Off Topic: Let's talk Buckeyes, Browns, Cavaliers...and a little Indians

It's a Sunday and none of my teams are playing so let's talk other sports and teams that might be interesting to fans of the Indians. 

Ohio State Football

OK, great season with a National Championship Game appearance and a decisive victory over Clemson in the semifinals.   Everybody is pumped up for the 2021 season this fall...except for me.   I don't know if anyone else sees the problems or if they don't, for some reason, want to talk about the problems looming.  In no particular order, here is what I see:

• Chris Olave staying:  On the surface this looks really good, right?  It will be the Olave/Wilson show again, helping to break in the new quarterback with two excellent, veteran targets.   We have a bunch of talented young receivers waiting their turn: Williams, Fleming, Smith-Njigba, Gee Scott Jr..  Now you add to that the incoming freshmen, Egbuka, Ballard, Harrison Jr.,   Then you throw in the very open and lubricated NCAA Transfer Portal and you have a recipe for disaster.  We have already lost Mookie Cooper.  I see Olave's return and the new QBs will combine to cause a lot of disgruntled receivers who will enter the portal.  So don't be surprised if you see Scott and maybe even Fleming leave.  Those would be big losses NOT in depth but, rather, in those recruiting classes.  This isn't the NFL.  If we have an excess we can't just trade them for areas of need.  We lose those players and get nothing back.   The bottom line here is you have to keep the line moving in order to keep everyone happy and Olave is stalling the line.  This is not as good a thing as people are thinking it is. as Olave returning will cost us 4- and maybe 5-star talents.   You don't have to have a long memory to remember Joe Burrow and even the exodus of quarterback prospects when we brought in Justin Fields.
• Our freshman quarterbacks getting essentially zero game time:  With 2020-1 being as truncated as it was and every game mattering as much as it did AND our defense constantly turning blowouts into close games in the second half AND having to show the alumni that we were trying until the bitter end in a national championship game that was lost midway through the 3rd quarter, well, all this meant no playing time for our touted incoming freshmen.   This means that we essentially start the 2021 season with three 4- or 5-star quarterbacks as freshmen.   Now, no one in their right mind would have ever recruited 3 stud freshmen into one recruiting class but this is, essentially, what we have.   How many of us think that all of Miller, Stroud and McCord are going to be here in the summer of 2022?   Again, competition brings the cream to the crop but it also costs us two things: (a) top recruits who enter the portal because we over-recruit a position and (2) our ability to recruit more than one quarterback per class.

Look, we will have problems at linebacker, defensive back and maybe running back this coming season, not to mention having to try to go to the national championship with a weak running game and a freshman quarterback.  Looking to the 2021 season I can see one or two of the head-scratching blowout upset losses to mediocre Big Ten opponents that we have seen in the years under Urban Meyer.   Add that lack of success to the likely exodus of star young players at skilled offensive positions because we over-recruited their positons and it is a recipe for no Big Ten championship and a drop off in recruiting in upcoming years both from lack of playoff berths and a bad rep in recruiting. Just sayin'

Cleveland Cavaliers

There are GMs who maintain the teams in tough environments (more on this later) and those who build their teams up no matter what is going on around them.  The Cavs have built a good team based on bad records and high draft choices, not missing recently on their selections.   They kept Love around at a bloated price just for this moment, when the kids would start to mature.  They brought in Drummond for the same reason.   And it is all working out.   And they added more young talent in Allen and a role player in Prince.   They had a plan and even when that plan got derailed, they just kept moving forward on a different train track.  The results are obvious now.   Will they make the playoffs this year?  Maybe.   But the bottom line is if they make the playoffs it won't be based on smoke and mirrors.   We all see the future for the Cavs and except for incredibly bad luck, it isn't going away anytime soon.   Veterans and young studs.   This team came together not by accident or luck, it came together based on hard work and a real plan that made sense.   We should all be proud of our Cavs team and their management.  They have done this city proud, maybe better than any Cavs team has done in 20 years or so.   Yeah, the James years were great but they were the James years.   This is the Cleveland Cavs, not the LeBron James plus 11 Cavs of the past, successful, years.

Cleveland Browns

Another example of having a plan.   The talent was there, the management just created the environment for it to be successful.   As a recent article said, they tried to fix what they could, not trying to fix everything at once.   And it worked.   I wondered out loud years ago when the Browns returned to Cleveland why they didn't draft, trade for and pick up in the expansion draft, linemen to protect Tim Couch.   That team should have been all about the offense but they tried, too soon, to build a complete team and, probably, a defense-dominated team.   The current management team gambled that they had their QB of the future and that they should do whatever they could to give him the tools he needed to be successful.   And they did.  And he and the team were successful.   The Browns did what the expansion Browns should have done but failed to.  And they did it well and put themselves in position to do it again next year and, better than that, created a buzz around them that could entice free agents, especially on defense, to come here this off-season.   Well done guys.  Keep up the good work.

