Lingering Items--Tomorrow Never Comes Edition

When I was a kid, I used to buy my baseball cards at a store called Don’s Beverage. Don was a cranky but mostly patient sort with the kids in the neighborhood who’d redeem Coke bottles for 3 cents each in order to buy another pack of cards. Don used to have a sign over the candy section that read “Everything half off, tomorrow.” When you’re a grade schooler it takes you a few days to catch on to the ruse. Tomorrow never came.

That’s pretty much how I feel about the Indians at this point. It’s taken awhile to catch on, of course, but I attribute that more to the sophistication of Indians’ general manager Mark Shapiro and my continuing naiveté that the team was about winning for not realizing it until now, but the Indians aren’t about winning, they’re about staying afloat as if that is a goal to be lauded.

The trades of Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez and Ryan Garko and Rafael Betancourt and Mark DeRosa are only important if you think a professional baseball team should be about winning. When it finally does dawn on you that this is an organization that’s building for a tomorrow that never comes, those trades become far more irrelevant. Aside to the Dolans: as a sign of good faith and in recognition of these economic times, I hereby grant to you an unlimited, free and worldwide license to use the phrase “Building For a Tomorrow That Never Comes” as your new mission statement. Feel free to plaster on anything you want. Look for it next week on a t-shirt at an Indians gift shop near you.

Reading and listening to Shapiro’s explanation of his dumping of anything with a viable pulse made me seem positively prescient the other day when I predicted, nearly word for word, what he’d say, particularly about the Lee trade. Frankly, it’s not that I’m all that great at predictions; Shapiro is just that predictable.

Just as I wrote he would do Shapiro did claim that the value they received now for Lee is better than they could get next year as if there is any way to challenge him on that point. But, again, all that misses the larger point. In the words of Bill Murray’s Tripper Harrison in the semi-classic movie, Meatballs, it just doesn’t matter. Even if the skies parted, monkeys flew, the heavens rained gold coins, cats started playing with dogs and Bill Livingston began writing something interesting, whether or not the Indians trade an All Star or a Cy Young winner just doesn’t matter because all the best players will still end up with the rich teams in the league.

The Indians’ problem is baseball’s problem. If the league owners can’t see how these yearly salary dumps by teams with no real shot at winning are ruining the game for a large portion of their fan base, then they should be the next to go. Without fundamental economic change that gives every team a realistic chance to actually be competitive each and every year, baseball is a rock heading for its own windshield.

This isn’t to let Shapiro off the hook. He’s gone off his own little deep end, so convinced is he in his own abilities that he can’t even acknowledge the crumbling mess around him. He offers his earnest sounding rationales without any sense of irony or context. If he really made the trades because he doesn’t see the Indians as competitive next year either, then whose fault is that? He put this miserable team together and as far as I can tell is the architect for next year’s as well.

You can go up and down the current roster, last year’s roster or whatever projects to next year’s roster and it is literally riddled with either bad decisions made by Shapiro or risky decisions that just didn’t work out. However styled, there is absolutely nothing approaching certainty that any move Shapiro just made or will make will result in anything more than what passes for this team today.

Shapiro took a chance on offering Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook long-term contracts and those didn’t work out. Their injuries aren’t his fault, certainly, but it underscores the precise point that nothing is nearly as predetermined as Shapiro would like the fans to believe including the ridiculous notion that this team is being built to compete 3-5 years out. Why wasn’t the team being built 3-5 years ago for this season? Because, say it with me, tomorrow never comes.

There is no reason to think that the decisions Shapiro is making now will translate into that mythical competitive team in 3-5 years. Shapiro’s track record isn’t that good. More to the point, though, there are just too many variables for anyone to successfully juggle. Injuries do happen. Players don’t develop in straight lines. Managers can’t manage.

Beyond all that, what’s galling is how Indians fans are constantly being sold a vision of a baseball team that’s like a start-up enterprise, selling its assets and hence its soul to venture capitalists on the if-come. The problem, though, is that the Indians have been around for 100 or so years and long ago should have escaped the clutches of that mentality.

