CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Guardians and their partners are pouring millions into upgrading Progressive Field, but none of the changes at the ballpark are aimed at addressing the foul weather Cleveland often experiences during the early part of the season in April and May. The Browns, meanwhile, have an option on the table to build a stadium with a roof in Brook Park. Has the allure of a rugged outdoor-only facility that stands against the elements lost its lustre for Cleveland fans?
On Tuesday’s podcast, Paul Hoynes and Joe Noga discuss listener responses to the question: How would building a retractable dome in the 1990s have changed the course of baseball in Cleveland?
Listen and read along with an AI-generated transcript of the podcast below.
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Read the automated transcript of today’s podcast below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it may contain errors and misspellings.
Joe Noga (00:15):
Welcome back to another edition of the Cleveland Baseball Talk podcast. I’m Joe Noga, joined by Paul Hoynes from Arizona where he’s getting ready to watch the final exhibition game of the spring before the guardians head up to Oakland to open the season on Thursday night last night it didn’t go as planned. Hoey, they’re playing in a ballpark with a retractable roof, and yet they get to the sixth inning and it’s a rain out six, nothing. The Diamondbacks win the game. It’s called after six because basically there was nothing to stop the rain from hitting the ballpark.
Paul Hoynes (00:52):
Yeah, Joe, it was weird. The inning had just ended and it started to rain and it looked like okay, it was just a light rain for a couple minutes and then it really started to rain hard. It didn’t last long, but they don’t have a tarp there. I don’t think. They had one guy covering the mound and a couple guys covering the plate, but Lorraine was coming down pretty hard plate got stopped and Tori Lalo and Steven V met behind the plate with the crew chief, and in a matter of minutes the game was called. So it was just weird. We’re going down the elevator to talk to vote after the game, and Antonette is on the elevator and he goes a rain out in the desert in a dome state, in a dome stadium. He goes, you don’t see that very often.
Joe Noga (01:44):
Yeah, I think maybe one of the only other times that an event at that ballpark at Chase Field was canceled because of rain. They had actually had the roof open. This was years ago for a women’s college basketball game, and it started raining. And I guess the standard there at that facility is if there are people in the stands, if there are people in the seats, they can’t close the roof because there’s safety concerns because cables could snap and people could get injured. So obviously knowing that, yeah, they need to make sure they’ve got their forecasts and all that mapped out. But with the women’s college basketball game, it was raining directly on the hardwood court that was on the floor there. They couldn’t keep playing. They don’t have a tarp in a dome stadium in the desert because of those two things. It’s a dome stadium in the desert, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But yeah, it was just really weird to see checking the updates on my phone last night that postponed due to rain. I’m like, oh, well, then they’re closing the roof, right? And then you find out, no, they’re not closing the roof, they’re just canceling the game.
Paul Hoynes (02:58):
And they had decided there was so much rain came down in such a short period of time, it was too dangerous for the players to play. They didn’t want somebody slipping in the outfield or on the infield and getting hurt in the second last game of spring training. So it was a good decision, and I don’t think anyone was disappointed. The Arizona was leading six nothing, and the game was pretty much over by that time anyways.
Joe Noga (03:29):
Nobody wanted to be there playing last night. Anyhow, I think everybody’s ready to check out and be done with the exhibition season. I’m sure this afternoon’s game, if they only wanted to play seven innings, everybody would be all in favor of it, but it’s not the way it is. And so that’s the way that spring training, the penultimate game of spring training ends up. And one more. They’ve got Tristan McKenzie on the mound today. Yesterday it was Tyler Beatty and he got a little beat up, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Christian Walker hits a home run against Cleveland. Seems to be something that he’s done a lot in the past.
Paul Hoynes (04:10):
Yeah, this guy, when he sees an Indians guardian’s pitcher on the mound, I mean all he does is kind of crank it up and hit the ball of 10 miles. He hit a lead off home run in the second inning off of Beatie last night on a three, two pitch. That might be still going, but he, boy, he’s, he’s a good looking player, Joe. I mean, and we saw this what for the last couple years, whenever Arizona came to Cleveland or even when Arizona, Cleveland came to Arizona last year, I mean, he just waxed Cleveland pitching, but I think bd, I don’t know, he’s had a good spring. This was his first really shaky performance and I think he found out that he wasn’t going to be the fifth starter, and obviously that job is going to Carrasco, so perhaps that had a little bit of influence on his performance last night, but he’s going into the bullpen and we’ll see how it works from there. He pitched almost strictly out of the pen last year in Japan, so he has that kind of track record behind him.
