Pestano mercifully DFA'd this morning...CC Lee is coming back. Will make the pen a hell of a lot better. Pestano is Darryl Akerfelds now, time to just jettison him.
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- Thread starter NFBuck
- Start date
I think the biggest problem is baseball is a sport of the 20th century. These days people seem more interested in faster paced sports like football and basketball. I'm sure you'll always have baseball teams that fill their stadiums, but as a whole I think the sport is going down. I would love to see a study that polls people that go to MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS, MMA, NASCAR and boxing events to see what the demographics are of the different fanbases. If I had to guess MLB and boxing would be the oldest.
Cleveland fans will fill any stadium for a proven winner, but getting into the AL play-in game last year doesn't count. Only the Browns can fill the stadium by just showing up.
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I have been saying the Dolans and Shappinetti can EABOD for a long time...so I will give them credit when they earn it, and I think the one thing they are doing that is like the 90s is trying to lock up the young core of players that people can identify with. Guys like Kipnis, Gomes, Brantley...they have yet to shed the "well, that guy is good, he'll be playing for the Yankees in 2 years" label, and they may never do it fully. I agree about the perfect storm of the 90s, but I also don't think they will ever recover from trading back-to-back Cy Young winners in back-to-back seasons. After that, people rightly asked...why SHOULD this be a baseball town? But I think they are trying, with the couple or three FAs (Swisher and Bourn, maybe Murphy) and locking up the core. If they can keep Santana, Kipnis, Brantley, Gomes, Bourn, and Swisher together for 5-6 years, and sprinkle in Lindorand maybe a 3B since Chis is a bust...then they've done all they can so, at least position player-wise. Locking up Masterson would be a big coup, but I doubt they'll do it. Still, they have a young nucleus of Kluber, McCallister, Salazar, Tomlin, and Carrasco...how many of those guys pan out will go a long way towards getting at least more people to care some. GOne are the days of sellouts, but there is no reason that a crowd of 25k shouldn't be expected instead of one of 15k or less.
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HOLYBUCKEYE10
Heir to Mike80's will soon! YAY!
Yeah I never expect it to be like it was then, but I also never expect to see an Indians team as talented as the ones from 1995-2001 either. That being said, this team is a playoff team. Look at Pittsburgh, they are a football town too, yet their attendance so far has been around 22-25k a home game. I see no reason why we shouldn't have around 18k a game at least. Over average not counting opening day is about 11,000, and honestly I don't think it truly is that much because even the 14k and 13k attendance figures from Sat and Sun seem to be higher than the true attendance was.
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Pittsburgh is seeing a revival because they're finally competitive after two decades of dreadful baeball. They'll see an attendance spike for a year or two, then it will probably level back off. Tribe fans ar still jaded from watching guys like Sabathia, Lee, V-Mart, etc dealt after their last good run with little return. It's hard to get too invested in the team when the perception, right or wrong, is that anybody that comes around worth a damn will eventually be dealt as they near FA.
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HOLYBUCKEYE10
Heir to Mike80's will soon! YAY!
Not too far off either. Seems like we are the farm system for other teams anymore. We get good, build up some young players, compete for a year or two, sell them off and start over again.
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I tend to agree... I was the biggest baseball fan one can be growing up. But after the 90s team fell apart and I got out of college I just couldn't follow it as much. I still love baeball but the world is too fast to handle the pace of the greatest game there is.
But I wonder if times will change. Will football devour itself in the concussion debate, and in the end will the youth go back to baseball if youth football dies? The reason baseball was so popular was that everyone played it growing up. But how often do neighborhood kids gather together to play baseball anymore? Heck... do parents even let that happen anymore? Maybe that is the reason the youth of today don't love baseball... they didn't have sandlot games and such to fall back on?
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And I am one of the few that defends Dolan. But they did the same thing with VMart, CC and Lee... the problem was they couldn't get a team around them fast enough and by the time they started winning those 2nd contracts came due and the big money was comming after them. The same will happen in 4-5 years when this group ends these contracts they currently sign. The only time they won't leave is if they are like Hafner or Sizemore and everyone can't wait til we stop paying them. But that is the life cycle of small/mid market baseball teams. We can keep them til they are 28-30... but after that, they becomes too expensive.
The one legitimate problem I can see with Dolan/Shapiro is they have been HORRIBLE drafting. And that is killer for small/mid market teams.
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Well there inlies why it has been such a disaster for players to walk when they're 28-30. The drafting needs to improve immeasurably for any sustained success. There have to be 4-5 Lindors in the pipeline, not 1 at a time, and we need some home-grown pitchers, not just Kazmaier/Davies type reclamation projects and AAAA starters. If you have 4-5 position players and 1-2 starters locked up at any one time, and you have 2-3 position prospects (real ones, not LaPorta/Marte/Chisenhall types) and 1-2 starters making their way up, then you have something. We haven't had that though.
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I'll say this too, people thought baseball would become hockey after the steroid era and the strike...but it hasn't. There aren't as many fans, but they are different types of fans. Fans that appreciate the nuances of the game, the matchups and WAR and advanced stats and bunts and all that...in addition to home runs. It's much like soccer, some people hate it...but there are legions who love it because it is just a totally different type of game and pace than football or basketball. Different type of athlete as well. I personally have become much more of a baseball fan as I have gotten older and because the steroid era ended. I like baseball like it was in the 80s. This is as close to that as we'll get back to.
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McAllister was a wrecking ball today...boy did we badly need that. Allen strikes out a batter, and we are an inning away from a shutout.
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Excellent outing by McAllister, AXFORD closes it out and the tribe take game 1 of the DH 2-0
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