From crainscleveland.com – 

““We’re starting the budgeting process right now,” he (Shapiro) said. “First, it’s an expense-type process, as well as projecting revenues. Although we never tie our budget for player salaries completely just to our revenue projections, it’ll be a factor.

“We could field a team tomorrow,” Shapiro said. “But now we have to say, ‘How do you upgrade? How do you improve?’ The answers to those things, they’re not transparent. You have to go into an offseason with a variety of scenarios, be prepared to be as nimble as you can be, with an understanding of where you want to improve and open-mindedness. And Chris and his staff will explore every alternative out there, other than probably the highest level of free agents. They’re going to explore every trade you can imagine, as well as some combination and level of free agency.””

I actually had to do a Twitter search to figure out why this Shapiro quote was even a story. Apparently fans are fired up about the fact that he said our front office is going to “explore every alternative out there, other than probably the highest level of free agents.” You mean we’re not gonna be in on Max Scherzer?????

Sorry to burst your bubble irrational Indians fans but Shapiro is simply being transparent about probably the most obvious characteristic of a small market baseball team. We’ve had back-to-back decent years so all of a sudden we can afford to throw $100 million bucks at James Shields or Pablo Sandoval? You think Scherzer would even answer our phone call after he declined almost $150 mil from the back-to-back-to-back-to-back Central Division champion Tigers this spring? If you think the front office should open up their wallets because we’re on the cusp of being perennial playoff contenders, blame yourselves because those wallets aren’t getting any thicker when a shitty MLS team draws more fans than they do. Shapiro basically spells it out in that quote! “Although we never tie our budget for player salaries completely just to our revenue projections, it’ll be a factor.” You can’t honestly use their lack of spending as an excuse for not going to games without realizing they might be inclined to spend a little more if people actually went to games and spent money at the ballpark, can you? Time is a flat fucking circle, people.

This little bit from Jordan Bastian paints a nice picture of the 2015 offseason for the Tribe, specifically financially. When you take into account existing contracts, retained players at the league minimum and estimated arbitration costs, their payroll sits around $72-$75 mil. We’re typically around the $80-$85 mil range. The team was willing to give Justin Masterson two years with a third option year at around $14 mil/per earlier this year before he imploded. So optimistically we may have around ~$15 million in wiggle room. He also points out that the trade market could be more advantageous for the Tribe than free agency. This has proved true time and time again, with most of our core players (Michael Brantley, Corey Kluber , Yan Gomes, Carlos Santana, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer, Bryan Shaw, I could go on) coming to the team via the trade.

Bottom line, Cleveland will never be able to afford top-tier free agents. That’s just a fact. Why Shapiro’s comments are so offensive to some is beyond me. Yeah maybe he didn’t need to say that publicly but we all know (well apparently not) that that’s how small market teams operate. We make our splashes with the Scott Atchisons and David Murphys, occasionally the Bourns and Swishers. They’re not New York or Los Angeles-sized cannon balls, but let them do their jobs and they might be able to get a couple girls heads to turn with a decent can-opener at the local pool.

KEEP THE CHIEF

PS Stop bitching about how bad the Swisher and Bourn contracts look now. You’re the same people who were applauding the FO for finally spending when they initially signed. See what happens to a small market team when big FA signings don’t necessarily live up to their contracts and the team can’t just spend more money to bring in more guys to cover them up?