But Shapiro has once again performed his magic act and, it seems the majority of fans are buying it. That doesn’t mean they’re happy with the trades or the state of the team, but as long as they are debating the merits of the latest round of Class A players acquired, Shapiro has won the battle for their hearts and minds. He knows that’s an argument that can’t be resolved but that does work to distract from the truth of the ugliness that’s enveloped this franchise and is working to undermine its very foundation.

Given the state of the Indians, the only other person that may be smiling at this point is Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner. As much of a mess that he’s made of his team, the Browns look positively well run in comparison to the Indians. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a sentence I thought I’d never write.

**

Speaking of the Browns, the fact that they have every one of their draft choices under contract before training camp really starts in earnest is a refreshing change from the previous regime. For reasons large and small, former general manager Phil Savage and cap master/lead negotiator Tripp McCraken never could master that most basic of tasks.

In life there are people that can get things done and there are people that watch others get things done. Under Savage, the Browns and their front office clearly fell in the latter category. It was always one thing or the other. The Browns couldn’t sign this draft pick or that because they were waiting for other draft choices on other teams to sign. Browns fans knew the drill and all it ended up resulting in is a team that was never fully prepared to enter into the season.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some semi-dark clouds rolling into the blue skies over Berea at the moment. Kick returner Josh Cribbs vows to not train but not play unless some serious inroads are made on a contract renegotiation. Kicker Phil Dawson isn’t happy with his contract situation and either are a few others. But at least they are all under contract. That in and of itself is a major upgrade.

**

Speaking of those semi-dark clouds, there also is the little issue of another season of As the Braylon Turns. Faithful reader Al Cook wrote me and asked about the ramifications of the Browns placing receiver Braylon Edwards on the reserved/non-football injury list. The short answer is, not much, but that’s just part of the story.

The non-football injury list isn’t like the injured reserve list. It serves as a parking area from which players can essentially be activated at any time. But because the injury is not related to football, the player doesn’t get paid. Thus, technically, Edwards is in an unpaid status, except for the fact that his contract really hasn’t called for any paychecks at the moment. Players get a stipend during training camp but their pay is pro-rated over the season. Placing Edwards on the non-football injury list was merely a way to tweak him, which at least this administration is willing to do.

Consider last season when Edwards hurt his ankle goofing off with Donte Stallworth after practice. A good case could have been made that the injury wasn’t football related because it wasn’t. Former head coach Romeo Crennel could have used it to smack Edwards back into reality by, too, placing him on the reserved/non-football injury list and would have gotten away with it long enough to make an impression on Edwards. He didn’t. It wouldn’t have made any difference financially but it would have at least told Edwards that the team was tired of his crap and perhaps that would have snapped him back into reality. As it was, Edwards had an Indians-like season instead.

But the rest of the story is that camp has now started and Edwards isn’t participating and no one knows exactly why. Fans sometime scoff at the media’s bitching about Mangini and his near abject refusal to say anything substantive about any aspect of the team’s operations, including what flavor Gatorade is in the cooler, but the mystery surrounding Edwards only underscores why Mangini, and hence Lerner, owe a larger duty to the fans.

Given the untested nature of the receiving corps, Edwards is being counted on, for among other things, leadership. Why exactly is a good question, but one I’ll defer for now. Instead just focus on the fact that Edwards is injured and fans don’t even know when he did it let alone how or what body part is involved. Mangini may see this as giving him a competitive advantage but it is at the expense of a fan base the team needs to bring closer not push away. Given Edwards’ supposedly minor ankle problem last year, these actually are meaningful questions that Mangini should answer but won’t.

This isn’t about making the jobs of Tony Grossi or Marla Ridenour any easier. It’s about rebuilding the basic trust that’s been lost over the years. Sadly, on that score, the Browns are now closer than the Indians. When does Cavs season start?

**

Given all that’s taken place with the Indians lately, this week’s question to ponder is simple: How did it feel the very moment when you realized that Cleveland no longer had a major league baseball franchise?

The Anti Divine Comedy

It was only an inkling but now it’s confirmed. The worst thing that can happen to a major league pitcher wearing a Cleveland Indians uniform is to win the Cy Young award. Just hope that Victor Martinez doesn’t win the batting title.

