SB Nation User Blog: Jay

First volley of projections for 2010 Indians

Jay — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:21:38 -0000

Could Sowers finally be the number-four starter of our dreams?

ACTA Sports has begun taking orders for The Bill James Handbook 2010, which customarily will include James' projections for every major league player. (Full disclosure: ACTA occasionally sends me a review copy of one of their books, and I am totally in the bag for them.)

James' proprietary performance projections, while perhaps less obsessed-over than PECOTA or even CHONE, are among the most credible ones publicly available. More to the point, ACTA has released the projections on a few key Indians right now, so let's put our greedy little eyes on them and get an early start on the expectation-setting.

First, the pitchers:

Key Indians Pitchers (by ERA)

Player IP W L K SV
ERA

Kerry Wood 56 4 3 62 27
3.54

Justin Masterson 171 10 9 151 0
4.00

Jeremy Sowers 150 7 9 81 0
4.44

WOOD: I don't know how James is projecting the Save stat, and I certainly don't care. James' system sees Wood as a pitcher who can still rack up the strikeouts and who generally, therefore, will prevent runs from scoring. This doesn't look like a $10 million closer, but it looks more than serviceable.

MASTERSON: Probably the best news in the press release is James' divination of Masterson as a solid number-two starter in 2010. I'm not even sure what to say about it, but I like it.

SOWERS: Less surprising but still heartening is the prediction that Sowers can settle in as a solid #3-#4 guy (don't argue), and damn it, that's all we've really asked of the guy, and it didn't seem like that unreasonable of a demand.

Of course, these projections are probably purely statistical, utilizing little if any subjective information, but they do suggest that there isn't too much urgency to the idea of adding a fungible fourth-starter type on the cheap this offseason.

Now the hitters:

Key Indians Hitters (by OPS)

Player At-bats R HR
RBI SB Avg. OPS

Grady Sizemore 574 101 25 78 21 .272 .853

Shin-Soo Choo 583 95 19 86 20 .293 .850

Matt LaPorta 451 70 20 68 3 .266 .802

Kelly Shoppach 381 57 19 61 0 .249 .798

Asdrubal Cabrera 582 96 9 74 19 .294 .779

SIZEMORE: James has Grady more or less returning to form; while his 30-30 has become a 25-21, note that this is based on 574 AB. Prior to 2009, Sizemore averaged 639 AB per season; obviously, health plays a role here.

CHOO: The numbers say that Shin-Soo Choo really is as good as we think he is.

LAPORTA: That 802 OPS no doubt is less than Indians fans want to see, not to mention the 20 HR over 451 AB. My guess is that James' system is making note of LaPorta's 2009 playing time trends but doesn't know that, barring an extreme circumstance, LaPorta actually will get 600+ AB on the big leagues in 2010. It probably also isn't entirely impressed with his 917 OPS in Columbus this year, given he was already 24. Unlike the typical LGTer, James' system is unlikely to blame any faults in his rookie production on Eric Wedge. Whether its ignorance of these factors is a strength or a shortcoming is up for debate.

SHOPPACH: Surprise! James' system thinks Shoppach is a good hitter who just had a bad year, with some real power counterbalancing his mediocre contact hitting. (In 2009, a 798 OPS was a 105 OPS+.) These projections have Kelly hitting about 90 percent as well as he did in his breakout 2008 campaign. One assumes that James' system didn't actually have to watch Shoppach striking out in every-other at bat all season, and again, one can debate whether that's a plus or a minus for the system.

CABRERA: The most disappointing projection here has Cabrera hitting almost as well as in 2009 rather than taking a step forward. In this case as well, the system is not really differentiating between Cabrera's performance through injuries and his production while healthy, and arguably, we can't, either. Asdrubal had an 877 OPS in April, and he seemed to be starting the big breakout year many had predicted for him. He went 785 the rest of the season to finish at 799 — a fine full season given his all-around game, but not quite what we'd like to see from him.

Choo's BABIP

Jay — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:12:10 -0000

Choo's BABIP

Now that the season's over, all the statboys are taking notice of our man Shin-Soo.

AFL games on MLB network

Jay — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:07:39 -0000

AFL games on MLB network

For those who can still stand to watch a baseball game, this might be mildly interesting. Hat-tip to Amazin' Avenue, where I'm off to write feedback on a "Fire Minaya" type post.

If there was one glaring lesson from last night's game, it was how quickly a dominating pitcher can...

