Tribe slamming shut their ‘window of opportunity’

Feel a draft? No? Neither do I. The reason we don’t feel any of that warm spring air (hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?) rushing in is because the Indians have apparently decided to pull the plug on their World Series hopes (and their fans' hopes as well) for 2019.

How else can you explain their rationale behind cutting payroll before a single game has been played?

We’ve been down this road before, folks: The talk of playing in a small market and the difficulties competing in same, the need to "play the kids," as if someone will call Human Services on them and file a complaint if they don’t.

The most comical suggestion though is the oft-repeated innuendo that the team is losing money or – at best – breaking even. The team is not losing money, folks, unless "losing money" means the same thing as "not making as much as we hoped." The Dolans have been around for two decades now. They wouldn’t be holding onto the franchise and losing money on an annual basis out of civic duty, now would they? These are the D-O-L-A-N-S, remember?

I think what bothers me the most – more than anything else – is that the Indians have arguably the best starting pitching staff in baseball. Along with that they have two of the best young infielders in the game, in Jose Ramirez and Francisco Lindor. They have all of those guys at what baseball executives refer to as "club friendly" contracts.

So, they have all those assets – at reasonable costs – and are still pleading poverty? Gimme a break.

The problem with the Indians is that after Ramirez and Lindor, most of the position players are marginal talents, and the last I checked, even with a great pitching staff, you still need to outscore the opposition in order to win. With the group as presently assembled, I see a lot of 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2 games. With a questionable relief corps, we may end up on the short end of a lot of those games.

There are never any guarantees in sports, but the one thing that’s certain is failure, if you don’t do everything in your power to climb through that window while it’s still open.

The Dolans are apparently still figuring out how to work the blinds, but if they don’t get this ship headed in the right direction, and soon, the next thing they’ll be trying to figure out is what happened to their fans.