Dojji

THis Cleveland team is starting to look like it could play 9 with the devil and his angels and come out on top. It's time to admit that the Red Sox simply were not on the level for most of this year that the Guardians have taken their game to this postseason. They got HFA because they were a better team, and they took advantage of it because they were a better team. And it's beginning to look like they're a better team than Chicago too with all its high priced high power talent. No one could have seen that coming. Amazing how it goes sometime.

That's because she's responding to people that are radically overhyping the bad ones.

To break that down a bit, Shaw provided a LOT of value with his glove, to make up for his increasingly soggy bat. Shaw was good for 1.4 dWAR at third base. That's actually very very good, anything more than 1 dWAR is very very solid defensive play at the position, especially considering some of us (myself included) were concerned about his ability to play 3B full time. Travis Shaw got it done with the glove all year, even when the bat was failing him, and even though 3B is a corner infield position, the glove still matters there. A lot. Travis didn't have much of an offensive result at the end of the day at 3B, he was the worst *offensive* 3B who played full time, BUT!!!!!! he hit well enough that his excellent defense played positively for us. That's just about the opposite of how we expected the narrative to go with Shaw this year but hey, that's baseball. If he can make some offseason adjustments and get that bat going a little more consistently, Shaw's going to be a major asset next year.

Shaw returned 2 WAR. That is a solid-average performance out of 3B. If that's the "worst in the league" we're in a golden age of 3B.

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You really love strawmen. Are you related to the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz? A middle ground actually exists between "IT'S ALL SOMEBODY'S FAULT I JUST DON'T KNOW WHO!" and "THE PLAYOFFS ARE NOTHING BUT A GAME OF PURE CHANCE!" Believe it or not. My opinion is that it's impossible to eliminate random chance and any analysis of a recent playoff performance has to account for baseball's tendency to occasionally throw the probability tables out the window and tell a story instead. But also that these stories are the exception and that most of the time, the probability tables are going to have their say and either team is a sequence of good/bad bounces away from having their postseason turned on its head at any time. And BTW, when we say "random" a lot of us myself included are also lumping in with that the separate but related category of "things that were major or minor contributing factors to the outcome, that we only learned about afterward and couldn't possibly have predicted or identified at the time." Stuff like injuries the team was keeping out of the press, illness, clubhouse mood, fatigue, whether the team went out to eat before the game and got into some bad oysters, you get the idea.

Honestly think it's Tito vs Theo. The Cubs are here because of the careful preparation of the general manager, and the Guardians are here because Tito did a good job holding the team together, maintaining motivation and putting players in the right position to succeed after the preseason planning broke down

Rebuilds happen. Usually when you make a lot of the right decisions that don't work out, in a row.

So in your opinion, random straw man that has nothing to do with anything you said either? Sorry, I'm feeing a bit lazy at the moment, and if I'm honest, your post isn't even worth dignifying with a proper snarking.

Whether or not it was a success, with a core like that, potent but aging, it was the right strategy. You either go for it or you sell off assets in trade to get younger, and you only do the latter if you don't think you have a chance to win the whole thing.

Pablo and Headley aside, It should not have been as hard as it actually was to replace with a decent 3B. The fact that we failed to do it should not reflect on the decision to trade Iglesias, which was made before the Pablo and Headley situations and can only inform the Iglesias trade by that most useless of activies, pure hindsight. THe difference between a ,726 OPS and a .773 OPS is pretty freaking huge. There was no reason to sign Drew in 2014 (and no reason that signing Drew in 2014 was guaranteed to work out as badly as it did). Given Iglesias lost a year in 2014, the year before we signed Pablo, I'm less sold on that one. If X-Bo moved back to SS to cover for him and played well in 2014, we might have been suckered into bringing in the professional FA and letting Iggy play utility man. No, I'm assuming the team was in position to make a play in the postseason. That's all that is required. If the trade goes well, if the trade goes poorly, that's irrelevant. The trade should be made, and let the chips fall where they may.

This is all beside the point. When we had Drew, we needed Drew because we didn't have another shortstop until X-Bo was ready. We got Iglesias as a way to hedge our bets on Bogaerts, having just been burned by Will Middlebrooks, that was understandable. Bogaerts turned out to be good to go, or at least to a point where he'd benefit from big league time. Leaving the question, what do you do with Iglesias? If you operate on the assumption that it shouldn't be THAT hard to obtain a decent 3B in the wake of the Middlebrooks fiasco, it would be a waste of the potential of one of those two very, very talented young shortstops to play either of them at third longterm. That means that the best way to use those two young assets is to trade one of them for something you need. I don't know a single fan on this team that wasn't glad we had Iglesias. The difference I see now between one camp and the other, is that one camp is always going to be in favor of trading surplus young talent to build the team in an effort to win championships. And the other is in favor of the older mindset that it's better to find ways to fit the talent you have into a team that works, rather than going to the market and making big plays. Personally I'm mostly with the former group. This is a big market franchise, it doesn't make sense for us to act like we aren't. We had a chance to make a play to improve our chances in the postseason in a year when we had every chance in the postseason. It was the right thing to do to trade Iglesias at the time we traded Iglesias, the only quibble possible is whether you liked the return or not. Even if it didn't work out exactly as hoped, it's always the right move to make that kind of play when you're in that kind of position. THat kind of strong postseason push opportunity is exactly what you hoard talent FOR. If you're a good bet for the postseason, do everything you possibly can to give yourself as good a shot as possible. If you don't make it through because you spent the month of July counting your hoarded prospects, and let a shot at a winnable championship slip through your fingers as a result, you are not doing your best by your ownership or your fanbase. There is nothing -- NOTHING -- more important in this sport than winning championships.

