Can the Indians really not afford Francisco Lindor?
Are the Indians really in a position where it is impossible to keep Francisco Lindor?
The Cleveland Indians are in a weird position this offseason. It is an open secret that Francisco Lindor is likely to be traded even though he has one year of team control remaining.
The Boston Red Sox had a similar situation with Mookie Betts last offseason and the result was him being shipped to the Los Angeles Dodgers, only to build his star even more. The difference is the Red Sox wanted to take a year to cut spending and balance the checkbook, so to speak. Indians ownership is claiming they physically cannot pay Lindor a deal worth over $300 million.
Indians cry poor in Francisco Lindor negotiations
The Indians stake to the claim of being a small-market team. The largest contract the team has ever handed out was the three-year, $60 million deal for Edwin Encarnacion a few years back. So the narrative exists of something like a 10-year, $350 million being impossible.
There are two trains of thought when it comes to such a deal. One is the player deserves the money and the other is it that the team would make a bad business decision considering that deal will mature as the player falls out of their prime. Such as what happened with Albert Pujols, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, and so on.
But the Indians are not making that claim. They are indicating the money is not there. Let’s assume revenues get back to normal in 2022 and teams are at least not making drastic cuts around the league.
The highest contract value on the team in 2021 is the $20.8 million owed to Carlos Santana. However, Lindor should exceed that by a lot once the arbitration process begins.
At the moment, the Indians have just over $89 million on the books for 2021 before arbitration deals. Giving Lindor $30-35 million annually appears possible if most of the roster is young and in the early stages of arbitration.
Even keeping the payroll at $100 million with Lindor taking up one-third would not be impossible. Jose Ramirez is under an insanely team-friendly deal and the Indians have proven to be a pitching factory where young talent never stops developing. Lucrative short-term deals like the one for Santana could be avoided and the Indians could still sign mid-level free agents. The team did that with Cesar Hernandez this past offseason.
One quick note too is that it is hard to gauge whether a billionaire ownership “can’t” pay someone. But that is a larger discussion.
The Indians front office has proven to work well with the limited budget. Having sustained success may tell ownership they can still compete for a World Series without spending so much money on one player.
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Owners are lying if they say it is impossible to pay one player around $30 million annually. The goal in any business is to turn a profit and this is nothing new to Indians fans who have seen several stars shipped away for prospects in return. The hauls have been great in the past and the evidence is there for ownership to do the same with Lindor.