Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I think this front office has done a whole heck of a lot here the last few years, especially with limited funds, and much of it is behind the scenes. I like the job Antonetti has done here as GM-- he's kind of had to clean up after the mess Shapiro left for him and it takes time to build that momentum. We were an organization way behind the times and now we're an industry leader in some regards and on the cutting edge of the baseball revolution.
This front office has turned a small market organization with no player development program to speak of (which made any success unsustainable), and bleeding cash, into a new, cost-effective player personnel system that is finally producing big leaguers in a variety of different ways. It sucks people expect this team to dominate the league like the late 90's and early 2000's but it's a totally unrealistic expectation. The landscape of the MLB has completely changed since then, which makes it an unrealistic expectation, but we're heading into a time where we should be serious contenders for the next few years. We have a nice window here....
This front office has totally revamped the amateur scouting department by hiring well respected writers like Clint Longenecker, Conor Glassey, Matt Forman and Mike Kanen from Baseball America. At the time, they were risky, outside-the-box hires but it's shown tremendous results recently. They've set up one of the deepest and most innovative analytic departments in all of sports-- seriously NHL and NFL teams are hiring people from the Indians analytic department without any experience in those sports. People are really studying how the Indians are training/developing their pitchers now too once they hired Eric Binder from the Texas Baseball Ranch to create a pitching development program, which is run by Derek Falvey, who many expect to be a future GM.
Unfortunately, sometimes the final on-field product can be a little misleading based on the support ownership gives them and that hasn't always been great here with the Dolan's. Respect is earned in professional sports and people seem to have taken notice of the job Shapiro, Antonetti, Chernoff and Falvey have done here. I'm not saying they're perfect but, for me, they've done more than "not much". I'm okay with Shapiro leaving because he's mostly a business guy these days, but I think Antonetti would be a greater loss-- he's been driving the changes within the Baseball Ops team and I would prefer for him to see it through... just my opinion though.