Joe Noga (05:22):
And this just in breaking news to the Cleveland Baseball Talk podcast, getting an email from Bart Swain with the Guardians with the pitching rotation. The starters for that first series in Oakland and Hoey we’re completely wrong. We missed our prediction was wrong here. He’s not going to be the fifth starter. Carrasco is not going to be the fifth starter. He is going to be the fourth starter. Carasco is going to get that start on getaway day Sunday in Oakland, and it looks like Mackenzie will be the one to open the series in Seattle.
Paul Hoynes (05:59):
Interesting. They brought Mackenzie along slowly the whole spring. Perhaps they just want to give him an extra day. He’s starting today against the Diamondbacks a Chase field, and maybe they just want to give him as much rest as possible between starts.
Joe Noga (06:19):
Yeah, one extra day. It looks like he’s going to get on that. Shane Bieber versus Alex Wood in the opener. Logan Allen versus Ross Stripling in game two, Tanner Bibe versus JP Sears in Game three and Carlos Carrasco versus Paul Blackburn on Sunday in game four. A little Easter action for the Guardians with that 4 0 7 start. Yeah, just interesting that that’s the rotation now. So they’ve made some Muza, Tanner Bibe not going second, he’s going third. Logan Allen going second. That doesn’t really, really reflect anything on the performance in spring training or anything like that, right? That’s more just like maybe it’s a matchup thing for Vote.
Paul Hoynes (07:10):
Yeah, I think it’s very much a matchup thing. Vote always said, we hadn’t decided on the order of the rotation. You just do your simple math. And it looked like it was going to be Shane Bieber, Bobby Allen and Mackenzie, but obviously their analytics department got involved and they made some switches and the way they worked it, Joe, it seems like everybody’s going to be on full rest too, so they had some days to play with the off day on Wednesday, so I think that helped them rearrange the rotation.
Joe Noga (07:52):
Yeah, certainly they’re going to face two left-handers in that first series, Alex Wood and JP Sears in the first and third games. Not an unusual thing for this Guardian’s Club to be facing. Left-handers as many left-handers as a team can throw at them.
Paul Hoynes (08:09):
Yes, Sears pitched against them earlier this spring and did a really good job against them Wood. I think this is his first year with Oakland, so it’ll be interesting to see how he does against him, but they faced him before. So yeah, they’re going to see a steady diet of left-handers because they have such a predominantly left-handed hitting lineup.
Joe Noga (08:36):
One of the other things that we’re going to see is we’re watching more and seeing more guardians games throughout the season is the regular season gets underway. We talked about youthful mistakes and we saw a few of them last night, especially around the infield with Brian Rocchio now taking over the majority of the games at shortstop and with Tyler Freeman being out in center field, if you look from behind the plate all the way up the middle of the diamond, new guys, young guys, guys without a lot of experience in their positions expect to see maybe the ball going places where it shouldn’t. Early on
Paul Hoynes (09:16):
In the fourth inning last night, Tim Herron walked a guy but then picked him off. Alec Thomas picked him off first base, they had him in a rundown, and Rocchio threw the ball pass first base, and Thomas was able to get back to First Heron strikes out the next guy, but Corbin Carroll hits a triple and that puts him up five. Nothing puts Arizona up five, nothing. And those are the kinds of mistakes that can’t happen with a team that’s not going to score a lot. And then in the sixth inning, Kaytel, Marta hit a ball in the right center field gap, and there was almost was a slight collision between Loriano and Tyler Freeman and I think you’ve, they’ve got to get used to playing together and that’s going to take some time. And like you said, Joe, when you play youth young players, it takes time. They know what plays to make, but sometimes executing those plays is the tough part.