In ground no other club would ever dare tread, the Indians once again sent a reigning Cy Young award winner, this time Cliff Lee, packing for a parcel of Philadelphia prospects, only two of which are pitchers and only one of which is in the high minor leagues.

Indians general manager Mark Shapiro, apparently wilting under the potential pressure of having to trade a non Cy Young award winner next season decided instead to jump early, way early in dumping Lee on a salivating Phillies organization. In exchange for Lee, the Indians get a Triple A pitcher, a Single A pitcher (apparently the key to the deal, which is laughable if you allow yourself a moment of levity), a catcher and a shortstop. The Single A pitcher, Jason Knapp, is on the disabled list. When healthy, he can apparently throw really, really fast. Let me guess, he’s got swing and miss capability.

So much for Shapiro’s “pitching, pitching, pitching” mantra. It’s now been revised to “pitching, pitching, position player, position player” and that’s without getting into the finer points about whether or not the Indians needed still another catching prospect or even another shortstop prospect.

Shapiro, just because he felt like it, also gave the Phillies Ben Francisco. I wonder if the Phillies even realize it. If they don’t they will when Francisco shows up, bat in hand. The Indians have gone from a team with a bunch of young outfielders to a team with a really young bunch of outfielders.

At this point it really doesn’t matter what Shapiro has to say about any of these prospects. Cleveland fans have been through this drill so many times that they can conduct the press conferences themselves. The prospects are all great, the economy is tough, and the Indians didn’t think they’d be able to sign Lee to an extension. Any questions?

Of course, the Indians never did try to sign Lee to an extension. His agent tried to engage the Indians in those discussions before the start of this season but Shapiro wanted none of it, probably because Lee’s leverage was at its peak given his Cy Young season of 2008. But as Lee continued to pitch well for a truly awful team put together by Shapiro, it became apparent that the Lee’s price wasn’t going in Shapiro’s direction. Time to move on.

Trading Lee now also allows Shapiro to go avoid any serious questions about whether or not trading Lee next year would have brought more value. Shapiro will undoubtedly say that because Lee had another season left on his contract, the Phillies were willing to part with more than they would next season. The great thing for Shapiro is that there’s no way to prove or disprove that theory.

One theory that actually is getting disproven though is that it’s easier to fire the manager than the players. Shapiro isn’t just conducting a fire sale. He’s in full liquidation mode, sacrificing nearly any player with a decent pulse while saving his erstwhile blood brother, manager Eric Wedge from the apparent voice mail telling him to report to Shapiro’s office and bring the playbook.

And speaking of Wedge, if anyone stands to gain by Shapiro’s latest brand of nuttiness, it’s him. Shapiro has this unhealthy belief in Wedge’s ability to manage a young team, unhealthy because, speaking strictly factually, Wedge has done nothing to actually nurture and grow either a young player or a young team. Past being irrelevant, Shapiro will no longer be compelled to fire Wedge come season’s end. What would be the use in that? A young team begs for a patient steady hand and on that score, Shapiro believes Wedge has the hands of a surgeon.

Thus it’s now more likely than ever that Wedge will be guiding whatever faux major league lineup that emerges from spring training next year and suddenly that’s turned into the least of issues. The real point here is that there is no longer any point to this franchise. Right in front of our eyes, Shapiro has turned into John Nash, another brilliant Princeton alumnus who went eventually went paranoid. Nash eventually regained some semblance of footing. If it were up to the fans, Shapiro might never get that chance.

While it’s doubtful that the Dolans are exactly celebrating the fact that their franchise has once again been relegated to a national embarrassment after trading another Cy Young award winner they are probably secretly thrilled that Shapiro has literally taken a meat cleaver to the budget. Wins are nice and all, but when it’s your money on the line there are other priorities. On that level, Shapiro, like Wedge, is probably as safe as he’s ever been.

Don’t be confused. In a world inhabited by the rational, Shapiro would probably be fired for the kind of mess he’s made. In a world where the balance sheet is far more important than the standings, Shapiro is probably in line for a hefty raise. Indeed, Shapiro’s cutting payroll as if he’s got an incentive clause. All any of this means is that the regime is probably solid even if the franchise is not.