Jay — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:39:10 -0000

If there was one glaring lesson from last night's game, it was how quickly a dominating pitcher can get humbled. Joba Chamberlain looked like he was at the top of his game, blowing away Jayson Werth and Raul Ibanez with 97 MPH fastballs. After getting ahead of Pedro Feliz with two swinging strikes, Phillies hitters had missed on the six of seven swings they had taken against Chamberlain that inning. And then Feliz hit one out of the park to tie the game.

Fast forward to the ninth inning, and Lidge had no problems dispatching Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter. All three strikes to The Captain were of the swing-and-miss variety, as Lidge showed the stuff that caused Manuel to still believe in his closer. And then, after getting to within one pitch of ending the inning, he allowed the next four guys to reach base and lost the game.

Forget hindsight - at the moment of their failure, both Chamberlain and Lidge looked great. There was nothing to suggest that a problem was lurking. They were throwing the hell out of the ball, and then they got hit. Trying to predict the future is really hard.

Dave Cameron, from the Hardball Times

Huff unaware he is a millionaire pro athlete

Jay — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:18:39 -0000

Huff unaware he is a millionaire pro athlete

"This past offseason, I got a job at a golf course cleaning clubs for tips. I'm looking to go back there again and earn a few bucks."

I'm not even sure what to say about this, it's just funny.

Neyer: Ryan Howard not quite as good as Choo

Jay — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:02:24 -0000

Neyer: Ryan Howard not quite as good as Choo

Not much excitement in the explication, but here it is.

A Tale Of Two Indians

Jay — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:31:49 -0000

More photos » by Eric Gay - AP

And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Browse more photos »

This article originally appeared on Yahoo! Sports. Discussion of the article is here.

As we await the first pitch of the 2009 World Series, you will forgive us Cleveland fans if we're not quite sure how we feel about this Game One matchup. At the moment, we're merely dubious, but we'll be feeling a whole range of emotions when C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee take the mound Wednesday night. There will be an irresistible pinch of excitement, watching the players we've spent years rooting for reach this pinnacle. There will be sadness, watching them achieve it with other teams, and for other teams' fans. Over the course of the game, there will be some fun moments watching "our guys," but in the end, that's going to give way to an all-abiding sense of disappointment.

There's going to be anger. In fact, there already is. Anger at a team that was picked to win their division four years in a row, yet managed just one winning record in those four years. Anger that we've made the playoffs just once in nine seasons — I'm already counting 2010 — and almost went to the World Series in that one winning year. Almost. Anger at a GM who just announced the hiring of a manager who was cast away by the worst organization in the game. Anger at an ownership group perceived as too thrifty to pay top-dollar for a name like Bobby Valentine, just as they were too cheap to keep these two lefty aces on the Cleveland roster.

Perhaps most of all, there is anger at the sports gods who ordered up this special humiliation for Cleveland fans. Two true aces emerge, after dozens of seasons without any aces. Our boys bring home the Cy Young Award in consecutive seasons — which never happens! — only to be traded away in consecutive seasons. Yes, this outrage, it's juicy. Much worse than that 43–0 homecoming drubbing the Steelers gave the Browns in 1999, far more inexplicable than the Indians' three-game collapse to lose the 2007 ALCS. This one, it's special. Just like blowing the World Series with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Game Seven, it's a screwing that's been saved just for Cleveland fans and nobody else. And don't think we're not pissed about it.

Lots of Indians went to the postseason this year, you see. The Dodgers lineup had three — Manny Ramirez, Casey Blake and Ron Belliard — not to mention our all-time home run leader, Jim Thome, on the bench. Victor Martinez went with the Red Sox, while Rafael Betancourt went with the Rockies. The Cardinals had Mark DeRosa and Ryan Ludwick, both of whom had short stints with the Indians. And now, the coup de grace, an all-bartered-away-Indians matchup in Game One of the World Series. Two guys who could never put it together for the Indians — or was it the other way around? — battling it out for all the marbles. Yeah, you'd be pissed, too.

One thing Indians fans will see when Sabathia takes the mound is our last first-round draft pick who actually gave the Indians a good season in the majors. Sabathia went 20th overall in 1999, spent just one full season in the minors in 2000, and debuted with the Indians at the start of the 2001 season at the tender age of 20. He was a solid middle-of-the-rotation guy right out of the gate, and while he made the fans wait through four years of fits and starts before finally emerging as a "true ace," even the most skeptical fans — the ones who couldn't stand the crooked cap and copious belly — would have to admit that he did eventually dominate.