Joe Noga (10:22):
Well, and the big thing is I just go back to what Tito would always say is we’re okay if you make that mistake once, but learn from it and don’t do it again, that kind of thing. If you’re seeing it happen over and over again, then, but there are so many different variables with the shortstop play that one play from Rocchio. You might not see it again, but he still might be in another situation where the ball doesn’t end up where it needs to be, and that starts to be a problem. But again, we are pretty confident that we’ve seen some pretty good defense out of Brian Rocchio in the past, so we will see how that goes. And it also extends to base running. I saw an interview with Sandy Alamar and it’s not necessarily always getting picked off or thrown out stealing. It’s also live ball base running mistakes and overrunning bases or taken off when you’re not supposed to or not making sure that the ball got down on the grass before you take off for the next base, things like that. Expect to see some of that as well.
Paul Hoynes (11:29):
And vote is really stressed, being aggressive on the basis this spring. He said, I don’t care how many people get thrown out, we want to test our limits, find out what we can do. And his players backed him up on that because a lot of players were trying to stretch singles into doubles, trying to steal bases. Several players got picked off the bag too, so hopefully they’ve learned their limits, Joe, because starting Thursday night, everything counts.
Joe Noga (12:05):
Did Josh Naer get the message? That’s the only important thing because he’s the one. I think in the past two years we’ve seen Josh Naor attempt to steal bases and sometimes successful, but other times you kind of scratch your head and you’re like, that was the old thing, Eddie, you think you’re invisible out there because they definitely see you.
Paul Hoynes (12:28):
Joe Naylor got thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double last night in the second inning, and I think he just got rounded a bag too far and he couldn’t go back. But that’s another example.
Joe Noga (12:44):
I want to remind our listeners, you can log on to Guardian subtext, get updates from the games now Hoey is out there directly from the ballpark as to what’s happening with the roof situation, with the pitching situation, all that Hoey and I will provide as many updates as we get on Subtext. It’s 3 99 a month To subscribe, go to cleveland.com/subtext or send a text message with the word subscribe to 2 1 6 2 0 8 4 3 4 6 to get on Guardian subtext throughout the season. Zi, you talked to Chris Antonette yesterday about the Miles straw situation, and we’ve been over this a bunch of times. There’s still no concrete final solution that’s been released yet to this, but all signs point to right now if a trade or anything isn’t worked out before Thursday that Miles Straw is heading to open the season with the Columbus Clippers of aaa.
Paul Hoynes (13:49):
Yeah, he’s definitely, he would cleared waivers, he’s going to report to Columbus. I don’t think, it didn’t sound like they had, there was a trade in the works right now, so I would expect him to be the starting center fielder for the Clippers on Friday night in St. Paul against the St. Paul Saints. That’s where, I mean, the Clippers opened the AAA season. The surprising thing to me, Joe, when I was talking to Antonette, he was really positive that straw’s going to get back here, get back to Cleveland and really impact this team for a big part of the season. On Sunday, him and Straw talked in the stands, he kind of just told them, reinforce the idea that they still believed in him, that they still wanted him back on his team, but he has to go down and do the work himself. Joe, that’s the hard part.
Joe Noga (14:51):
Did that sound like Antony, to you having that conversation, did you feel like he really meant that or was that just him trying to be positive and trying to will something into existence?
Paul Hoynes (15:05):
Well, I was surprised by it because I thought, okay, we’ve seen the last of Miles Straw one way or the other. It was like Zach Ack getting sent down last year when they outright him, we never saw him again and they ate what remained of his $2 million contract. But this is a multi-year contract, so they’ve got to do something with this guy, Joe. And like we were talking before the podcast, it’s one thing to, okay, let’s say you play out the year this year for $4.5 million, but you still owe this guy two years of his contract and you can’t just keep sending, he can’t just open a year at aaa. I mean, you’re going to either have to bring him back up or you’re going to have to eat a huge chunk of that salary and trade him, or you just absorb the entire salary and release him because you can’t just keep, he’s not going to be your center fielder in 2025 at Columbus.
