Should Stephen Vogt be fired<\/a>? <\/p>\nThe sharks are circling. The verdict feels inevitable. The media is beginning to question leadership. The jury sits eight to one in favor of a guilty verdict. And yet \u2014 I can\u2019t vote with them. I won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Because this isn\u2019t justice. This is a setup. A farce. A trial designed to punish the wrong man while the real criminals walk free.<\/p>\n
Yes, there have been mistakes. The offense looks lost. The bullpen is unraveling. And Vogt, in just his second year, has made his share of questionable decisions. But what manager wouldn\u2019t stumble when handed a roster held together with chewing gum and pine tar? What leader thrives when the front office won\u2019t spend, won\u2019t support, and won\u2019t step up? What team believes when it has been hampered in every possible way?<\/p>\n
You want someone to blame? Fine. But let\u2019s get the name right on the indictment.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t write down Stephen Vogt\u2019s name \u2014 because as far as I\u2019m concerned, that man is innocent! <\/p>\n
No \u2014 write down the real criminal \u2014 Paul Dolan.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t point at the man doing his best with the depleted roster he has been given \u2014 point at the man signing the checks!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m telling you Vogt is an innocent man! A manager who came in with no promises, no ego, and no budget. He inherited a team with more holes than hope, and he tried to make it work. He showed up every day with positivity despite being crippled by a penny-pinching owner. <\/p>\n
Vogt is what we need in a manager. He believes in this team. He is doing his best as he learns on the fly. And still \u2014 still \u2014 he\u2019s the one we\u2019re dragging into this courtroom like he rigged the game himself?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
The real guilty party wears a suit, not a manager\u2019s cap. The one who\u2019s kept this franchise on a bare-bones payroll while pretending we can contend. The one who trades stars, dodges paying players what they are worth, and banks on our loyalty to cover his greed. <\/p>\n
And yes, we\u2019ve been competitive on that shoestring budget \u2014 but there\u2019s a reason Tito Francona left, and a reason this team has never broken through. It\u2019s because Paul Dolan refuses to invest even a sliver more to push this club beyond division titles and into legitimate championship contention.<\/p>\n
It wouldn\u2019t break the bank for a billionaire like Paul Dolan. We had a team that made the American League Championship Series last year. You\u2019re telling me by opening up that billionaire\u2019s pocketbook \u2014 even just a bit \u2014 we couldn\u2019t have become a legitimate threat to win it all? Stephen Vogt is not the culprit here\u2026Paul Dolan is. <\/p>\n
And if we fire Stephen Vogt, we\u2019re giving ownership exactly what it wants: a fall guy. A distraction. A cheap sacrifice to silence the roar of a city that\u2019s starting to see through the illusion.<\/p>\n
Well, not me!<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t fire the wrong man just to make the powerful feel safe.<\/p>\n
My vote is not guilty.<\/p>\n
And when the real trial begins \u2014 the one with the Dolans on the stand \u2014 I\u2019ll be the first to say that justice must be served.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a terrible thing to condemn a man for failing at an impossible job. The Twitter polls have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[686,30008,5,15124,135,51,2589,2565,2588,2587,250,181,538,3637,4,6850,2225,173,6101],"class_list":{"0":"post-156226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-angry","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-case","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-cleveland-guardians","14":"tag-cleveland-guardians-analysis","15":"tag-clevelandguardians","16":"tag-corner","17":"tag-covering","18":"tag-for","19":"tag-front-page","20":"tag-guardians","21":"tag-men","22":"tag-mlb","23":"tag-nine","24":"tag-stephen","25":"tag-the","26":"tag-vogt"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114806753665631220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}