Drew hit fine the year that mattered.

not really. More if an indictment of recent Tigers draft strategy and a sign that it's time to cool it for awhile until the draft starts producing nuggets again instead if duds. If D&D are doing their jobs well, it should be possible to stay aggressively competitive for a long time, at least until attrition erodes the core of the team. But there always comes a time when you lose enough gambles in a row and the pipelibe goes dry for long enough that it's time to take a step back form the table and lick your metaphorical wounds for awhile. It's a natural part of the baseball life cycle.

it's the magical thinking of armchair managers everywhere. They recognize in concept that some things are out of a manager's control but insist that somehow this one is special andmanagers must be able to wave a magic wand and fix the broken thing and make it go, just this one time, and rail on them for not doing so, even when they know full well that a manager is just as susceptible to the vagueries of chance as anyone else. Believe me folks, if managers really could do some deal with the devil to manipulate the random chance that can easily overwhelm all the best laid plans, there wouldn't be a soul left unsold in any coaching staff in all of baseball

Drew was like his brother, very professional and never sought attention for himself. He was a good teammate based on everything I saw and read and was a perfectly acceptable SS all round. Iglesias is also a perfectly acceptable SS but we already had an arguably better one and clearly thought at the time that our hole at 3B was not insurmountable. Spending surplus talent to try to win championships is always, has always been and will always be an acceptable use of assets whether it works or not. If you have a shot at the brass ring, always take it and never regret it!

on the other hand Tito and Napoli have hardware from their Sox days too. One thing that amuses me about this matchup is how much it really is Theo vs Tito. The cubs are a team that got here because of careful GM preparation in the offseason and has Theo's fingerprints all over it. Meanwhile the Guardians have been the story of a team whose preseason planning broke down with the injuries they sustained, but improvisation and strong managership kept them playing a little better than their opponents throughout this postseason. If the Cubs win a lot of the credit goes to their stacked roster andbtherefore the GM, if the Tribe manages to pull through you are probably going to have to blame the manager for finding the ways to work around the holes in his roster and exploit favorable matchups. Either way it should be a fascinating series for Sox fans

The owner certainly enjoyed all those division titles and all that prestige. And fans or no fans, the team president and GM answer to the owner.

Well we knew JBJ was a smart defender rather than a rangy one.

Before we laugh too hard let's see what kind of career Marco makes for himself. He's a pretty talented infielder

Disagreeing. From a ratings standpoint, LA winning would be superior in all likelihood.

Compensation picks is your answer. IIRC we got the pick that turned into JBJ by walking away from Beltre. EDIT: Ninja'd by Palodios.

And we're back to the magic wand again. Oh he should be accountable, as long as you also hold him accountable for some of the tremendous peaks this team had over the course of the season. Maxbialystok put that better than I could possibly reiterate it. My position has always been that the shorter the stretch of games discussed, the less control over the situation the manager has. And Farrell, as an average manager (I've been saying this all season, I'll say it all year, he's not good, not bad, but average) isn't going to be able to wave the wand nearly as effectively as some others. I still think this team would have had better showings each of the last 5 years if Tito Francona had been left right where he was following the 2011 season. That man was an excellent manager. Adequate tactician, master motivator. THe team got away for him for one month in his entire career when injuries and his own health issues overwhelmed him. Team overreacted and immediately fired the best manager they've had in the modern era and haven't found a replacement yet that was worthy of carrying his jockstrap.

Umm... you do realize LA is a much larger media market than Chitown, and much less likely to tune into baseball anyway regardless of who's playing than a stereotypical Cubs fan would be..

The lugo signing wasn't good, but it's hard to criticize anything the FO does when we win it all. I will say though that Lugo shines a light on the whole third base question all the same. We won the World Series with a guy who put up 0.6 WAR in one of the most sensitive field positions. Perhaps we should not be so harsh on Travis Shaw who despite all the trials and tribulations of the second half, was a 2 WAR ballplayer. Championship teams have holes sometimes, you don't need to strain for perfection in every last detail. Just get a team that's good enough to compete and hope for a bit of postseason magic. That's what half the teams that actually won the Series wound up doing.