Extending the Cynicism

If anyone other than Cleveland Indians general manager Chris Antonetti and team president Mark Shapiro had made the decisions to “extend” the contracts of Carlos Santana and Asdrubal Cabrera, I’d buy into it easier. As it is, when these two conspire to sign younger players to what are being called contract extensions, fans would do well to look at little more closely, mainly because with these two it's rarely as it seems.

Shapiro is a disciple of John Hart. Antonetti in turn is a disciple of Shapiro. Behind Antonetti is no doubt so acolyte that will also be a lesser light. In the Indians’ general manager, where inbreeding of its executive think is preferred, the generations are getting progressively weaker not stronger.

When Hart took a flyer on signing younger players to contract extensions, it was innovative. With an eye for talent, Hart singled out good young players and actually did make a financial commitment to them in a way no one else was doing at the time but in the same way that the Jacobs-owned Indians actually made commitments to legitimate free agents.

As the money has dried up under the Dolans’ ownership, the challenges have been greater and Shapiro, a generation removed from Hart, has never quite been up to the task. The best that can charitably be said about his tenure as general manager is that it was uneven, from questionable trades to questionable extensions with a few outright successes to keep the fans guessing.

I could rail about how Shapiro has taken a gift for gab and clipped speech and turned it into a career without actually having accomplished anything too meaningful on the field, but why rail about that? Fans already know that the Indians won the division in 2007 with Shapiro ostensibly in charge and have been awful ever since as he tinkered and tortured his way to creating a machine that can smoothly deliver a crap sandwich season after season.

Now comes still another generation removed in the form of Antonetti. Until Santana and Cabrera were signed to their “extensions” the Indians looked suspiciously like a team that was deliberately avoiding putting players under anything other than a one-year contract.

I could rail about how Antonetti, armed with statistics, helped make a mess of the Indians player development process when he was Shapiro’s first lieutenant, but why rail about that, either? Fans can see the fruits of his efforts each night as they gnaw through the imaginary phone telephone cords of the landlines they once owned bemoaning Antonetti’s inability to a) grow any meaningful talent through the draft and b) find meaningful help through questionable trades or in the cutout section of the flea market he shops every off season.

So when the announcement came that the Indians had signed Santana to an “extension” similar to that given to Cabrera, I didn’t know whether to get cynical or skeptical but I knew it had to be one or the other. It turns out that either will do.

The cynic in me believes that Santana was signed to an extension mainly on the strength of his two home-run performance in the team’s only win this season and the fact that he’s beating the cover off the ball in comparison to rest of his teammates at the inglorious pace of a .250 average. But the skeptic in me knows better. When it comes to making decisions about players the Indians move roughly at the pace of a governmental agency so the chance that Santana’s “hot” start factored into current thinking is minimal.

Really, though, it doesn’t take a professional cynic or skeptic to see through the veneer of these extensions as less about a commitment to spending money to retain valuable assets and more about an opportunity for team and player to hedge their bets.

A player with at least three years of service is eligible for salary arbitration. He isn’t eligible for free agency until after his sixth year. In the cases of Santana and Cabrera, the contract extensions, such as they are, buy the Indians certainty through the arbitration years while providing the players a launching pad for their inevitable trade somewhere else in that last year of their contracts should their performance meet or exceed expectations.

Because if there's anything worse to the Indians then a player underperforming his contract, it's a player on the brink of free agency outperforming his contract.

This is the kind of transaction that garners Shapiro the admiration of his fellow team presidents at the off season meetings and earns knowing nods to Antonetti from his counterparts in opposing press boxes each night. But don’t believe for a moment that it represents a change in direction for the team or the ones paying the bills. These extensions add no clarity to finding the answer to the inevitably frustrating question of whether or not this team will ever be properly funded to be truly competitive.

Don’t take my word for it, just be a student of history. The Indians under Shapiro have been bloodless in trading away talented fan favorites during their free agent seasons rather than pursue them to what would be true contract extensions. Shapiro first and now Antonetti understand the financial limits of their bosses and thus have laid the groundwork where it’s now accepted orthodoxy that the Indians can’t outbid any other team for the services of a player they grew and nurtured.

