Jim Ingraham: Winning comes at a cost the Guardians are obviously unwilling to pay

So what we have here is failure to clobber the old baseball. That's what's going on when the Cleveland Baseball Guardians take the field in hopes of winning that day's game. To do so — as we also all know — the hitters are frequently required to hit 'em where they ain't. That means hitting a screaming line drive down the left-field line, into the gaps in left-center or right-center or, better yet, hitting one where the opposing team's outfielders literally ain't, which is completely out of the old ballyard. History tells us that Guardians hitters don't do that very often. Nobody seems to know why, although I have a couple theories on that subject. One of them is this: Guardians hitters don't hit many home runs because many Guardians hitters can't. You heard it here first. That's right. It's as simple as that. All of us have things that we wish we could do but can't. Take me, for example. I always wished I could play the drums, but I can't. That's probably because I don't have any drums. My guess is that the Guardians frequently have trouble winning games because they have trouble hitting home runs. Don't blame them. Blame their genetics and their roster. Ideally, of course, you would like to see your team hit lots and lots of home runs. You know, like Aaron Judge. I've done some research on this topic, and here is what I found: Judge doesn't play for the Guardians. That's too bad for the Guardians, because they don't hit a lot of home runs, but Judge does. Judge is really good at hitting home runs. The Guardians are really not — most of the Guardians, at least. The Guardians are 10th in the league in home runs. That's not awful, but it's also not Judge territory. Historically, the Guardians have never seemed to be enraptured by the thrill of the home run. Back in the 1990s, all the Cleveland Indians thought about was hitting home runs. So they did. They hit a lot of them and they won a lot of games. They eventually stopped hitting home runs and stopped winning games. The fans, naturally, stopped coming to the ballpark. When the fans stopped coming to the ballpark, the team stopped winning a lot of games because the team wasn't going to the World Series every other year. That led to a decrease in revenue, which led to some losing seasons because the team could no longer afford to sign players to big contracts. That's pretty much where we and they are now: trying to make the best out of some meager payrolls and some unimposing rosters. Great managing can cover a lot of deficiencies, and that's exactly what happened for the 11 years Terry Francona was driving the bus. The team was more impressive than the sum of its parts. Francona stuck around so long that the norm became the norm and, in due time, that meant scouting and signing an endless parade of middle infielders, all in the name of economic conservatism. You can still win that way, but the winning doesn't come easy because the consistently diminished payroll prevents it. Every few years or so you might catch lightning in a bottle, and the Indians did exactly that in the peak Tito years. One could even make the argument that the franchise flourished in those years thanks to a hall of fame-caliber manager and a whiz-bang front office — most of it still intact — with a magical knack for finding usable rocks in hard places. All of that was well and good, but well and good isn't forever. Welcome to not bad, but let's try this. Sigh. It all comes down to the money, of course. It always does, and Jose is the only one who won that battle. How much do you have? How much are you willing to spend? How bad do you want to win? The answers to those questions have revealed themselves — for better or for worse — through the last few years, and it hasn't always been a pretty sight. The only opinion that counts, unfortunately, seems to have come down on the side of "Let's try this." How much winning can be done before the losing starts? Tito is in the other league now, so you are on your own, which history tells us is not a comforting thought. Nor is the return of the chillingly economic mindset in which "How much?" carries more weight than "How good?" Put all the lights and all the bells and all the whistles into the ballpark makeover, but winning is what matters most. Winning and only winning. Winning doesn't come easy, and neither does the mindset that produces it. Nobody knows that better than the customers who have waited and waited and waited. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com and follow him @Jim_Ingraham on X.