Cleveland Indians name Chris Antonetti as President of Baseball Operations, Mike Chernoff as General Manager

As expected, just days after honoring outgoing President Mark Shapiro in their final game of the regular season, the Cleveland Indians have announced that they have promoted General Manager Chris Antonetti to President of Baseball Operations and promoted Assistant General Manager Mike Chernoff to General Manager. Filling Chernoff’s spot as Assistant GM will be Director of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey.

In the time since Mark Shapiro announced that he’d be leaving for Toronto, several teams have reportedly attempted to interview Mike Chernoff for their own GM vacancies. The Indians denied the requests, fueling the idea that they would be naming Chernoff as their own General Manager.

Chris Antonetti has spent the last five seasons with the Indians as the Club’s General Manager, working with Shapiro in several key acquisitions. Most notably, he orchestrated the trade that brought Ubaldo Jimenez and his one half-season of greatness over from the Colorado Rockies in 2011. It was a move that Shapiro reportedly did not agree with, but the then first-year General Manager Antonetti pulled the trigger, and it arguably played a huge part in the Tribe’s 2013-playoff run.

Chernoff and Antonetti will have a lot on their plate heading into the 2015 season, as they are tasked with fixing a team that missed the playoffs for the second straight year and stumbled into a winning record to finish the season.