At least John Hart isn't in charge anymore....

[Swanny]

Texas just signed Hideki Irabu to a minor league deal. Any of you fans who want to place blame on someone for the Tribe never winning a ring can blame Hart. He has no clue on how to assemble a balanced pitching staff and he is already proving it in Texas. We have a whole new set of problems with Shapiro at the helm.

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[Alex]

Swanny, I don't know how or what to respond to your post.

GOOD JOB!

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Alex

[tribejunkie]

I will Be Shapiro's job to do damage control for the next 3-5 yrs. Damage that John Hart has created.
We now have a mediocre team mostly in part of not keeping any of our high priced talent. We all should of seen this coming when the Indians hardly put up a fight for Albert Belle.
We have no future in our farm system. Instead of signing high priced talent to multi year deals, we rented high priced talent players at a very steep price, Casey,Giles,Sexson, Burnitz.
So Indians fans the saying goes start from the ground up and in the farm system is where we need to start. It worked in the early 90's and it can work again in due time.

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[truefan]

look at the bright side, perhaps we can now rape Texas of a young and upcoming talent! Texas has added enough to be on the fringes of the playoffs. We all know how Hart smells blood and won't hesitate to unload talent for that one or two guys who could get them "over the top" as he liked to say. This year around the trade deadline, Texas will probably be looking for a starter. Maybe we could unload Finley to them and steal one of their Casey's, Giles, etc. Carlos Pena is a stud in the making down there....

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[the teacher]

We don't have any talent down on the farm because it was traded away mostly for pitching. I'm no Hart fan, but trades are easy to review in hindsight. The burba-casey deal looked good at the time. Casey was a great prospect, but there is no such thing as a "sure thing". He hit .272 with 7 hr's in 1998 for cinci (not exactly setting the world on fire), and Burba stepped into our rotation and nailed down a starter's role by going 15-10 for us. would I prefer to have Casey today? Um, yes.

Sexson was dealt essentially for Wickman. I'll take Wick today, straight up. Again, I'm not defending Hart, he's done some bad deals, but they didn't all suck and he was trying to address our #1 need, pitching.

Swanny, you're already bashing Shapiro. OK, he's an easy target, and bashing him is tempting I suppose for those who don't like to examine the facts. But do you GET that cutting payroll is not his decision? And do you understand that he has a strategy, one that's worked for such teams as Seattle? Don't forget Seattle lost Griffey Jr., The Unit, ARod, and Tino Martinez and they had an ok season with a payroll of $76 million.

Speaking of payroll, please realize that a sky-high payroll not a cure-all. Just ask the Dodgers ($109 million) or Boston ($109)or the Mets ($93), none of whom were around in October. Better yet, ask Arizona, who did OK with a payroll of.... guess what? $81 million.



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The Teacher

[Swanny]

Pat Gillick is the G.M. in Seattle. Big difference from Shapiro. I guess we will just have to see how it all pans out.

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