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?

• We traded our ace
• Our young gun who started our only playoff game last year was sent to AAA after a month and a half
• Another starter was moved to the pen after giving up 17 earned runs in his first 4 starts
• A fourth starter made almost as many starts in AAA as he did in the majors

 

• We had the best starting pitching in baseball in the second half
• We had the third best starting pitching in baseball for the entire year

 

If that doesn’t convince you that Mickey Callaway is a fucking sorcerer, I don’t know what will.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything like the transformation the Tribe rotation underwent in 2014 in my entire life. My father, who has been writing about the team for longer than my entire life, said the same thing. In March and April, Tribe starters posted a 4.82 ERA, just shy (27th in the majors) of league leading Atlanta (2.32). May was a bit kinder, as their ERA shrunk to 4.41 allowing them to climb to 24th in the bigs. June, 4.14 (24th). July, 4.32 (25th).

August? Fucking 2.57. 2.57! More than a run and a half better than any previous month, and almost a half run better than the second best staff in August. How? It certainly had something to do with Carlos Carrasco’s return to the rotation on August 10th (again, how?). He ended up posting a 1.82 ERA, 29/4 K/BB ratio and allowed batters to hit just .179 during the month.

September’s ERA ballooned to 2.79. So after posting five consecutive months of 4+ ERAs, the Tribe rattles off two sub 3’s.

Oh also they set the major league record for strikeouts in a season.

STARTERS

Just remarkable. Of the five starters that began the year in the rotation, one was traded (Masterson) one was bad (McAllister), one was bad then good (Salazar) and one was bad then good in the bullpen then unfuckingbelievable (Carrasco).

Kluber was the only one to go through the year unscathed and he’s going to win the Cy Young so that’s cool. If you’re going to talk about the Indians pitching it obviously starts right here. A lot of his success this year was due to what pitches he was throwing. In 2013 he threw just a normal four-seam fastball 24.1% of the time, his two-seam sinker 29.1%, his slider 25.1% and his curveball 12.4%. Compare that to this year. He threw his sinker nearly 50% of the time. Using a pitch that moves as much as his sinker does essentially as a fastball makes things much harder on hitters. Even if he accidentally grooves one, unlike a flat four-seamer, it is still difficult to hit and even more difficult to hit well. He also threw his slider and curveball more, leaving the four seam and changeup virtually out of the equation. According to FanGraphs, his curveball was the best in the majors this season, saving an average of 3.94 runs per 100 times thrown. Second place was Henderson Alvarez of the Marlins, more than a run and a half behind.

Carlos Carrasco had a couple silver bullets in his revolver as well. By that same runs saved/100 pitches thrown statistic, Carrasco had the second best slider and 6th best changeup in all of baseball in the second half. That’s the same slider he went from throwing 8.6% of the time in 2013 to 22.1% in 2014.

Callaway and Francona do an unbelievable job of seeing talent behind bad numbers, which is why I’m still optimistic about Trevor Bauer. For all the trials and tribulations he’s been through so far in Cleveland, he’s still 23 years old. Kluber and Carrasco were both just putting their talent into the wrong pitches. Bauer could possibly have the dirtiest raw stuff out of all three. He’ll be just fine. Salazar is in that same boat, only a year older.

How have I gone 630 words without mentioning my boy T.J. House? Out of the 18 games he started this year, he gave up more than three earned runs 3 times. He’s not going to go out and shove for 8 or 9 innings with double digit strikeouts every time out. He’s going to keep you in the game, pitch to contact (61% ground balls) and hopefully get you a quality start. All the while sporting stirrups and one of the hardest ‘staches in the game. Ps he’s our only lefty.

THE PEN

 Cody Allen – 76 appearances

Scott Atchison – 70 appearances

Bryan Shaw – 80 appearances

Mark Rzepczynski also had 73 appearances and yes I googled “left handed horse”. These four together helped the Indians become the first team in American League history have four pitchers with 70+ appearances. Allen tied for third in the league in games. Shaw was first and set the Indians single season record. Tito set the American League record for calls to the bullpen in a season. Phew.

They pitched a lot. But all four were very effective. Allen became the closer we all knew he could be when the John Axford experiment blew up in our faces. The team even signed the 38-year-old Atchison to a one year deal with an option for two. CC Lee, Nick Hagadone and a handful of others got in on the action as well. Who knows what the future of Scrabble will be with the emergence of Kyle Crockett.

Kyle Crockett

Once again the Bullpen Mafia was consistently one of the strongest aspects of the club over the course of the season. Tito can never have enough pitching, though, and I expect him to aggressively look to make a good thing even better this winter.

The final part of the 2014 Wahoo Review will come at the end of the week and will look forward to the winter and 2015 season. Keep a look out for it, and also head over to the brand new clevelandsportscentral.com and poke around a bit. CSC and Bottlegate are going to be playing together in the future.

And Happy Birthday, Mike.

KEEP THE CHIEF