The Cleveland Indians are bad.
They might not be bad forever, but they just got swept by the Oakland Athletics and their two biggest free agent signings — Hanley Ramirez and Carlos González — are officially gone with the latter’s release on Monday.
How does the Indians’ marketing department respond? A rousing “we’ll get ‘em soon, folks”? Maybe more dad jokes? Perhaps a clever reference to everyone’s favorite television show, The Simpsons?
Maybe they’ll just turn off Instagram comments and make a big deal about it.
That’ll show ‘em. Right up until fans get fed up not being able to yell obscenities at a faceless organization, and choose to take their anger to players’ Twitter and Instagram accounts instead*. But at least the Tribe's Instagram account manager won’t have to deal with it anymore.
(*By all means, don’t do this, because it makes you an asshole — but if you have enough cognitive function to make it to this website and read an entire post, I think you’re smart enough to know that already.)
Sure, it’s meaningless — and probably only for this one post — but making it this big deal about toning out the “noise” when “noise” in this case means fans is another weird look for a team that is on the verge of getting crushed to dust by Browns fans in mere months.
Remember those Twitter avatar jersey promos for the home opener? The one you probably didn’t get because they were meant to only go to “positive” fans? Not season ticket holders, mind you. Not even just big presences on Indians Twitter, but only influencers or positive fans. Wouldn’t want to give any pointless jersey icons to those Negative Nancys who get upset at ownership for sitting on their hands and doing nothing.
Shutup and eat your hot dog and cheer. And don’t you dare comment on our Instagram pictures. We’re shutting out the noise over here. Haters beware.
Looking at some of their previous posts, maybe they didn’t get why commenters weren’t happy with a video of Jake Bauers “admiring his art” that brought the score to ...
*checks notes*
... 7-2 in the eighth inning.
I guess, in all, it’s just a sad state that the Indians are in. It’s sad that their social media team feels the need to curl up in a ball and ignore the criticisms of the team that fans are looking to express somewhere. It’s sad that Terry Francona has finally decided to embrace younger players a year too late. It’s sad that multiple players have left for nothing and had success elsewhere, while the Indians’ hitting coach refuses to change anything after seven years. It’s sad that the Indians’ only big signings in the offseason were two failed veteran lottery tickets. It’s sad that the Indians gave Danny Salazar millions of dollars, but couldn’t scrape together the money to bring back Michael Brantley, or even have the stones to give him a qualifying offer.
It’s sad, but rolling up in a ball and doing nothing is emblematic of the 2019 Indians season, so at least they’re staying on brand.
UPDATE: The comments are back on.