After watching the Indians lose to the Reds this weekend in the most lifeless fashion I have seen in quite a while, I have become fascinated with what has gone with Cleveland.  Just from watching, I felt like Eric Wedge has lost the ability to motivate these guys, maybe that happened earlier, I am just now seeing it first hand though.  So perhaps it is time for a new voice in Cleveland, but that cannot be the only problem.  On paper the Indians look good, so good last year that Buster Olney picked them to win the World Series.  I thought they would put up a good show this season from what I saw during the spring.  And yet they haven’t.  I went looking for the answer.

What I found was an extremely interesting post from Jay over at Lets Go Tribe.  Jay goes through all the various factors that could lead to the poor performance of the Indians.  The first, maybe the members of the front office are just bloggers, is a personal favorite- I mean if you don’t know more than us, than why are you in charge?  If you can’t find some information the average guy or girl can find in a few hours on the internet than really, why should you be running the team?  Which leads to one of Jay’s other points, is the Indians scouting.  If all the information is there from a statistical point of view, and every team has the same numerical information the only thing that can make a difference is the scouting.  And the Indians are not out-scouting anyone.

The last few years teams looking to improve their front office have consistently looked to the members of the Indians organization.  I know folks in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Colorado that originally came from the Cleveland front office.  Perhaps those other clubs have picked the Cleveland club dry, or perhaps those other clubs now have the same tools the Indians have and are just better at playing the same game.

Jay makes another strong point about the Indians front office looking for one type of player.  If you aren’t that type, then you have to move on.  I’m not entirely sure that is true- it would take more than one mornings investigation of this on my part, but I will agree that you can’t just have one type of player. If you could, then there really would only be one type.  You need to have hard-throwers, and easier-throwers who mix their pitches.  You need to have guys that can hurt you with their speed, their bat and their glove.  You rarely are going to find all three- though Grady Sizemore sure fits that bill.

Again, the front office might now be filled with one voice, perhaps the dissenting voices have left for better positions. Perhaps without noticing the Indians front office has become filled with one perspective, and that is clouding their vision.

Jay uses the Churchill quote “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”  I want to add to that the Sherlock Holmes quote, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

Jay puts a lot out on the table.  All relevant. Perhaps the great test would be to use Jays points to evaluate the successful clubs. Do they have dissenting points of view?  Do they have strong statistical understanding, and strong scouting or just one of the two? Do they have scouts who find one kind of player or talent in many different forms?

Ask yourself that about your team, and share your thoughts in the comment section below.