The Man Behind The Tribe's Success

It's August 10th and the Cleveland Indians hold a 3.5 game lead over second place Detroit in the American League Central. The Tribe has lived up to expectations this season after falling flat in 2015 when Sports Illustrated tabbed the Indians the team to beat in the World Series.

Manager Terry Francona has played a vital role in the club having sky high expectations the past few seasons. After all, he did help Boston end the "Curse of the Bambino" back in 2004. Widely regarded as one of the best skippers in baseball, Francona brings expectations with him wherever he coaches. The other reason for the expectations is the talented roster that has been assembled in Cleveland in recent years and no one has had more to do with building the foundation than President of Baseball Operations Chris Antonetti.

Antonetti began working with the Indians in 1999 when he was an assistant to the baseball operations staff. He has been with the organization ever since, steadily climbing the latter to become the most powerful man in the room. Before being named president of the organization at the end of the 2015 season, Antonetti served as the Executive Vice President and General Manager since the conclusion of the 2010 campaign, following back-to-back 90-loss seasons.

He has essentially been the one calling the shots when it comes to player personnel and baseball operations for the last five years. Since that time, the Tribe has had only one season with 90 or more losses, and Antonetti has been the man with the plan when it comes to building and maintaining the roster.

He took over the drafting for the club in 2011 at a time where the organization's farm system was viewed as one of the weakest in baseball. The first selection he made in a draft was a young shortstop by the name of Francisco Lindor. In the next three drafts, the team selected Tyler Naquin, Clint Frazier and Bradley Zimmer with their first picks.

Two of those players have played a substantial role in the Tribe's success this year (Lindor and Naquin), one was used to acquire Andrew Miller (Frazier), and one is knocking on the door to get the call when the rosters expand in September (Zimmer).

It hasn't only been the first round where the Indians have drafted well in over the past six years. Even after the trade of their #1 prospect (Fraizer), the Indians still have five of the top-100 prospects according to MLB Pipeline and Baseball America.

The depth of the farm system allowed the Indians to be major buyers at the deadline for the first time in recent memory. With the team poised to make a run in October, Antonetti and General Manager Mike Chernoff were not afraid to use those assets to improve the big league roster, something the previous shot caller in town was not known to do during his tenure with the Indians.

Quickly on Mark Shapiro.

No, he wasn't the best talent-evaluator. Yes, he rarely made trades to make the roster better due to over-valuing the organization's own talent in the farm system.

But what he did was connect the organization throughout the community and interact with different groups to make a positive impact for the Indians and Major League Baseball around Cleveland.

Along with his community outreach, Shapiro played an immense roll in the development of Antonetti. The two worked hand in hand when it came to personnel decisions and Shapiro really valued Antonetti from a decision making and player evaluation standpoint, as shown by his decision to promote Antonetti to the GM role at just 36 years old.

Shapiro is one of the most respected men in all of baseball and at the end of last season (when Antonetti took over as president in Cleveland) he was named the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Toronto Blue Jays. Going from President of one MLB organization to another shows just how much respect Shapiro has in the game.

So much so that his name was even brought up as a potential replacement for Bud Selig when he stepped down before Rob Manfred was named the new Commissioner of Major League Baseball in 2015. Shapiro is a top of the line individual and did nothing but great things for the Indians organization. However, when it comes to making decisions on the field, Antonetti is head and shoulders above his former-boss.

Back to Antonetti.

Not only has Antonetti been more aggressive in the farm system, but with a little help from the Dolans, he's been able to explore free agency when the time and money is right. Thanks to the failures of Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher back in 2012, the days of signing big name free agent to extended contracts aren't coming back anytime soon.

What's great about the current roster is that it looks to be at a point where the team can compete by bringing in players on one-year deals to fill in voids season to season. Ideally that's not really how teams want to build a roster and the Indians may have just gotten extremely lucky picking up Rajai Davis and Mike Napoli for a combined $12 million in the off-season, but it's highly unlikely that the organization is offering a player four years, $60+ mil. in the near future. The trend of one-year free agency contracts is likely to continue and this year Anontetti and company struck gold.

Anonetti has also been extremely aggressive when it comes to locking up the talent they have developed. He and the club have rewarded players like Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco and Jason Kipnis with lengthy contract extensions to keep a solid core in place. The whole starting pitching staff is under team control through 2019. Kipnis, Lindor, Naquin, Jose Ramirez, Cody Allen and Yan Gomes aren't going anywhere anytime soon barring unforeseen circumstances.

Zimmer and 3B/OF Yandy Diaz (both in Columbus) could be ready to make an impact for the big league club as soon as next year. A plethora of prospects are steadily making their way up the system, some at a rapid pace.

Every organization in baseball strives to put together a team that can get deep into October and make a run. At the end of the day, the people who construct the team can only do so much and once the season starts, it's up to those players the team believes in to go out and perform.

Those players have played as great as anyone could have expected up to this point and there is a ton of praise to be distributed on the field, but when it comes to the moves behind the scenes, one thing is for certain: no one in the front office deserves more credit than Antonetti.