The race to write off the Cleveland Indians season probably began for most in late April. Let’s hope the race to write off the Browns season doesn’t begin in late September.
Cleveland fans so conditioned for disappointment, particularly after watching this baseball season crash and burn this year in spectacular fashion, it will be completely understandable if the fans want to storm the Cleveland Stadium gates if the Browns start the season 1-3. There’s every chance of course that the Browns could actually start that way, but if they do it won’t be because its front office stood pat. In fact (and if anything), it will be because they tried too hard.
Standing in stark contrast with Indians general manager Mark Shapiro is Browns general manager Phil Savage. Where one is passive, consumed by statistics and paralyzed by analysis, the other has displayed an almost reckless sense of now. Whether it turns out better for one than the other remains to be seen but there is no chance that if the Browns fail it will be because Savage didn’t act.
When a team has a deep talent void, the job of the general manager can be much easier. Almost any player he chooses is likely to be an upgrade and thus it’s easy to miscalculate the real value of the moves that are made.
Shapiro made absolutely the right move when he determined that the Indians of the mid and late 1990s needed to be rebuilt. He hatched a plan to get young and good by trading Bartolo Colon for prospects. He assembled some other young talent as well, signed most of it to above-market contracts based on their years of service, and then has been mostly content to watch its uneven development.
To a certain extent, it seems that Shapiro’s inaction the last few season was brought on by a false sense that he had truly built a juggernaut in the making. He wasn’t the only one that thought so. There have been budget concerns, of course, but how else really to explain the kind of fringe moves that Shapiro has made the last few years? In retrospect, by failing to stay vigilant to the plan he initially hatched, Shapiro now faces another rebuilding job, even if he doesn’t admit it publicly.
Article comments