CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The addition of David Blitzer and his investment group as minority owners of the Cleveland Guardians has been heralded as a financial shot in the arm for a franchise strapped for cash.
But don’t expect it to change how the Guardians run baseball operations.
“I wouldn’t expect our operating philosophy to change,” Guardians general manager Mike Chernoff said Thursday morning prior to the team’s series finale with the Twins. “The industry economic model is what it is and so we know what our challenges are being a small market. We don’t shy away from those at all.
“We’re not expecting that to change in any way, and yet we still need to compete with all 29 other teams and our goal is exactly the same as every one of those other teams, to win the World Series.”
According to Spotrac.com, the Guardians have the third-lowest payroll in baseball at just under $61 million, ahead of only Oakland ($42.5 million) and Baltimore ($32.5 million).
Chernoff is most excited for majority owner Paul Dolan to be able to add someone with Blitzer’s diverse levels of expertise stemming from various business ventures and ownership stakes in The NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, NHL’s New Jersey Devils, Real Salt Lake of Major League soccer and numerous international clubs.
“He brings a lot of expertise in other sports and other areas,” Chernoff said. “We’ve already started to tap into that, just in conversations and we’re excited to grow some of those partnerships.”
Blitzer’s greatest impact could be in marketing of the club.
Despite an offseason rebrand and fielding a young, exciting, competitive team, the Guardians continue to struggle to sell tickets, ranking 26th out of 30 teams and averaging 15,440 fans per home game.
“I think that can be a huge factor,” Chernoff said. “We often get kind of tunnel vision in baseball, like ‘This is the way it’s done.’ It can be helpful to see other industries or other sports that teams are doing things differently on the business side or in the sports operations side and it can kind of open up your mind to creative ideas, potentially.”
Unlike some teams that completely bottom out and rebuild the entire minor league system as well as the major league club which can take years, the Guardians, who are amid their own retool or rebuild, have managed to remain competitive while not bottoming out in the standings.
Despite fielding the youngest team in baseball, Cleveland finds themselves just two games out of first place entering play Thursday.
“That’s our goal. It’s not easy,” Chernoff said. “We have to make hard decisions like the Clevinger trade. It was an incredibly challenging decision. We’ve made those consistently and we’re willing to make those hard decisions, which in our minds is a huge credit to Paul as an owner, to be willing to face what might be deemed short term pain for the sustainability of the future.
“I think more importantly than anything, we have to do things differently. Right? We have to be a little bit better than every other team in every single area of our operation via people who are passionate and committed to trying to do that. We have to know that we have to catch some breaks along the way so every day that we’re here we’re thinking about how we could be a little bit better than the competition or do something a little bit differently that puts us in a different spot so we can compete despite whatever those resource constraints are.”