It's A Crime That Frankie Lindor Won't Finish His Career In Cleveland
The Indians are telling clubs interested in trading for Lindor that they want each team’s best and final offers so they can make an assessment over the weekend.
The request by the Indians does not mean a trade of Lindor is certain. But clearly, the Indians are seriously considering moving their four-time All-Star shortstop, who is under club control for two more seasons and projected by MLBTradeRumors.com to earn $16.7 million in arbitration in 2020.
Frankie Lindor is one of the very best players in baseball. There are only a handful of hitters in baseball I’d pay to watch, but he’s absolutely on that short list, at least for me. Most of my list is composed of pitchers because they’re constantly in the action, but that’s beside the point. Lindor, Trout, Betts, Bregman, Yelich, Judge, Bellinger and a few others and that’s it. Yoan Moncada will also be on this list sooner than later.
The thing about Lindor is that it *should* be hard for me to do anything but hate him. I dislike the Cleveland Indians for what the did to me throughout the 90s and in the 2016 World Series, but he’s just so goddamn likable it’s impossible. I mean look at his goddamn smile!!!
Oh, and did I mention he’s a stud yet? Because he is. A switch hitting/power/speed/on base/defensive wizard stud. And it is a crime against humanity that the Indians are even thinking about trading him right now.
The AL Central is trashola. Awful. Foul. Grotesque. And the Indians should absolutely still be trying to win a World Series. But… they’re not. They’re trading everyone from their core. Bauer was dealt, Kluber was dealt, Andrew Miller is gone, and it looks like Lindor is being shipped out soon too. How do Indians fans sleep at night? I’m kinda throwing stones in glass houses here, but life has to be fucking miserable if you’re a Tribe fan and at one point being *so* close, yet so far… and especially considering their owner has tossed around quotes like this regarding his superstar short stop’s future in free agency:
[regarding signing a player to a $300MM+ extension] “The day when we do a deal like that is when somebody else is doing $1-billion deals with somebody else,” Dolan told Zack Meisel of The Athletic. “(I hope fans) enjoy him,” Dolan said of Lindor. “We control him for three more years. Enjoy him and then we’ll see what happens.”
Lindor *should* be a franchise player, but he won’t be. He’ll be drafted and developed by one team while getting paid for his stardom by another. It’s sad that that’s the way it is. Another issue I have is that the Indians front office is one of the best in baseball IMO. Mike Chernoff and his team can extract value out of a pile of shit, but he’s hamstrung by money.
It’ll be nice not having to deal with him on the Tribe while the Sox contention window is “open” but at the same time it sucks as baseball fans that we’re not going to get like 5+ years of Yoan Moncada and Frankie Lindor battling it out for the AL Central title. If the Dolans ever win an NBA or MLB championship there is no god.