In truth, it’s a choice the Indians have made not to pursue high priced talent and not an inevitability thrust upon them by the baseball Gods or the economy. The operations of the Detroit Tigers prove that point.

Nonetheless, I’ve long since reconciled myself to this method of operation as most fans have. What’s frustrating though is for the Indians to try to treat these fans as some sort of idiots who cannot see through the simple pretense of the frugal way in which they choose to operate a franchise designed not to win but to turn a decent profit for the owner irrespective of performance.

Knowing that they couldn’t lose Santana and Cabrera for most of the periods through which they’re now signed, these new contracts don’t represent extensions as much as they represent agreed upon financial hedges against the vagaries of the arbitration process.

The problem with the arbitration process for the Indians is that it represents disorder to the anal-retentive way in which they like to operate. It almost doesn’t matter what kind of year the player had because arbitration only enriches, it never cuts. So no matter how either Cabrera or Santana performs during one of their arbitration years, they know they’ll get a raise with the only question being how much.

Since Shapiro likes to plan his 5-year operating budget down to the number of light bulbs that will be needed in the overhanging lamp in his office, it’s unfathomable to him to not know what number to plug into his budget for Cabrera's or Santana's salary in those years, particularly should Cabrera or Santana actually put together a good season.

Now these so-called extensions give Shapiro and Antonetti real budget certainty on two of their better players, allowing them to focus elsewhere. This isn’t really a criticism because having budget certainty is pretty important to any multi-million dollar business.

But creating budget certainty is not a proxy for commitment and the Indians have no more or less of a commitment to either player today then they had for them before the extensions were signed.

What I'm less certain about is why Santana or Cabrera signed on. They would get their money anyway. At best these new contracts, particularly for that first free agency year, represent an insurance policy against injury or really bad performance. Since neither are pitchers, I'm not sure that trade off makes sense in either case and I suspect that the agents won't outlive these deals.

Perhaps that's the real talent of Shapiro and Antonetti. They took a good deal for them and convinced the agents that it was a good deal for their clients. Not bad, when you think about. Now if Shapiro and Antonetti could just find a way to exercise that talent in a way that actually improves the team, by say, signing a free agent that can actually hit.

Lingering Items--Where Every "If" Comes True Edition

The Cleveland Cavaliers got a bit of convenient redemption when they won the NBA’s draft lottery last week. It wasn’t even close to the top sports thought on the minds of Cleveland fans. The top thought, and spots 2 through 7 as well, was the Cleveland Indians.

I was talking with a friend on Sunday who theorized that the rapture did happen, perhaps earlier than planned, and that the town had collectively died and all entered the same room in heaven—a room that gets one channel, SportsTime Ohio, and the Indians play on a continuous loop and win each and every time.

It certainly seems that way at the moment. The Indians, a far less talented team, at least on paper, then probably half the league are more than 40 games into the season and still have the best record in baseball. More to the point, though, they’ve given no hint that they won’t be able to sustain this level of play for the rest of the season.

Which gets me back to my friend’s theory. This is kind of what heaven must feel like for an Indians’ fan. It’s a place where all your “ifs” come true, as in “if Justin Masterson can pick up where he left off at the end of last season…” or “if Asdrubal Cabrera can return to a higher level of play promised by his rookie season…” or “if Josh Tomlin can baffle hitters like few other young pitchers…” or “if Grady Sizemore can finally stay healthy….” Ok, not every “if” is falling the way it should, but you get the point.

The Indians are a fascinating team by any measure you want to take. The roster is a patchwork of young, old, has beens and never quites. It’s incredibly thin, which most rosters of teams with budgets like the Indians tend to be.

And yet, and yet, game after game, week after week this team keeps moving forward, playing with nearly unbridled confidence even as the usual bumps and grinds of every team’s season approach.

