Cleveland Guardians’ Chris Antonetti Faces His Biggest Challenge Yet

By now Chris Antonetti knows the drill. Now in his 23^rd year with the Cleveland Guardians, the last seven as President of Baseball Operations, and the five before that as Executive Vice President and General Manager, Antonetti has been around the baseball block in Cleveland in both good times and bad times.

These times? These are neither good nor bad.

These are hard times.

Being the top baseball decision maker for a financially-challenged major league team during a pandemic is nobody’s idea of a good time. But the Guardians’ Mr. Roll with the Punches never met a scenario he couldn’t out-finesse.

While Cleveland’s baseball fans continue to roil and boil over the lack of activity by the hometown team, which had the lowest payroll in baseball last year, and, not coincidentally, its first losing season in nine years, the unflappable Antonetti still sees the glass as half full.

“We’re in a position right now financially to add for 2022. So that’s not a limiting factor for us right now,” he said.

Maybe not, but it’s a disturbing factor to Guardians fans, and others around baseball who interpret Cleveland’s do-nothing offseason as an admission that the team is either unable or unwilling to compete.

“I probably shouldn’t be in the chair I’m in if I was going to be too sensitive to criticism,” said consummate team player Antonetti. “I’m guessing if I asked you what our payroll was in 2016, no one cares. What they remember is we played in Game 7 of the World Series. Our goal is to figure out how to win that last game.”

The perception of Antonetti throughout the game is that he’s a patient, consistent highly-intelligent executive who has had opportunities to pursue positions with other freer-spending teams, but chooses to stay with the financially-conservative Guardians, under owner Paul Dolan.

Indeed, it is Dolan, not Antonetti, who is the target of fan backlash over the Guardians’ failure to improve the team either through trades or free agent signings.

The biggest news the Guardians made over the winter was to add an unheard-of 11 minor league players to their 40-man major-league roster.

“We did explore a number of things in our approach to free agency and trades, but we weren’t going to make a transaction just to make a transaction,” Antonetti said. “We didn’t want to put obstacles in front of some of our young players who we feel will be able to contribute this year.”

Skeptics would translate that into: “We didn’t want to spend big money on proven major league players, even if they helped make the team better.” Such is life as the top baseball decision maker for a financially challenged major league team.

Antonetti and Guardians manager Terry Francona are both considered at or near the top of their field. Where others of their ilk might be inclined to pursue positions with other more financially ambitious teams, the Guardians’ two most important non-players remain comfortably ensconced in a work environment they both regularly praise.

“Each market has its own challenges,” Antonetti said. “Our job is to figure out how to overcome those challenges.”

Cleveland does have an outstanding pitching staff, starting with a rotation led by former Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber, plus Aaron Civale, Zach Plesac, Cal Quantrill, Triston McKenzie, and a top closer in Emmanuel Clase.

But pitchers don’t hit, and last year the Guardians hitters didn’t hit. At one point Cleveland got no-hit by opposing pitchers twice in the span of 16 games. Most of that same group of hitters are back this year, which is not exactly a good thing.

According to Antonetti, the Indians did pursue a group of targeted players. “But more often than not they didn’t end up here,” he said. “On that level I can be disappointed. But that doesn’t take away from the excitement we have for the group of players we have. There have been times in the past where we didn’t have those options to turn to internally, and therefore our net was a little bit wider and we would have taken most anyone to fill a spot. We don’t feel like we’re at that point.”

Where the Guardians are at this point is a pitching-dominant team with an offensively-challenged lineup. If Francona can smoke-and-mirrors-it to contention at the trade deadline, the ball will be in Dolan’s court on whether he finances the pursuit of a position player difference maker.

Said Antonetti: “I can’t think of a time where, when we’ve been in a competitive position at the trade deadline, if there’s been an option for us to improve the team – finances haven’t been an obstacle.”

Can Cleveland get to the trade deadline still in contention?

“We’re counting on some young players. We need guys to take advantage of the opportunity that is in front of them,” Antonetti said. “To the extent that they are able to do that, it could make for an exciting year.”