The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Beware: Indians could be leaving
Tribe may have new name and new venue other than Cleveland after 2023 if team sells
The Larry Dolan family bought the Cleveland Indians for $323 million in 2000. For years, fans have pounded the table calling for Paul Dolan to sell the team to a billionaire that can re-sign his own players and land big fish in free agency.
Those fans might get their wish, but not in the way they want it to happen.
Before writing this column, a request was made to interview Paul Dolan “about the future of the Indians in Cleveland,” specifically regarding “the lease expiring at Progressive Field in two years and similar matters.” The request drew this response from an Indians spokesman: “Thanks for the inquiry, but Paul isn’t able to talk on those topics at this point.”
Each of these “steps” to legitimize selling the Indians has happened in recent years, including dragging out the name change.
If I wanted to unload a baseball team I owned and do it with a clear conscience, this is what I would do:
• I would announce my team loses money every year.
• I would trade away my star players because I can’t afford to keep them.
• With fewer and fewer noteworthy players to attract fans, I would count on dwindling attendance, which would add credence to my claim I was losing money. Then I could blame the fans not buying tickets as the reason I had to sell the team.
In March of 2019, Dolan angered fans when, in a rare interview, he told Zach Meisel of The Athletic: “Enjoy (Francisco Lindor). We control him for three more years. Enjoy him, and then we’ll see what happens.”
What if, in the back of his mind, Dolan was really thinking, “Enjoy the Indians while you can and then we’ll see what happens.”?
There are more steps I would take if I owned the Indians and concluded selling them would be the only way to stop losing money:
• I would keep any talks about extending my stadium’s lease that expires in 2023 a mystery.
• I would keep cutting payroll until barely any meat is left on the bone to make it more affordable to an out-of-town buyer, who could instantly become a hero to whatever city he moves the team to by promising to pour money into it.
• I would announce on July 4, 2020, it is time to discuss changing the name on the front of the uniform from Indians to something else. Then five months later announce, yes, we are changing the name. Then in March of 2021, I would announce the name change might not occur until 2023 because it takes so long to work out the logistics.
Forbes last month valued the Indians at $1.16 billion. If someone is going to pay that much money to buy a team then move it, the new owner would have every right to rename the Indians the Nashville Cats or Las Vegas Rustlers or whatever — sort of like the Browns being moved to Baltimore and being renamed the Ravens.
Each of these “steps” to legitimize selling the Indians has happened in recent years, including dragging out the name change.
“The reality is, we lose money almost every year, and we’ve lost a lot the last few years,” Dolan told Anthony Castrovince of MLB. com during spring training in 2019. “It’s the nature of our business. We’ve owned the team for 20 years and never taken a penny out of it. On the rare times when we make money, we reinvest it in the team.”
The 2020 season was catastrophic to the Indians and all teams because the novel coronavirus pandemic caused Major League Baseball to ban fans from all 30 ballparks. For the Indians, that meant no local TV revenue, ticket sales, concessions or parking revenue. Money from corporate sponsorship dollars was minimized.
“The reality of the finances in baseball for 2020 was the industry lost billions of dollars,” Indians president Chris Antonetti said a week after the 2020 season ended. “And as a team, we lost tens of millions of dollars, more than we expected. So that puts us in a really difficult financial position that will take us years to recover from.”
The Indians payroll reached a historic high of $142.8 million in 2018. That ranked right in the middle of MLB’s 30 teams at 15th. Three years later, the Indians’ 2021 payroll of $49,709,700 ranks dead last, according to Spotrac.com
I asked Dolan at the 2020 Greater Cleveland Sports Awards program, where he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission for his service to the community, about whether the Indians were negotiating a lease extension on Cuyahoga County-owned Progressive Field. He said negotiations were underway, but didn’t want to be quoted.
Dolan appeared on WTAM’s “Wills and Snyder in the Morning” on April 5 to mark the Indians home opener. Mike Snyder asked Dolan about negotiations to extend the current lease. Dolan gave basically the same answer he gave me 16 months ago.
“We’re in them and everybody is working hard to get us a satisfactory result,” Dolan said, adding the goal is to get a long-term extension when prompted by Snyder.
Dolan told Snyder he is looking for a minority investor to replace John Sherman, who had a minority stake in the Indians but now owns the Kansas City Royals.
The Indians right now are difficult to watch for fans that need to see more than strikeouts by Shane Bieber to get excited. Lindor and pitcher Carlos Carrasco, another fan favorite, were traded to the Mets. Former Indian Carlos Santana got a standing ovation from Tribe fans on April 5 the first time he stepped into the batter’s box as first baseman for Kansas City. He signed with the Royals as a free agent in December.
Jordan Luplow, Jake Bauers, Yu Chang, Josh Naylor and Ben Gamel are nice guys, but no one is rushing to Progressive Field to watch them play.
All this angst would end if Dolan would come out publicly and promise the Indians aren’t going anywhere but where the schedule maker tells them to go for road games, or if a lease extension would be announced. Then fans can get back to griping about Dolan not spending enough money or pleading with him to sell the team to someone with Cleveland ties and deep pockets.
One thing is certain: If Cleveland’s baseball team is moved, it would not be like 1995 when Art Modell shocked the football world by announcing he was moving the Browns to Baltimore for the 1996 season.
No one saw Modell’s move coming. Too many signs point to the days of professional baseball in Cleveland possibly being numbered to ignore them.