Lee came to the Indians organization in 2002 the same way he left in 2009, in a big swap, with the Indians sending an ascendant ace out for an impressive group of prospects. The ace was Bartolo Colon, and Lee came back to the Indians in a package that was so sweet, Grady Sizemore was thought to be the third-best guy in it. "The Colon Deal" set the standard for getting premium value out of a star player in his walk year; all subsequent deals are compared to it, and never favorably. Teams don't just give away future All-Stars the way they used to. Nobody could have guessed that the Indians would be on the sinking-ship side of two more Colon Deals before the decade was out.

Indians fans naturally were livid in 2002, as they are now. They didn't understand the trade then, and the media hadn't really figured out how to portray it. (The crawl at the bottom of the ESPN screen read: "Indians trade P Bartolo Colon to Expos for 1B Lee Stevens and minor leaguers.") I still remember GM Mark Shapiro standing bravely at the podium, really like no GM I can recall before or since, saying something like, "I know I'm going to catch hell for this, but this is the only way we win in the future."

Both players emerged as front-of-the-rotation guys by the end of 2005. One-year rental Kevin Millwood was the de facto staff ace that season, somehow winning the ERA title with a losing record. Lee was in his first full season in the bigs, and he looked ready to fulfill Peter Gammons' chipper observation that he "had All-Star written all over him." Sabathia, now 24, struggled mightily for most of the season, as he often had during the previous three. The Indians were doing their trademark early-season free-fall, but the offense seemed to jump to life once batting coach Eddie Murray was dumped. Lee rode the soaring run support to an 18–5 record and a fourth-place Cy Young finish.

Sabathia didn't click until August, but he posted a 1.79 ERA over his final ten starts, providing a finishing kick as the Indians' completed four solid months of .650 baseball, making them a virtual lock for the postseason. Then, inexplicably, the Indians lost six of their final seven games, losing their playoff berth on the last day of the season. Sabathia delivered the club's lone win in that frustrating week, shutting down the happless Devil Rays over eight innings, and he has pitched like an ace ever since. Over 141 starts since August 10, 2005, Sabathia has averaged exactly seven innings per start, with a 3.02 ERA and four strikeouts for every walk. (In an utterly unheralded move, Shapiro shrewdly extended Sabathia's contract through the end of 2008, just as the 2005 season was starting.)

It was the first of many missed opportunities for the Indians and this pitching tandem. Sabathia led another impressively deep rotation in 2006, but Lee faltered into mediocrity, and a historically bad bullpen and sieve-like infield defense took the Indians out of contention in June. The club reloaded for 2007, but Lee missed the start of the season with an injury that, in retrospect, he probably never fully recovered from. After struggling with command for all of May and June, Lee fell completely off the cliff in July, posting an 8.68 ERA over his final five starts. He was, reluctantly and famously, sent to the minors at the end of July 2007.

His team, meanwhile, surged to the best record in the majors and a long-delayed trip to the playoffs. Fausto Carmona became the "second ace" Lee was expected to be, and the Indians somehow had the club's strongest and deepest rotation in recent memory, perhaps in 50 years, even without Lee. Sabathia unquestionably was the club's most valuable pitcher that season, but he faltered badly in the playoffs. He barely managed to scrape together a quality start against the Yankees in the Division Series, and he crapped the bed completely in the ALCS against the Red Sox. It may seem cruel to pin the Indians' failure to win the pennant on Sabathia, but the simple truth is that he was absolutely terrible in that series, while his teammates took three games out of five without his help. He won the Cy Young Award, but his team won only the division title.

The 2008 season was perhaps the most bizarre turn of all for the two lefites. Coming off his injury-plagued nightmare season in 2007, Lee barely made the club out of spring training to start 2008, but once the season started, he dominated opposing hitters completely. Just eight months earlier, he'd forgotten how to pitch, and now, he'd forgotten how to give up runs. As if maintaining some cosmic balance, Sabathia fell hard out of the gate, posting an astonishing 13.50 ERA over his first four starts. For the first five weeks of the season, inexplicably, Cliff Lee was the league's best starting pitcher, and the incumbent Cy Young winner Sabathia was the worst. Sabathia recovered his old form quickly, however, and against all odds, Lee maintained his new form.

Finally, for the first and only time, Cleveland had both Sabathia and Lee pitching like aces at the same time. It lasted all of ten weeks. Lee posted a 2.73 ERA from late April through the first week in July — this was actually the low-point of his season, if you can believe that — and the club went 9–4 in those games. Sabathia posted a 2.16 ERA over that same period, but the club won only seven of his 14 starts. At one point, the Indians rotation collectively threw 44 scoreless innings in a row. The lineup, however, was a different story, freezing up completely just as the rotation was surging. Throw in yet another God-awful bullpen, and the Indians' season once again was over and done by the end of June.