Ohio State Buckeyes Basketball

Truth be told, I don't think this is that good of a team.   I just think they are well-coached and that they buy into Hotlzman's system.   There are no real studs on this team but it works.  That is the type of team and coach who stands the test of time.   While they are just as likely to lose to a bad matchup in the first or second round of the NCAAs as they are to making an unexpected deep run in the tourney, they are getting the most out of their guys night in and night out.  This is what you want to see out of a coach and Holtzman is delivering, constantly.

Cleveland State Basketball

As an alum I can't tell you how tickled I am.  I mean, really, since Horizon play starter this year they have had one bad loss, Saturday night.   Gates has taken cast-offs, undersized players and role players and turned them into a winning team.  Again, taken what you are given in the environment that you are given it in and producing a product MUCH better than what you should have is how coaches get recognized.   If I am CSU I sign this guy to a long-term, ironclad deal.   When I saw them vs OSU I knew there was something there, especially for a team in a lower level league like the Horizon.   They continue to show it night in and night out.   The only thing that will stop this team is if their egos get big and they lose sight of what got them here.  Otherwise, Coach Gates will be leading CSU out of the dark ages.

Cleveland Indians

Part of the reason for doing this post was to show the Indians how it is done.   When you have 3 players from the same draft class as your top 3 starting pitchers that is not about a plan, that is about luck fueled by great player development.  When you talk about trading some of your star players away and not getting a return to replace the players you traded, in talent or position, that is what mediocre management does.  Francona has done a great job with whatever team he has been given but he has extracted a price from those players and from his health.   There is no reserve here.   There are no Lindors or Klubers in the farm system that I can see.   Your best prospect is a platoon player and you have 13 top prospect young middle infielders in the majors or the minors.   And you have a management team that traded Yandy Diaz for Jake Bauers.   None of that inspires me to believe that this management team can turn those 13 middle infielders into outfielders and firstbasemen who are as talented as who we wold have to give up to get them.   I won't say what the Indians have accomplished has been luck but it is starting to look like this management team is not doing what we all see is needed to keep this team afloat.  We all know what that path is.   These guys just need to start seeing it and acting on it instead of doing trades where the teams we trade to get an "A" for that trade and we get a "C" for that trade.   

I am an Indians fan first and foremost.   I just don't want to see them fall behind because management couldn't keep the flow of good players coming.

Indians haul for Lindor and Carrasco in light of the Pirates trading Joe Musgrove

 Now, let's start out by saying that I had intended to do a followup post to the Lindor/Carrasco post anyway.

The Joe Musgrove trade just got me typing sooner.  

For Musgrove who has a 4.33 career ERA in the majors, the Pirates received 5 prospects, the Padres #7, #17 and #20 prospects and a guy not ranked in the Padres top 30.  They also received the Mets #20 prospect.  

Five decent prospects for one rather mediocre starting pitcher.  

I think the Indians could have gotten this package for Carrasco alone, easily.

If you look at what we got from the Mets I think that could equate to Greene, Wolf and Giminez or a prospect of his caliber. 

That means that we traded Lindor for Rosario and a little more.

Looking at it that way would make you think that we should have gotten more for Lindor.  I think a resonable guy would have been Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Mets #6 prospect.

Bottom line is, what the Indians got for Lindor/Carrasco was light when you compare what the Pirates got for Musgrove who isn't even as good as Carrasco.  This, to me, once again (Clevinger trade another example) that the Indians can't get value when they trade their veterans.  They don't get robbed but they don't get value, either.  

If you are the Indians and you are deciding to live and die with your farm system you have to do better than they did in the Lindor/Carrasco trade.   Not even considering the bulk of the return was what we already had in our farm system, we didn't get back the equivalent of what we gave up.   Small market teams like the Indians just can't do that.   They have to get back as much or more than they traded, trading the present for the future from teams that are going for it now.  

The Indians didn't do that meaning that their present AND their future is weaker now than it was before the trade.  Small market clubs have to do better.  Antonneti and Chernoff have to do better.  The problem is that there re-dos on this kind of trade.   We are now stuck with the guys we got for Clevinger, Lindor and Carrasco.   It wasn't enough.   These guys need to do MUCH better than they are doing.  They haven't shown any ability to rebuild the Indians and they are hurting the long term competitiveness of this franchise.. 