Fausto Carmona, perhaps the team’s best if not most mercurial pitcher, is having a mostly mediocre year and no one even notices. Carlos Santana, counted on for so much at such a young age, is barely hitting his weight. The Indians’ one free agent signee, Austin Kearns, is hitting about as well as Austin Powers.

Still, the Indians are tied with the Boston Red Sox for the American League’s best batting average and they trail only the Yankees in runs scored. All that could change if Sizemore and Travis Hafner, two players who have been key to both stats, don’t return soon. You have to think those results would show up somewhere.

But perhaps that won’t matter. This is the season where every “if” comes true and that means that Shin-Soo Choo is about due to go on a tear and even Santana and Matt LaPorta should soon climb back to respectability.

The Indians’ offense has been great thus far as important to its success has been pitching. For proof, consider that the Indians are second only to Oakland in ERA but Oakland is two games below .500 while the Indians are enjoying life in the clouds.

The two worst regular pitchers on this roster have been Carmona and Chad Durbin. The former is a bit of a surprise, the latter not so much. Every one else above them has basically been unhittable. As good as the starting pitching has been, the bullpen has been even better. Chris Perez has the worst ERA of the group but it’s still below 3.00 and he does have those 12 saves. His walks tend to shake the ghosts of Joe Borowski but they really aren’t getting him into much trouble.

When you see all these great statistics about the Indians in print, the fact that they have the best record in baseball is obvious. But it still takes a heavy case of eye wiping to actually believe what you’re reading. You’d be hard pressed to find a team less spectacularly constructed playing so spectacularly well, in any sport.

The Indians are still about 50-60 games away from having to make some tough decisions about the direction to take this club in the season’s latter stages. And it is still difficult to imagine this level of play being sustained through the mid-summer heat.

But this is the season where every “if” seems to be coming true so who can really say what comes next. Perhaps the Indians will falter as the thinness of its roster runs head long into a season that is, after all, 162 games long. At this point though it seems just as likely that the Indians will continue its steamrolling of the American League unabated because this seems to be the year when every “if” comes true.

And for once, the Indians marketing department got it right. What if indeed.

**

The Plain Dealer’s Tony Grossi drew an unintentional chuckle in his weekly “Ask Tony” segment this past Sunday. A reader asked Grossi why, in the face of the lockout, he was even bothering to write about potential free agent signees. Grossi said that he was struggling to find something to write about other than the labor dispute.

See, this is funny because rather than write about news, Grossi would rather right about conjecture. It’s a shame, really, when he along with Mary Kay Cabot, the Plain Dealer’s two main football writers, all but ignore the lockout as if it is higher level calculus that they’re never going to understand.

But on the other hand maybe it’s a good thing they know their limitations. They could be like Mike Freeman at CBS Sports who recently wrote that Peyton Manning’s silence on the whole thing was benefitting the owners and not the players.

Manning, along with Tom Brady and Drew Brees, are the most prominent plaintiffs on the NFLPA-sponsored lawsuit against the owners in which they allege that virtually every activity undertaken by that cartel (their words, not mine) is illegal.

Freeman says that “the only” explanation for Manning’s silence in this battle royale is to keep his image and his commercial earning ability in tact. Freeman essentially accuses Manning of being a shill for the owners and paying lip service at best to the players.

It’s an explanation, but hardly the only one. You could start with the idea that the lawsuit, indeed the entire strategy employed by the NFLPA, was ill conceived from the outset. That Manning would put his name on the pleadings is actually more of an act of courage in this light.

Brees, certainly, has been the most visible player during this dispute and certainly acts as if this is a cause in which he believes. Brady, like Manning, has mostly been hanging out at home.

But this isn’t about any particular players anyway and for Freeman to act as if any one of these three or any of the others for that matter are at the forefront of some groundbreaking struggle is ridiculous.

Like everything else that takes place on the business side of professional sports, this is an argument about money. The tactics employed in this case are extreme and incredibly polarizing but they’re just that, tactics. It’s about finding leverage in order to extract the best deal.