Two aces, finally healthy, finally pitching like two aces, for the first and only time, somehow, impossibly, was simply not enough. As a tandem, that's all Indians fans ever got out of Sabathia and Lee — one nice season in 2005, and ten dazzling but poorly timed weeks in 2008. As individuals, each guy delivered a Cy Young season, plus a couple other really good seasons. Sabathia never delivered anything in the posteason, however, and Lee never even got there. Should we blame the pitchers for not being at their best when we needed them most? Should we blame the team for not better capitalizing on their stellar seasons when they happened?

Most Indians fans will tell you, I think, that they do blame Sabathia, but Lee gets a pass. While their Cleveland careers ended with the same kind of transaction, the two men actually left Cleveland on very different terms. Sabathia was in his walk year in 2008, and he'd rebuffed contract extension talks at the start of 2007, then rebuffed them more loudly at the start of 2008. Contrary to what the cynics will tell you, most players do not, in fact, go for top dollar. In free agency, perhaps that is the rule, but most star players re-up with their hometown club before they ever reach free agency. Sabathia was offered extensions commensurate with those signed by other elite starters — Oswalt, Peavy, Zambrano, Halladay, Carpenter — and he wasn't interested.

Sabathia claimed he loved playing in Cleveland, for the Cleveland fans, within the Indians organization, with his Cleveland teammates. His friends speculated that he wanted to go back home to California. Everybody knew he liked to swing the bat, which suggested an NL destination, and he clearly relished his brief stint in Milwaukee. He made noises more than once about wanting to play with other African-Americans. And in the end, he went to the Yankees — far from his home in California, not in the National League. And for all his ample bellyaching, he isn't exactly surrounded by African-American teammates in the Bronx, either.

Sabathia and his four infielders are paid more than the entire rosters of 22 major league clubs, and Sabathia personally is guaranteed more than twice as much money in his contract than everyone in the entire Indians organization combined. In the end, for all his talk, it wasn't about anything but money. And now, just to rub salt in our wounds, Sabathia has produced for New York where he totally fell flat for Cleveland. In the 2007 postseason with the Indians, Sabathia posted an 8.80 ERA over three starts in the first two rounds. In 2009 for the Yankees, he's posted a 1.19 ERA in three starts.

Yeah. You'd be pissed, too.

Lee's exit was different. He was not in his walk year, and judging from his rebuffed requests to talk extension with the club just a few months ago, he was not determined to reach free agency. We'll never know what kind of deal Lee was truly willing to take, of course, but he wanted to talk — and he wanted to do it not just before reaching free agency, but two full years before. That generally means a guy wants to stick around, not hold out for top-dollar. That's why, while Sabathia's brilliant run in these playoff games is seen as a knife in the back, Lee's equally dominant run is more bittersweet.

This doesn't seem to happen to any other city, and it doesn't happen in any other major sport. Rank-and-file Indians fans rail at the owner for being "too cheap" to field a competitive team. They beg for Dolan to sell the team — as though some other guy with more money to blow might actually buy it. They fantasize about an owner who would pour hundreds of millions of his own dollars into the salaries of star players. They think Dick Jacobs used to spend money like that, but he didn't — in the go-go 90's, with a new taxpayer-funded stadium, Dick Jacobs always made a profit. They think the Steinbrenners and other owners spend their own money like that, but they don't — those richer clubs aren't spending down the wealth of their owners, they're just spending money from richer TV deals.

That basic imbalance in the game's economics is the reason Sabathia and Lee are starting Game One of the World Series for the Yankees and Phillies, rather than starting Games One and Two for the Indians. It is the only reason. Yes, the Indians have made a number of other missteps over the past several years, but on a basic level, Lee and Sabathia are gone because the Indians had no reasonable hope of bidding for them. The Phillies — who lured away Thome in 2003 — and the Yankees — who are the Yankees — can bid on players of this caliber once they reach free agency, and other clubs cannot.

That's why these teams have these players, and in fact, it's the only reason the Yankees made it to the World Series this year, or in any year since 1998. They've got Sabathia from the Indians, Burnett from the Marlins, Damon from the Royals, A-Rod from the Mariners, Teixeira from the Rangers, even Matsui from the Yomiuri Giants. And while the Yankees cherrypicked stars from other rosters, no other club ever got a crack at Jeter and Rivera. Yet Bud Selig wants to tell us that parity is alive and well in major league baseball. I can't imagine how he says this with a straight face. This ain't parity, this is prima nocta.