Joe Noga (16:16):
No, and here’s the thing that the idea and the philosophy of when we were asking them early in spring training, Hey, why haven’t you brought in a veteran outfield or somebody on the free agent market to play in the outfield? And the response was, well, we’ve got a lot of young guys that we don’t want to clog things up and we want to give opportunities to the guys that we have here and see what they can do. Okay, that’s great at the major league level. Well, if you’re putting straw down there in center field, there’s only one place that he can play. And don’t you have guys, eventually you’re going to have Chase de Lauder at aaa. I mean, for DeLauder to move up to aaa, straw can’t be there. There’s just too many people in the outfield. There’s too much of a mix right now out there when George Valera is healthy and he’s able to come out there. I can’t imagine straw being able to stick around in AAA and do the same thing that they expressly said they didn’t want to have happen at the major league level. Have some veteran blocking young guys that they need to see Guys like Valera, guys like Chase de Lauder, even a guy like Pete Helpin, I mean, they all need the opportunity to play there and straw being at AAA is just blocking all of them.
Paul Hoynes (17:32):
Yeah, that’s another factor. But I really think Antoinette was sincere. I think he really expects straw to be back up in the big leagues at some point this year, and hopefully he can find his game again and convince them that they’re a better team with him than without him
Joe Noga (17:57):
And don’t misread what I’m saying. I love watching Miles Straw play center field. I think he runs like a gazelle. I think he’s fantastic in the outfield. I could watch him play centerfield. It’s the way you’re supposed to play centerfield. I just wish that he was giving you more at the plate and more consistency like we saw out of him the second half of 2021 after he was acquired in the trade and came over here and gave them all that hope and promise that, hey, they got something here. So if he could get back to being that guy at the plate, then sure, find room for him at the major league level. But if not, you’re stuck with a bad contract and it’s hard to get off from under it.
Paul Hoynes (18:44):
Yeah, no doubt about that. And we’ll see. But it surprised me. I thought, this guy is just down there. He’s going to be there the rest of the year and then at some point you have to make a decision on him. But the way Antoinette talked, they seemed to believe that he can come back up here and help this ball club. We’ll see if that’s a reality or not.
Joe Noga (19:11):
All right, we’re going to shift gears back to the ballpark discussion because a lot of our subtext subscribers have been chiming in since I put out there a question about, I asked our SubT texters what they thought Cleveland’s Baseball Destiny would’ve been like if years ago, instead of building a ballpark like progressive field, they had built something like a Minute Maid Park or Tractable Roof, or if they had scrapped the idea of just pouring money into upgrades for the ballpark, if they had said, okay, well let’s just build a new park with a roof because the weather in Cleveland sucks in April and May, and we lose too much money by not playing games or having to guess whether or not it’s going to rain in June and then having it be a bright sunny sky rain out game because somebody made a bad call in the game day operations room. So that was the question I put out to the subtext subscribers. Hey, how would Cleveland’s Baseball Destiny be different?
(20:21):
Would game seven of the World Series in 2016 have been different with no rain delay? And would guys like Chase de Lauder have a chance to open the season on the roster if it wasn’t 30 degrees and raining every other day in April? I want to read through some of these responses and just go through a couple of ‘em. Here’s a guy who replied and said, it’s from the 2 1 6 area code. Cleveland doesn’t have a dome because we are good stewards of the game, and I’m not going to use that word. And there are a bunch of, I’m going to say WSEs, that want to whitewash the sport was meant to be played outside. The weather is part of that. Next question. So there’s a guy who doesn’t want a dome in Cleveland, another one that says Baseball in a dome is terrible. Some lousy days in April and May, but nothing like sunny afternoon or a warm evening watching baseball game seven, blame MLB for that. They got under the, it was their decision to stop the game. Football, football in a dome is different. I guess the story with the Browns is they want to build a dome in Brook Park and if the city isn’t going to agree to upgrades at the stadium when their lease runs out, Zi, what do you think should happen with the Brown Stadium?
Paul Hoynes (21:59):
Well, I don’t know Joe. I’ve always liked football outside, but I think it would help to have a dome stadium. I think you’d have a chance to get a Super Bowl then, which would be a great thing for Cleveland, a football town down to its roots. But there’s pros and cons and I kind of wrestle with it.