Indians' international haul

 OK, we are into the interntional signing period and all evidence says that the Indians stuck to their guns and signed the players they were going to sign and kept their bonuses within scope based on where those players were ranked by different sources.

Now, of course, whether these guys become major leaguers down the road will be dependent on their hard work and ability to grow their games, our player development system and, in some cases, luck to stay away from injuries.

But, on the surface, at least, the Indians did not appear to go cheap by backing away from players who they were linked to just because those players required million dollar or large hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses.  Certainly, they shied away from playing the big boys as they didn't sign any of the top international amateur free agents, that is, the guys who were requiring multimillion dollar bonuses.   But that is not unusual, in the least, for the Indians.

Now, below the surface, we will likely never know whether 2020 had any impact on which guys they signed this month but, from history of previous years and all I read this year, I think they stayed the course, probably the first sign since the pandemic of them still throwing money into the player development system.

Real analysis of the Francisco Lindor/Carlos Carrasco trade

 OK, now that I have calmed my nerves with a little gallows humor (see below), here is my real opinion of today's trade.  Let's keep this short.

Did the Indians do well in this trade?   Well, no.   They needed certain things that they didn't have in their system: Outfield prospect close the majors, a ML shortstop to replace Lindor this year and a controllable, quality, young reliever.  What they did was get a shortstop and some interesting guys back, just interesting enough to keep the fans from totally writing off the Indians now and in the future.  Basically, they got two shortstops in this deal...and the prospect system is already dripping with shortstop prospects.   

Look, they already have 10, count it 10 middle infielders in their top 30 prospects.   That does not count Rosario and Gimenez.   That's 11 in the top 31 plus Chang and Rosario.   

So, the return wasn't terrible but it doesn't do a single, freaking thing to help with a rebuild.  Not one thing.

The only way this helps with the rebuild or to keep us competitive is if Antonneti and Chernoff can turn some of these middle infield prospects into major league ready or close to the majors outfield and pitching prospects.   And that is the a type of trade that Antonneti and Chernoff have not shown they can make.   Why in the freaking world would you bring in more middle infielders when you are already stocked with 10 of them.

Well, Rosario and Gimenez are cheap and major league ready.  Not great but OK so you can keep them around for a few years and keep the budget down.

The only way this helps this team this year and in the future is if they can spin some of these 10 MIF prospects into young controllable ML relievers and relievers.   These are the types of trades Antonneti and Chernoff have not shown they are good at making.  I mean, Yandy Diaz for Jake Bauers?  

The Indians have, once again, not taken advantage of their assets to help keep their team competitive.  Looking at the return for Bauer, the return for Clevinger and now the return for Lindor/Carrasco,  the Indians are positioning themselves to supplant the Royals as the worst team in the AL Central.   It won't happen this year, as they will still be better than the Royals and Tigers.   But, down the road, they have a bunch of position player prospects who project to just be complementary starters in the majors and some intrigung pitching prospects who will be good when Plesac, Civale and Beiber are walking out the door. 

If you think back to the 70s and the 80s, this is exactly what the Indians were: a bunch of complementary starters and a few very interesting prospects who never panned out.   Unfortunately it looks like we are going down this road again with teams that likely will not be bad enough to get good draft picks or good enough to compete.  Look for a series of teams over the next 5 years who finish within 5 games of .500, either way.

For anyone who thinks that Nolan Jones comes riding in on a white horse and gives us the star power that we have lost, remember that Jones looks right now like a platoon player and will not be the savior of this franchise like Lindor was.  

This trade was not terrible but it did not give us anything that will help us to be competitive to get to the playoffs or compete IN the playoffs.     

INSTANT REACTION TO THE TRADE OF FRANCISCO LINDOR AND CARLOS CARRASCO

 Dolan is cheap and he should sell the team to someone who has the money and would be interested in putting some money into it.

There has to be someone out there with lots of money, who has a reputation of running a successful organization, who needs a new challenge and would be interested in leaving his stamp on this franchise.

And then it came to me:

Donald Trump

No, wait, here me out.

He has money.  CHECK

He knows how to run a successful organization.   CHECK

In 13 days he will be looking for a new challenge, if he isn't going to jail, that is.   CHECK

Plus, on top of all that, he has two other things going for him:

a. Him owning the team will certainly fill the seats.  I mean, Ohio is a red state, right?   All he has to do is tell his supporters to come and they will come.   And drink plenty of beer, too.

b. With the Indians looking for a new nickname he could call the team the Cleveland Trumps, leaving a legacy on the franchise.

Common, with him and his money, this could be the best, first 4 years of any Cleveland Indians owner in history.

And if Shane Beiber fails to win the Cy Young this year he can scream about how he the vote was rigged.