Speaking at a charity event on Thursday, Indians CEO Paul Dolan told reporters (including Dennis Manoloff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer) that he had no plans to relieve manager Manny Acta, general manager Chris Antonetti or team president Mark Shapiro of their duties.
"We all have a lot of work to do, but their jobs aren't at stake in this,'' Dolan said. "As I sit here today, I have no intent to make any changes. I have to understand what's happened. I'm not going to have that understanding today. Hopefully, sometime in this offseason, we'll be able to assess and move from there.''
"We had a team threatening to make the playoffs that has collapsed. We have to understand what happened, and I'm not going to make judgments on that right now. It's going to take more time to assess what we have, what we need, and what we're capable of doing.''
The comments echo statements made by Dolan on August 9, though the Indians' slide has gotten worse since, with 10 losses in their last 12 games. The Indians are 7-26 since July 18, a stretch that included an 11-game losing streak and an ongoing eight-game losing streak. The Tribe were close to contending in the AL Central and wild card races and didn't make any major acquisitions before the trade deadline, though Dolan didn't think that was the season for the collapse.
"I doubt it was demoralizing to the team,'' Dolan said. "Most teams I know are glad when they're kept together like that. We were very aggressive in looking for something that could help the team. I'm not convinced, given what's happened, that anything we might have done would have made a material difference.''
Shapiro and Acta are both under contract through the 2013 season and Antonetti already said that Acta will return as manager next year. Antonetti's contract reportedly runs through at least the 2014 season, according to the Plain Dealer's Terry Pluto. Since all of these deals are relatively close to completion already, it stands to reason that Dolan would give his staff another year to right the ship, especially since the Tribe weren't expected to be much more than borderline contenders this season anyway.