Brady, Manning and Brees are mere scenery to this operetta. They could be as overbearing as Chelsea Handler after a few drinks and no one would notice. They aren’t being counted on to lead the charge. That would be the lawyers and the other fools who concocted this slow march to Bolivia, as Mike Tyson might say.

What Freeman and his ilk really need to see is that Manning is just being Manning. That he may be acting out of self-interest is hardly surprising. The first person on either side of this dispute that isn’t acting out of self-interest will be the first.

**

Right now, Josh Tomlin and Justin Masterson are a combined 11-3 and gave given up 35 runs collectively. CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee are a combined 7-7 and have given up 55 runs. This week’s question to ponder: Huh?

Lingering items--Rebuilding Edition

Everything is quiet these days with the Cleveland Indians. The team took 2 of 4 games (it should have been 3 of 4) from the Boston Red Sox but you could quicken the pulse of the average fan far more quickly by flashing a picture of Erin Andrews on the screen for 10 seconds.

It’s understandable. Indians management wrote off the season before it started so it follows that the fans would do likewise. As my oldest daughter said to me while she was attending Wednesday night’s game and glanced around to see all the empty seats, “it’s depressing.” At least she and her friends at E. 4th Street to look forward to after the game.

If general manager Mark Shapiro didn’t see any of this coming then he missed every possible sign along the road. Fans understand when a team is rebuilding. It’s part of the natural cycle of professional sports. What they can’t understand is how exactly the Indians were rebuilding. Only now is it starting to come into focus and you can thank dumb luck and Jamey Wright and Mark Grudzielanek for that.

When Wright and Grudzielanek, two of Shapiro’s spare parts that he signed for no apparent reason in the offseason, were summarily cast adrift in the land of free agency recently, the purpose, intentional or not, was to make further room for younger players with more of a future. If only Shapiro would continue the paring by parting with Russell Branyan.

The strange thing about Branyan still being on the roster while Wright and Grudzielanek are not is that their presence always made more sense than Branyan’s, even if their actual signings did not. Utility infielders will always have a spot in baseball and with the Indians having suspect and mostly young infielders, at least a case could be made.

There is no case for Branyan. He was signed, bizarrely enough, to start which meant he’d be taking time away from one developing player or another. And it’s not as if the Indians didn’t have candidates to fill that slot. Right now and very predictably Matt LaPorta is back in Columbus because he couldn’t get enough at bats to get the kind of consistency necessary to really assess his long-term value.

The Indians could have jettisoned Branyan instead of LaPorta, just as they did with Wright and Grudzielanek, and then all of this maneuvering with one of the game’s most mediocre players ever, might have made some sense.

Instead it looks like we’ll be treated to Branyan at least through the end of the season and LaPorta, he’ll just have to take a back seat. But on the other hand, if he can’t even beat out Branyan, what does that say about LaPorta anyway? Bueller?

**

On the positive side, at least Branyan’s presence was good for one victory this season. Given his history, he's right on track for maybe being responsible for 3 victories all season.

It’s not clear though whether Mark Shapiro really thought there would be much of a return on his investment in Branyan anyway so maybe it’s unfair to measure Branyan’s contributions by such conventional metrics.

Actually, it’s never been clear exactly why Shapiro signed Branyan in the first place so perhaps Branyan really shouldn’t be the target of any criticism. You can’t blame a guy for taking the easy money.

The real point here is that the Indians have another 100 or so games before this season comes to a merciful close and we’re not closer to figuring out what they’re trying to accomplish now than we were in spring training.

It's kind of like facing a 198 yard shot over water to a green. If you're going to lay up, then make sure you actually lay up. If you're going for it, then give yourself enough club. That's the state of the Indians at the moment, facing that 198 yard shot to the green and completely indecisive about what they should do.

The signing of Branyan is meant to be akin to grabbing enough club to make the shot. In actuality, using him is like hitting a 4-iron and then acting shocked when the shot lands in the water. They'd be no worse off and a better chance of making par if they actually just laid up continued to develop their prospects and explained to the fans why it makes more sense to just lay up.