Joe Noga (22:28):
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you could do a football stadium with a retractable roof or you shouldn’t do a football stadium with a retractable roof, but with a baseball stadium, you probably should. Here’s something from Bobby in Albuquerque. He writes in, they should have a dome any place where the Northern climate should, even if it’s like Seattle’s where it doesn’t necessarily keep it warm, that’s more of a roof over the stands there in Seattle, it’s retractable, but it’s still open on the sides. He says, I’ve often wondered if they could do something like put a retractable canopy over the stadium. More people would come out and you wouldn’t have games get canceled, which is, that’s a big factor for some of those. But let’s see, bud in Arizona says The cost of a dome and baseball tradition are the reasons why they don’t have one. In Cleveland old school baseball fans think baseball should be played outside out of date thinking, but gives an excuse not to build a dome rather than build domes. Start the season May 1st. There you go. So move everything back to May 1st. We lose the entire month of April. What are we going to do for the entire month of April? Or do we play every game on the road? Yeah,
Paul Hoynes (23:49):
I’m not sure it doesn’t rain in May in Cleveland. I don’t know.
Joe Noga (23:53):
I guess it does. Here’s a couple more we’ll go with this is a gentleman from the 2 1 6 area code. I’m pro roof. As long as they actually pull it out, only when necessary. A lot of these teams with the retractable feature just end up keeping it closed, and I’d hate to have progressive field become more like an indoor ballpark. Rain is one thing, but when it’s muggy and hot and they’ve got that roof closed, so it’s a comfy 70 degrees, that would be wrong. It goes without saying that a roof is not retractable. A roof that is not retractable is certainly not an option, but he says it’s interesting to bring up Tito in this conversation. I don’t think there would’ve been anything stopping him from opting for the veteran guys 99% of the time. Even with a roof, the early season weather was a reason to use convenient excuse for an otherwise inexplicable decision when it came to deciding who got to play and how much for Tito
Paul Hoynes (24:55):
Joe, I always wonder about that statement. The Guardians have been the youngest team in baseball for two years running, and Tito was the manager of those two years, wasn’t he? I’m pretty sure, and they’re going to be one of the youngest teams in baseball this year. But I know he liked veterans, but he played young players too.
Joe Noga (25:18):
Here’s another one from Albuquerque, short and Sweet. He says, part of the glory of being a Cleveland fan is being tough and rooting for our team no matter what the weather, this coming from somebody who has an Albuquerque area code on their cell phone. So this is probably one of those tough Cleveland fans who bugged out to Albuquerque just to avoid the winters and the weather that way. Alright, so that’s just a lot of different perspectives on a dome stadium and a roof and what can or should happen. But I wouldn’t mind watching the Browns in a stadium with a roof. They could build something out there that would be real nice. I love the stadiums in Minnesota, the new stadium in Minnesota, the new stadium in Las Vegas. Those are our incredible feats of architecture. Let’s see, something like that, and I don’t care if it costs $2 billion, I’m not going to be around when it’s finally finished, but as far as a baseball stadium, just every time I go to Houston, every time I see Minute Maid Park, I walk in there thinking, God, there’s no reason why Cleveland shouldn’t have built something like this back in the nineties.
(26:36):
It would’ve changed things for this franchise forever.
Paul Hoynes (26:40):
Yeah, who knows? I mean, they’ve still been pretty successful playing outdoor baseball. I dunno, does a roof guarantee you a World Series? I’m not sure.
Joe Noga (26:49):
No, but it guarantees you 81 home games that are going to start on time. That to me, at least working in this industry, it keeps you from losing your mind. And it would keep me from having to field phone calls from my friends with season tickets who say, what’s going on with this club? Why can’t they get this right? Because over the last three or four years, how many of those phone calls have you had Hoey?
Paul Hoynes (27:15):
I don’t answer those calls.
Joe Noga (27:18):
Alright, that’s going to wrap up today’s edition to the Cleveland Baseball Talk podcast. No more talk about roofs after tonight, we’ll be talking about the season opener and can’t wait to get to Oakland to kick things off. Hoey, we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Paul Hoynes (27:36):
Alright, Joe.
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