Short-sighted isn’t the right description of it. I’d agree short-sighted if they made panic moves after missing their 1a and 1B targets that potentially hamstring them down the road, a la Swisher and Bourn.
They liked 2 ideas. Grabbing sure fire things that make the lineup or bullpen considerably better with meat on the bone for team control to either move them again to recoup prospects or look into extending once they see the new cash flow system after a season and what that looks like.
It was either that or what you’re experiencing now. That was always the “fall back”. Wasn’t like if they didn’t land Olson they were going to go out and sign Rizzo, or if they didn’t land Winker they were going to go out and sign Schwarber. That’s just not realistic for the constraints in place.
The line they flirted with is they were sure they were going to get at least 1 of Olson or Winker, if not both, heading into the lockout and ended up with none and their 2 paths are extreme opposites of each other. Both make sense from an operational standpoint when you’re trying to shoehorn a contending team out of a young roster, either now or in the future. Both are satisfactory outcomes for them, operationally, as they are quite high on a number of their young guys knocking on the door.
But both have completely different effects and are wildly different when viewed from a fan perspective. One shows they’re trying to win now to fans, the other tells them they don’t care about competing (not true, but understandably so). There will always be a disconnect between how front offices view team building and fans view team building. Their 2 outcomes just so happen to be an extreme polar opposite of each other, which had them playing with fire when it came to the fan aspect of things and expectations from fans.
Short-sighted isn’t the description I’d use. I’m not sure what description I’d use, to be honest, but not short-sighted.
es.pn
