year 6 Jacobs $14,410,000
Year 6 Dolan $45,836,000
Year 7 Jacobs $27,706,000
Year 7 Dolan $59,948,000
Year 8 Jacobs $44,376,000
Year 8 Dolan $64,157,000
Year 9 Jacobs $53,694,000
Year 9 Dolan $79,113,000
Year 10 Jacobs $66,134,000
Year 10 Dolan $82,000,000 (est. prior to trades)
Here is the order, from highest to lowest, of the last 23 years of Indians payrolls from 1987 through 2009 adjusted for inflation in 2009 dollars, up through the dates before the 2009 trades begain. You will note that Dolan has 5 of the top 7 payrolls. Jacobs has 9 of the lowest 11 payrolls:
1. Dolan
2. Dolan
3. Dolan
4. Jacobs
5. Dolan
6. Jacobs
7. Dolan
8. Jacobs
9. Jacobs
10. Dolan
11. Dolan
12. Dolan
13. Jacobs
14. Dolan
15. Jacobs
16. Dolan
17. Jacobs
18. Jacobs
19. Jacobs
20. Jacobs
21. Jacobs
22. Jacobs
23. Jacobs
I'm sending it to the WTAM and WKNR talkshow hosts. It's time for a little perspective amidst all the bashing.
Eric, hey, if you're going to do that, at least correct my typo. I don't want to look any more dumb than I already am. There's no such word as "begain."
I love listening to the radio shows, by the way. But the fans just bang the same drum over and over about not spending money, while overlooking the real problems of poor decision-making, signing bad free agents, our own underproducing players (who lack any leadership skills), poor fundamentals, no power in the lineup, mindboggling injuries, no consistency….need we go on?
That's eye-opening. I've never seen a year by year breakdown like that, and didn't realize current owners had outspent Jacobs by such a wide margin. I'll be interested in seeing if readers or listeners will admit that they've been off base in their payroll remarks. I'm going to guess *no.*
It's like folks who voted for Obama….they can't tell you why, they just wanted to, no matter if a policy hurts them or not. No logic or reasoning. They're in denial.
Is it possible to be a worse baseball fan than a Cleveland Indians baseball fan? Seriously. The worst baseball market ever. If not the worst, then certainly the most stupid. Averaging 33,000 so far in two games of the series against Detroit. How much do you want to bet that 12,000 geniuses have showed up just to holler their complaints about dumping salary, and yet are still completely oblivious to the fact that salary was dumped only because they never showed up.
"I haven't bought a ticket to an Indians game since 1999, but now let's all go buy tickets together and scream DOLAN SUCKS!!!"
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