Even for those of us who understand the Indians' bind, this is ugly. They did what they had to do, that much is clear. Sabathia was determined to walk away at the end of 2008, and there was no point not cashing him in. As for Lee, the team wasn't going anywhere this season or next, with him or without him, so they sold high, eliminating the risk that he'd suffer another injury before they had another chance. You'd have trouble finding an executive anywhere in baseball to tell you that Shapiro didn't do the right thing, and many would say he's among the very best GMs in the game.

Even so, this Game One matchup is a uniquely awful thing for Indians fans to swallow, in the wake of two massively failed seasons in a row. It's still ugly. And we're still pissed.

One more take, from the DiaTribe

Jay — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:07:02 -0000

One more take, from the DiaTribe

Paul gives a very thoughtful take and asks the pivotal question, who's fault is this? Not unlike my piece, he focuses in on that brief period in 2008 when both aces were actually pitching like aces, noting that the Indians nonetheless were 37-51 when Sabathia was traded.

An interesting note is the Casey Blake quote, that losing the ALCS changed the direction of the franchise. I don't think Blake is right. I think even had we won the World Series, the subsequent moves probably would have dropped in roughly the same order, 1-2-3. Those moves were made for a reason, and they had nothing to do with what happened n 2007.

A Tale Of Two Indians

Jay — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:23:09 -0000

A Tale Of Two Indians

Well, if you didn't like those other pieces, you probably won't like this one either, but at least you can complain directly to the author.

Fire Everyone! - Mark Shapiro

Jay — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:10:17 -0000

More photos » by Tony Dejak - AP

Is just developing a good process enough?

Browse more photos »

This is the final installment in a 12-part series.

"A Hit Is A Hit" — The Sopranos, season one.

Christopher has been bankrolling a band called "Visiting Day", who are managed by his girlfriend Adriana. He plays the band's demo to his associate Hesh, an old-timer in the music business.

CHRISTOPHER: So?

HESH: I think it's ... not good.

CHRISTOPHER: Wanna be a little more specific?

HESH: There's good. And there's not good. This is not good.

CHRISTOPHER: Okay, maybe it's not your era — no offense, but ...

HESH: Kid, music is music, talent is talent. I don't care who you are. I seen it all. I seen heavy metal invented by Hendrix at the Bottom Line, he just got out of the army. I told him, "Kid, I don't know what you call it — talent, charisma, magic — whatever it is, you got it." These guys ... [gestures to the cassette] ... I'm sorry, they don't.

CHRISTOPHER: That Vito is a great guitar player, Hesh.

HESH: Good, fine, he's a great guitar player. However, there's one constant in the music business: A hit is a hit. And this, my friend, is not a hit.

CHRISTOPHER: But why?

HESH: Christ. Reasons we can never comprehend or codify, you pitiful schlepper.

Of all the installments in this series, this is the one where it's most tempting to beg off and admit, this might just above my pay grade. I'll be honest, I can't say with much confidence whether Mark Shapiro should be fired. What I can say is that there are definitely good reasons to fire him.

Before we get to that, better face up to some hard facts. If you're going to fire Shapiro, you have to believe that a better option is available. Chris Antonetti is the heir apparent, but you fire Shapiro and keep Antonetti only if you think that in keeping Antonetti, you preserve the best parts of Shapiro while rooting out his shortcomings. Heck, maybe that's actually the case, but I personally couldn't say. It doesn't seem likely. And if Antonetti was the instant front-runner for most any GM opening, what would that make Shapiro if he were available?

Shapiro's calling card is turning walk-year veterans into prospects who become multi-year contributors to the team — a truly staggering haul, including Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, Coco Crisp, Shin-Soo Choo, Travis Hafner, Milton Bradley, Franklin Gutierrez, Asdrubal Cabrera, Josh Bard and Kelly Shoppach. Add to that list, potentially, over the next several years, Matt LaPorta, Carlos Santana, Luis Valbuena, Michael Brantley, Lou Marson, plus a half-dozen significant pitching prospects, plus Mark DeRosa, Arthur Rhodes, Justin Masterson and Chris Perez. Even his least successful trade acquisitions — Alex Escobar, Jason Michaels, Brandon Phillips, Billy Traber, Andy Marte, Josh Barfield — have not been entirely bereft of big-league talent.

