royal_k;732235 wrote:It is a combimation of bad drafts and bad trades that have sent this team to the point of where it's at now.
And...I'd guess you'd call it bad luck. Small market teams tend to have to not waste much of what money they put into players if they want to be successful. In the past couple of years, the most highly-paid guys on Cleveland have been:
Sizemore: injury-prone and ineffective.
Hafner: injury-prone and has suffered a major power outage in recent years.
Westbrook (before traded to St. Louis): injury-prone and never really moved above #3 starter level.
That's just a killer when the few players that a small-market team is shelling out the cash for wind up being disappointments. You couldn't predict it when they got the contracts. Sizemore was a perennial all-star in the making, Hafner could mail in 40/100 lines and Westbrook had the potential to be an upper-rotation starter for years.