Indians’ Chris Antonetti defends ‘earnest effort’ to keep Francisco Lindor

Lindor cut off negotiations with the Indians on Monday. Though things seem cordial between the player and the organization, Indians president Chris Antonetti said they could not make the numbers work and it would be “hard” to keep Lindor in the market Cleveland is in.

Antonetti said the Indians made a “sincere and earnest effort” to keep Lindor, but “different and creative concepts” did not yield an agreement.

“Any team can afford one player individually,” Antonetti said, via Jake Seiner of the Associated Press. “The question is can you afford an individual player and still build a championship team around him. And that’s ultimately the problem we’re trying to solve. And it’s really difficult in baseball’s economic system for teams in smaller markets to be able to do that.”

Lindor has made this outcome sound inevitable for a while now. He’s worth a huge sum of money, and the Indians aren’t willing to pay up. That means Lindor will probably be playing elsewhere in 2022.