We've chanted that litany before, but it bears recalling because horse trading is one of the most important jobs of a GM, and it's notably one of the only jobs where success or failure is directly traced to his decision. Shapiro also has had an impressive run with third-tier free agent starting pitchers — Pavano made 33 starts and netted a decent prospect, Byrd completed three serviceable seasons, Millwood won the freakin' ERA title, and even Brian Anderson did okay for a couple of years. And while fans rightly bemoan the dead weight of Hafner's contract, Shapiro has not really made the big, crippling mistakes that befall most GMs — on the balance sheet, Hafner-Westbrook-Dellucci pale before Wells-Rios-Ryan.

If you're going to get rid of Shapiro and his like-minded colleagues, then you have to be willing to live without those exemplary skills — without his leadership, class, and intelligence, his deftness with trades and contracts, the respect he commands within the industry, and especially — especially — his willingness to take the public body blows when tough decisions need to be made. You can't assume that the next guy will excel in all of those areas. I am certain we'd miss those qualities.

Having said that, I can tell you why Shapiro should be fired in one word: Talent.

Baseball is never simple. As a rule, the world's most elite natural athletes cannot succeed as major leaguers. Hitting and pitching are simply too hard. Hitting at this level requires a knack that may be the hardest thing to quantify or characterize in all of sports, and if you don't have it, then all the talk or mechanics and approaches in the world can't save you, even if you have several NBA championships and MVP awards on your résumé. Pitching at this level requires a freakish combination of precise muscle control, huge arm-generated torque, resistance to elbow and shoulder injury under extreme stress, and intelligence.

Running a baseball club may be just as hard and just as unquantifiable; after all, more than a few titans of industry have tried and failed. A brilliant executive can't necessarily run a ballclub any better than a world-class athlete can hit a curveball. The brilliant executive can be an inspiring leader, managing and empowering his charges. He can define what kind of people he wants working in the organization, hire them, set expectations, evaluate them, act on them. He can fire people. He can order case studies and surveys of best practices. He can analyze statistics and devise processes, enact them, evaluate them, refine them, start over from scratch if need be. He can maintain outstanding communication with his staff, with his bosses, with the public. He can do all these things reliably, even predictably, because he simply has the tools and the skills.

For all that, however, the brilliant executive can't necessarily tell you whether it's better to overspend on Raul Ibañez or Kerry Wood. He can't necessarily devise a process to tell you that, and he can't necessarily hire the right person to tell you that, either. Nor can he devise a process to hire the right person to tell you that. It doesn't always come down to objective analysis or having a good process. Sometimes it comes down to talent: the talent to play, the talent to evaluate talent, the talent to develop talent, and the judgment to make decisions about talent.

Sometimes — often, maybe — it comes down to reasons we can never comprehend or codify, pitiful schleppers that we are.

Evaluating talent is a special skill, and here I can speak with some experience. Most of my professional life is centered around my ability to identify genuine talent — musical talent, IT talent, and even writing talent — people who reliably will perform at a high or exceptionally high level, just about 100 percent of the time. I have, on occasion, identified individuals with weak paper qualifications who later went on to excel in their field. In some cases, they thrived in part because I gave them an opportunity and aided their development. In other cases, their success was inevitable, and I just saw it earlier than some others.

I am not suggesting, by any stretch of the imagination, that I have the ability to judge baseball talent. Maybe, if I'd spent 20 years working as a baseball professional, learning from thousands of discussions with scouts and making and testing my own observations — maybe then, but perhaps not even then. For whatever it's worth, though, I can tell you that my ability to assess a person's talents is entirely intuitive. I have no ability to explain it, or to teach anyone else how to do it. I can be highly analytical in my assessments of people, breaking down facts and metrics, making rules and devising grading systems to create rankings — and I can teach these things by rote and by example. However, none of that has anything to do with being able to differentiate reliably between a high ceiling and a low ceiling.

I can't tell you for sure that it's the same for baseball, but I worry that it is. Most of the people reading this could be trained in the rudiments of being a low-level scout — doing your homework and measuring some kid's raw tools on the field. Skills are another thing entirely — evaluating footwork and positioning on defense, observing quality of command across a variety of pitches, intuiting the difference between a bad day and a chronic problem. Beyond these, another level, the crucial, game-changing question: Will this ballplayer develop skills beyond what he's showing today? How does he project to a different level at a different age, or even just to a different ballpark in a different league?