The ideal, I think, is to have young talent coalesce at roughly the same time, meaning when they are still at least two years away from being free agents. But talent doesn’t develop evenly or as expected and thus the ideal is always a pipe dream. You either accept that fact and be honest about it or you try to fool yourself and your fans. To this point, the Indians have mostly been about trying to fool themselves and their fans.

**

If you are ever the optimist, though, then at least you can get excited about the Indians promoting Carlos Santana from Triple A Columbus on Friday, though it came at the expense of another propsect, Lou Marson.

The Indians essentially traded one prospect for another at the moment, though it wasn't much of a trade given how Marson has struggled offensively. Still, while most people may be asking why it took so long to get Santana to Cleveland, it also may be that Santana's promotion was a little Strasburg envy.

With the Indians playing the Washington Nationals this weekend and pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg getting all the attention, it seemed a natural for the Indians to bring up Santana. In many ways, he was nearly as dominant in the minor leagues as Strasburg. With the Indians mired in mediocrity like the Nationals,a jolt of young and perhaps special talent isn't just a gimmick but a necessity. It sells tickets.

But even more than that (though selling more tickets for either team is something that shouldn't be minimized) the real thing that the promotion of Santana does at the moment is divert the attention away from the really pedestrian job Shapiro has done in acquiring propsects. Strasburg makes the whole Nationals organization look good. Shapiro is obviously hoping for the same bump with Santana.

**

I have no idea whether Tom Izzo will take the Cavs head coaching job, but if he does then he is doing so knowing that he's taking on a bit of a rebuilding job himself.

The basketball conspiracy theorists have all said that they don't think that Izzo will sign unless he has the tacit understanding from LeBron James that he'll be back. I don't buy that theory.

If Izzo is that shallow, he has no business taking the job in the first place. If the only thing that would bring him to Cleveland is the chance to coach James, then he's well advised to stay in East Lansing. Coaching James is a perk. It may not seem this way at the moment but the game really is bigger than James and I think Izzo understands that.

If Izzo comes it will be because he's intrigued by whatever challenges the new job presents. He comes because he sees the NBA as the next step in his career. He comes because it will pay him more money than BP has at the moment. But a man at his level of accomplishment doesn't come if it's just about James.

With or without James, the Cavs heading coach job is a good gig and will remain so as long as Dan Gilbert remains owner. It's just that Izzo needs to be convinced of that. In college, he more or less controls his own fate. In the NBA, he'll have to accept a little loss of control and a huge helping of faith that those surrounding him will work just as hard as he's used to working to be as successful as he's used to being. If he gives the Cavs a thumbs up, then he's navigated the breach. If he doesn't, then my guess is that he'll never coach in the NBA.

**

The Browns have concluded mini camp and laughably head coach Eric Mangini says he doesn't have a starting quarterback. In fact, in more or less a replay of last season, Mangini said that he'll head into training camp with the idea that both Seneca Wallace and Jake Delhomme will work with the first team and that they'll get a similar amount of reps.

Don't believe it. It's not credible for Manigni to suggest to anyone that Wallace is on par with Delhomme at the moment. In fact, if you're Delhomme, it's probably a little offensive, actually. But Delhomme's a veteran and he knows the book on Mangini and likely has concluded, as even the casual fan has by now, that this is simply about Mangini trying to act as the master motivator so that no player feels comfortable with his status.

But consider for a moment if Mangini is telling the truth. That can only mean one of two things: he's trying to curry favor with Mike Holmgren who also seems high on Wallace or it means he's on a collision course with himself by repeating the mistakes of last season's training camp when he completely bungled both Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn. If either is the case, the outcome won't be good for anyone, particularly Mangini. Even he has to know that.

That's why it's best to simply disregard anything Mangini says on the topic at the moment. Come the first game of the season, Delhomme will be the starter and even Mangini knows that, too.

**

Given Mangini's seemingly high opinion of Wallace at the moment, this week's question to ponder: Absent an injury to the starter, would Wallace every be named the starting quarterback of any NFL team?