Who Turned Out the Lights?

The Basement. It's cold, it's dark and it's lonely. When you've been relegated to it, you find yourself wondering how it all happened. How did you end up down here with the blue birds and the sailors? You're supposed to be better than that right?
Any extended stay in the basement is not advisable. Instead of visits spent laughing and cheering together in person, you find that your visitors now stare at you through the rectangular windows on the wall. Just checking in to mark your progress, only to walk away after a few minutes.
Talk of the present will also turn into talk of the future. In an instant, the outsiders who were singing your praises a few months ago, are now burying you under a laundry list of your deficiencies. What better time to shake through this laundry list, than when you're in the basement?
There are two things to do while stuck in that basement. The first of which is admit that you are there, and that changes are needed. The longer you resist the fact that you're in the basement, the larger chance you run of losing a valuable asset in exchange for nothing. Choosing to go that route, rebuilding yourself, can sometimes prove to be a lengthy process. You'll need to accept that your chance to get out of that basement will be pushed to the following year. People will forget about you, but they'll most assuredly be there when you come back up.
Or the second option, the more risky option, is that you sit and wait. Hope a cat, or a King and Queen come wandering to close to that basement door. Hope that you have the strength and parts to grab hold, and toss them down the stairs in your place. But where to go from there?
This is the position of our Cleveland Indians.