I have no doubt that great baseball scouts learned a lot from the great scouts who came before them, and I have no doubt that a gifted executive can learn immensely from a great scout, purely by his ability to listen and communicate and absorb. At the same time, I am quite sure that the greatest talent evaluators in the game are possessed of something that is innate and ineffable. And I am genuinely concerned that the Indians don't employ any of those people — and that, in fact, Shapiro may have favored others in the organization to the point where the best evaluators left.

Take a look at the AP report of Neal Huntington being hired away by the Pirates:

Huntington formerly was the assistant general manager to the Indians' Mark Shapiro, but dropped behind vice president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti and assistant general manager John Mirabelli on the front office depth chart two years ago.

Huntington accepted a different role in 2005, Shapiro said, because Antonetti's skills were in the management and administrative side, while Huntington's were in evaluation and scouting.

"My skill set and passion were more that of an evaluator, but they never technically took me out of the front office," Huntington said. "I was exposed to some incredible things -- rebuilding an organization and being involved in every decision, every tough decision, that was made."

And from the MLB.com report:

As an adviser to Shapiro and vice president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti, Huntington was involved in nearly all personnel and staffing decisions, as well as trade acquisition discussions. He also spent the majority of his time evaluating talent on both the Minor and Major League level.

When asked about Huntington, Shapiro responded: "[Huntington is] one of our chief evaluators and one of our strongest voices on every level," Shapiro said.

Here's a guy who was the highest-ranking evaluator in the organization and possibly the best, a guy with a master's degree in sports management from UMass, and essentially, he was passed over — well treated, perhaps, but pointedly not in line for a future role as GM. So too, perhaps, was John Farrell, who upon leaving Cleveland — quite amicably, as Huntington did — was quoted to say that he was looking to have a larger voice in an organization. Farrell had been a major league pitcher and a college pitching coach, and with the Indians he served stints as Farm Director and Director of Player Development. Despite his experience and impeccable reputation, Farrell too was not viewed as the future leader of the organization.

Years earlier, there was Tony LaCava, whom the Indians hired in 2002 as national cross-checker, essentially rescuing him from the sinking-ship Montreal Expos. As the Expos very recent Farm Director, LaCava naturally was instrumental in selecting the prospects to be received in the Colon deal, which is not only Shapiro's signature trade, but arguably the most successful trade of a veteran for prospects by any GM, ever. LaCava, too, was not retained in the Indians organization, moving on to the Blue Jays as Assistant GM in 2003, just one year later, while John Mirabelli continued his string of generally disastrous drafts.

Like Huntington, LaCava is going to be a GM sooner or later, yet he wasn't good enough to be Assistant GM in Cleveland. None of these guys were given large enough roles in the organization to keep them around, and no doubt the Indians were possessed of too much executive talent to keep in-house — a nice problem to have. Still, given how things have gone since, it's telling that the prince-in-waiting anointment, and present-day "co-GM" status, went not to an ace evaluator, but instead to Antonetti, a man whose background and skill set are more or less identical to Shapiro's.

For all the talk about being open to all ideas and all viewpoints, the major player-evaluation talent in the Indians organization was basically told that being a solid administrator was more important, and that their path to bigger jobs would have to be in some other, presumably less enlightened organization — and never mind that it doesn't matter how well administered your organization is if you don't know who the best talent is. (Is it any wonder, then, that when Shapiro hires a former catcher for a manager, he then populates his coaching staff almost entirely with other former catchers? All leaders lead by example, first and foremost.)

This is not to say that an executive without a scouting background cannot be an outstanding GM, but it's noteworthy that other organizations that have gone with the "Ivy League whiz kid" GM model tend to have a "wise old baseball man" figure hanging close by, advising the gifted non-scout executive. The Red Sox had Bill Lajoie attached to Theo Epstein; Allard Baird is in that role now, while Lajoie is now advising Huntington in Pittsburgh. The Rays put Gerry Hunsicker with Andrew Friedman, and down in Texas, Jon Daniels has access to no less than John Hart and Nolan Ryan. But when non-scout-gifted-executives Shapiro and Antonetti huddle to make the big decisions, who are the wise old evaluators in the room — Charles Nagy and Jason Bere?

Later that night, at home, Adriana and Christopher discuss Visiting Day's potential. Hip-hop mogul "Massive Genius" has told Adriana that the band's demos are promising.

CHRISTOPHER: You know how I use the technique of positive visualization?

ADRIANA: I know you talk about it. You're fairly negative a lot of the time.

