Tribe Talk: Shapiro's Frankenstein Of A Team Comes Back To Haunt Him

(Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images)

Welcome to Tribe Talk, where Bleacher Report's Tribe fans weigh in on the ups and downs of the Indians each week throughout the season.

This week we debate how to divvy up the blame for the season between Mark Shapiro and Eric Wedge, how Shapiro’s strategy of cobbling together a team from spare parts has backfired, and what players should and shouldn’t say to the media.

I would like to thank this week's participants Dale Thomas, Scott Miles, and Jeff Smirnoff for their contributions.

This discussion is open to all, so please feel free to comment below and pitch in your thoughts on the questions we're addressing this week.

Go Tribe!

1. The chances of Eric Wedge being fired have been discussed ad nauseum over the course of the season. A notably less popular topic is the fate of Mark Shapiro.

Most everyone agrees Wedge should be held accountable for the team's terrible performance, but is it fair that Wedge has been saddled with nearly all of the blame while Shapiro is rarely criticized?

Who do you think is more to blame, Shapiro or Wedge? If you were in charge, who would you fire: Wedge, Shapiro, or both?

Dale Thomas: Well, it was Shapiro that hired Wedge in the first place, so Shapiro is on auto-blame in my opinion. Shapiro seems to happily seek out the mediocre, whether it is players or staff, then makes small moves that have small effects. Each season, it's hard to believe (and hard to stomach) what "didn't" happen to fill the team's needs.

This is not to say that Shapiro hasn't done a few significant things, but those things tend to be outgoing moves of contributing players (Casey Blake, CC Sabathia, etc.). Then the team just moves guys around the field and plays a lot of  yo-yo between the Major and Minor Leagues.

The Indians are stuck on a hamster wheel, and BOTH guys in charge share equal dizziness. That said, the big guy should go first, then the rest follow on out the door like rats to the Shapiro'd Piper.

Samantha Bunten: Shapiro's mostly futile maneuvers to tweak the team over the years have done as much, if not more, damage to the franchise as Eric Wedge's bumbling managerial stint. He is to blame at least as much as Wedge is, and Wedge has been taking nearly all the heat for it despite the fact that he’s no more than 50 percent of the problem.

While Shapiro has made a number of slick trades with very positive outcomes for players like Sizemore, Lee, Choo, and Hafner, the drafts he has overseen have been appallingly bad and disasters outnumber successes among his free agent acquisitions.

Further, Shapiro's relentless defending of Wedge has left the two inextricably linked. Shapiro has tied his own fate to Wedge's by defending his beleaguered manager when he should not have done so. Shapiro essentially made Wedge and himself into a package deal, which means whoever goes first will likely take the other down with him.

If it were up to me I would fire them both, but the first guy I would send packing would be Shapiro. His mistakes, in my opinion, have cost the team more dearly than Wedge's, highlighted by the fact that in hiring and refusing to fire wedge, Wedge's mistakes are also in a way his own.

Scott Miles: It would have to be Mark Shapiro without a doubt. The only credit one can give to Shapiro is that he picks up a lot of these "highly touted" prospects from other teams when the Indians are going south and trading away the veterans. Players such as Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore, Travis Hafner, Asdrubal Cabrera and Shin-Soo Choo have all come in trades.

But Shapiro has, frankly, been dismal in signing free agents and in the draft, the two areas where small-to-mid market teams must excel. Numerous first round picks have turned into busts (if they've even reached the big leagues), as have acquisitions such as David Dellucci, Jason Michaels and (to a lesser extent because at least the team was good in 2007) Trot Nixon.

At this point both should go, but Wedge can only play the guys he's been given. That's directly caused by the GM.

Jeff Smirnoff: Both are equally culpable. Wedge starts slow every year and always chokes/falters/fails when there are expectations or the Indians are in a superior position. It has happened too many times to be coincidence.

It is not all his fault that some players have performed horribly but he has continued, for almost seven years, to put certain players in bad spots again and again. We see the same poor fundamentals and mistakes over and over again, and that falls on the manager.

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