[horseofcourse]

To watch the current team and to know the pain that came pouring upon Indians fans’ (particularly in that fateful week in July of 2009) is to gain some measure of respect for the Front Office realizing what needed to be done and to go about doing it. Granted the compelling reasons to make some of those trades were self-inflicted (Mike Aubrey, Jerry Sowers, Crazy Eyes Crowe, Beau Mills…you want me to keep going), but in those mid-season moves, they unquestionably have had more hits than misses and as much as the questions were flying back then (and here’s another piece from yours truly attempting to rationalize what seemed irrational back then) as to what the organization was even doing or what direction they were headed, the Indians asked themselves the hard questions, realized that there were hard answers, and didn’t shy away from what that meant.

As Chris Antonetti told Joe LeMire of SI (who was apparently on the Indians’ beat this week) in a piece that references the mysterious DiamondView system, which is the Indians’ data analysis tool for which they own
proprietary rights, the seismic shift that occurred back in July of 2009 was prompted by some logical thought, which isn’t always the most prevalent line of thinking in professional sports as Antonetti relays the situation thusly:
We started by asking the question, what’s our quickest way back to competitiveness?
We realized that we could have let a lot of those guys complete their contracts, become free agents and get draft picks back for them. We felt that it would be in our best interest to try and expedite that by getting guys who were further along in the development process.

This is all old news in these parts I know, but the Indians found themselves in a hole (self-imposed for the most part because of their drafting) back in 2009 and punted on the 2009 and 2010 seasons when they moved Lee and Vic, slamming the window shut themselves in late July of 2009. The idea was that they could vault themselves back into contention quickly with talented players at similar developmental stages, under club control for similar stretches of time, which could mature and congeal into a winning ballclub, much as the 2004/2005 had done.

At the end of last year, few would have predicted that the group of assembled talent would do much more than continue separate itself into the categories of wheat and chaff as the team would continue to take steps toward contention. Now, just two months into the 2011 season, it’s easy to see how the Indians’ Front Office set the table for this to all happen. Sure, some of it may have already been in place from previous moves (Cabrera and Choo most notably), but the Indians spun their straw into gold with moves that flew under the radar for years, adding pieces and parts that all lined up for this 2011 season to occur.

Now, with the Indians firmly in control in their division, it will be up to the Indians to remain seated at the head of the table so their fans can continue to feast in their success…