CHRISTOPHER: I think you should mentally prepare for the possibility that Visiting Day sucks.

ADRIANA: What?

CHRISTOPHER: I think that ... the only reason you've gotten this far with Massive is ... he wants to be in your pants.

ADRIANA: Boy, oh, boy.

CHRISTOPHER: Look, I had some experts listen to the demo ... they crapped all over it. Sorry.

ADRIANA: Who, Hesh? That old synagogue cantor?

CHRISTOPHER: Silvio. Hey, he owned rock clubs in Asbury. You heard what Squid said. A professional engineer.

ADRIANA: What about my opinion? That it's good. That it's special. This is just a way for you to keep me down.

CHRISTOPHER: That ain't fair.

ADRIANA: What's wrong with it, huh? What's wrong with Visiting Day?

CHRISTOPHER: I don't know ... but it's a problem that you don't know.

This series of articles perhaps has only demonstrated the obvious, that a club this bad — which decides in June that it must not only tank the current season but the next season at the same time — has suffered multiple failures in more than one part of the organization. In any one area, we can talk about how much control that one group of people — coaches, scouts, trainers — really had, compared to the influence of the other groups and the whims of the fates. But a systemic failure points ultimately to Shapiro, who hired and is accountable for all of those groups, and the harsh truth is that every club must contend with the whims of the fates — or fail to contend with them, as the Indians have.

Amateur scouting has been a disaster since Shapiro took over; maybe time will reveal that it was fixed two or three years ago, but maybe not. Big-league scouting has been a mixed bag, with veteran acquisitions missing a lot more often than they hit — in Barfield's case, about four times more often. The training staff has won high praise from some in the industry, but they haven't stopped the Indians from being undercut severely by injuries to a half-dozen key players in just two years — in some cases, multiple injuries and disappointing rehab processes have afflicted a single player like Jake Westbrook over and over again. The farm system has been another mixed bag, producing too many players who dominate at Triple-A but can barely perform at replacement level in the majors. If all clubs were like the Indians in this regard, those MLE formulas might look a lot different.

We had a manager whose playing-time decisions often defied any imaginable logic or reason, who thought it was important to have Ramon Vazquez on his bench rather than future 30-30 man Brandon Phillips, and who thought it was a good idea to put Ryan Garko in the outfield, with a rookie flyball pitcher on the mound — scratch that, ever — and we had a GM who let him do these things. It's true that Shapiro fired Wedge, and he may be sincere in saying that bringing in a new manager is an exciting opportunity. Even so, Shapiro made it abundantly clear that he didn't think there was any real, qualitative reason why Wedge shouldn't continue to be the manager — his exact words were, "it's a cop-out."

We had extraordinarily bad — and sometimes historically bad — bullpens in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009. Those volcanic fiascos were, at least, largely Shapiro's direct creations, and at most, entirely the fault of Shapiro and people who were hired by Shapiro, and who generally have not been fired by Shapiro. They have turned too many contenders into also-rans, too many decent squads into train-wrecks, and too many season ticket holders into non-customers.

The sum of these observations is this one, frightening, inescapable conclusion: Shapiro has not given us any concrete reason to believe that he knows how to put people into critical positions who are capable of evaluating, developing and coaching real talent — the kind that can thrive at the major league level. Without people in key roles who are possessed of that kind of judgment and talent, it doesn't make any difference how good your organizational processes are or how much class-acting you do. We cannot contend on a diet of trade-acquired minor leaguers and recycled starting pitchers alone. If these things weren't clear five years ago, or even one year ago, they ought to be crystal clear now.

I am just a scribe, neither scout nor coach, not a baseball executive and certainly not a former major leaguer. So I don't really know what's wrong with the Cleveland Indians. But it's a problem if Mark Shapiro doesn't know either. And as much respect for him as I have, I'm not at all convinced that he does.

Key Indians Pitchers (by ERA)
Player	IP	W	L	K	SV	ERA
Kerry Wood	56	4	3	62	27	3.54
Justin Masterson	171	10	9	151	0	4.00
Jeremy Sowers	150	7	9	81	0	4.44

Key Indians Hitters (by OPS)
Player	At-bats	R	HR	RBI	SB	Avg.	OPS
Grady Sizemore	574	101	25	78	21	.272	.853
Shin-Soo Choo	583	95	19	86	20	.293	.850
Matt LaPorta	451	70	20	68	3	.266	.802
Kelly Shoppach	381	57	19	61	0	.249	.798
Asdrubal Cabrera	582	96	9	74	19	.294	.779