Jim Ingraham: Complaints down, expectations up for Guardians

One week from today is opening day for the reigning American League Central Division champion Guardians. It will take place 2,391 miles from Cleveland. Ironically, that's roughly how far most MLB handicappers predicted the Guardians would finish out of first place last season. Those silly handicappers! We all know how that turned out. We also know that not many Guardians fans will show up a week from today in Seattle, which is about as far from Cleveland as you can go and still be in the United States except for Alaska and Hawaii. Seattle is also where, 28 years ago, inside a drafty cinder block domed stadium that no longer exists, the Guardians won their first American League pennant in 41 years. Since then they have made 13 trips to the postseason — 11 as Central Division champions and three as World Series participants. However, the most unlikely of those 13 trips by far was last year's out-of-nowhere thrill show, when the youngest, cheapest-payroll band of baseball bandits shocked the baseball world by not only winning its division but coming within one win of reaching the AL Championship Series. Exactly nobody saw that coming, and those same nobodies have been clamoring for the start of the 2023 season ever since. Last year proved that anything is possible with the right mix of baseball gym rats under the direction of a future hall of fame manager. This year the gang's all back, so gangway! Talk about what a difference a year makes. A year ago at this time the Guardians (Kidians?) were nearing opening day following a do-nothing offseason their first losing season in the Terry Francona era. Payroll archeologists struggled to find Cleveland's puny payroll, and expectations for the coming season were duly adjusted, the consensus being somewhere between futile and forlorn. Then 2022 happened. The Gobsmacked Season. Terry Francona's Mona Lisa. Nobody saw it coming and, consequently, nobody wanted to let it go. What a ride it was. It was a season that belongs in a museum. The majors' cheapest, youngest, hungriest, feistiest band of hardball harassers wouldn't quit until the other team did. But it was more than just an on-the-field masterpiece. It was a master class in organizational efficiency. In a season in which they spent less money than almost any team in the majors, the Guardians went farther into the postseason than almost any team in the tournament. They didn't win it, but history tells us they went farther than they had any business going. In doing so, it reset the parameters for this season. During the winter of 2021-22, the Guardians broke all the so-called rules for contention. While most of the other teams spent most of the winter trying to assemble the best team money could buy, the Guardians did it their way and, in so doing, they had their cake and ate it, too. The Guardians outspent nobody but they outplayed almost everybody. That's not the way it's supposed to work, but those daring rules breakers in Cleveland gambled on taking the road less traveled ... and it worked. As a result, this winter was a far quieter one compared to the same fan base and media critics (guilty, your honor!) who a year ago were demanding some tangible proof that Cleveland's American League Baseball Club was trying to make the team better. The organization's higher-ups ignored those pleas, and the team got better anyway. Way better. So much better that a relatively quiet offseason this past winter was greeted not with howls of protest but with a respectful, "they know what they're doing" acknowledgement. This is another reason that last season was a seminal moment in the history of the franchise. Unable financially to compete with the bigger market teams with their ballooning payrolls, the Guardians did it their way and achieved the same outcome — a formidable playoff qualifier — achieved by their wildly-spending competitors. The community rancor and outrage by the lack of action the winter before disappeared this winter thanks to a 2022 season that belongs in a museum. Can the Guardians do it again this year? If you saw them play last season, their success was not a fluke. They don't have the wiggle room of the big-spending, big-market teams, but there is more than one way to backdoor your way into the postseason. The way the Guardians did it last year is harder, but by doing so they proved a couple points. The first is you don't necessarily have to be the biggest spenders in the sport to have the most success. The second is if you're not going to spend big, your scouting and player development departments better be elite and your minor league system bountiful. The Guardians last year checked all those boxes. That led to another quiet winter. No Guardians fans complained. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com.