There’s no doubt in my mind that, starting with Shapiro but certainly not ending there, a whole bunch of Indians apologists will defend this trade like they have all the others--by focusing on the souvenirs the Indians received in the exchange. But extolling the virtues of this pine tree or that says little about the forest. The Indians are not a better team or franchise today than they were yesterday and yesterday they weren’t so hot to begin with.

The Indians are defying gravity and poetry by going in reverse order of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Having started in relative paradise, they are blasting through purgatory at warp speed on their way to the depths of Hell. This time, though, Dante and Virgil, in the form of Shapiro and Wedge, aren’t nearly as likely to escape.

The Indians long ago stopped giving fans a reason to invest in them for this season and now have jump started that process for next season In turn, less attendance means an even smaller payroll and on and on it will go.

At this point it’s more than fair to ask if there is a realistic path forward. The last time the team was in it this deep they at least had an injection of cash coming from the new stadium that would be opening. It literally changed their fortunes.

There is no such cash cow on the horizon this time. Right now the franchise is encircled by a boa constrictor with each subsequent movement only tightening the grip. Without a few years of serious deficit spending in order to actually rebuild this franchise with bona fide players that can yield a contending team, it will get more and more difficult to breathe. Once a franchise no longer has promise to sell, the end is near. Shapiro may not see bottom but the ticket-buying, television watching, product buying public is starting to see it in high definition.

But hey, look at the bright side. An “anonymous major league source” sounding an awful lot like the Indians’ Chris Antonetti, supposedly told the Plain Dealer’s Paul Hoynes that Knapp, the alleged key to the deal, has “a great pitcher’s body.” So there is that. Of course so did John Rocker.

A Mere Footnote

If you blinked, you missed it.

The Cleveland Indians’ traded relief pitcher Rafael Betancourt to the Colorado Rockies at around the same time general manager Mark Shapiro was telling anyone who’d listen that any trades had to yield “pitching, pitching, pitching” in return.

He got pitching in the form of an unknown commodity buried in the minors via the Mid American Conference. Cue the eye roll. The Indians aren’t about acquiring pitching. If the question is, what did we learn from the Betancourt trade, the answer, stated in the form of a question is “What is the best way to manage a dwindling team budget?”

It’s easy now for Shapiro to say that the Indians were never going to pick up that option anyway so the trade was about getting something for Betancourt rather than let him walk away at the end of the season. Whether it’s true or not or whether it was just Shapiro’s way of rehearsing his speech on Cliff Lee which he’ll either pull out of the drawer later this week or 52 weeks from now is a whole other matter.

In simple economic terms, you can give Shapiro the benefit of the doubt, but just barely. By dumping Betancourt now, the Indians not only saved themselves about $1.5 million off of payroll for the rest of this year, they also “saved” $5 million by not having to pick up his $5 million option for next year. It’s not savings you can bank because Shapiro claims he wasn’t going to pick up the option anyway, but in Indians math it’s still real money.

Frankly, Shapiro’s rationale is just a tad convenient. At $5 million in 2010, Betancourt may not be cheap but it’s not like he would have been wildly overpaid either. That would be Travis Hafner. The average major league salary is around $3.2 million. On the Indians, Betancourt’s salary would be half that of both Jake Westbrook and Kerry Wood and about 42% of Hafner’s salary approximately $12 million salary.

The major case against Betancourt is that he had a career year in 2007 and hasn’t lived up to it since, or in Shapiro-talk, “we don’t see the value proposition in Betancourt tilting toward the Indians in the near term.” But it’s not like Betancourt’s regressed like, say, Jhonny Peralta, who had a career year in 2005 and hasn’t lived up to it since.

Betancourt at least has been a mostly reliable if not quite spectacular reliever for several seasons. He did have 2007, which will put him in the “interesting, we ought to take a chance on him” category for several more seasons. And though he isn’t close to that level right now, he’d easily be considered one of the most viable bullpen arms for next season, particularly when compared to what the Indians received in return.

When a team’s glaring weakness is its bullpen and you trade one of the few mostly reliable arms for a pitcher that’s years away from contributing, then just be straight with the fans. Don’t try to sell them Connor Graham. They can tell the difference between a bald claim of improving your won/loss record and an implied claim of improving your profit/loss margin.

It’s not exactly a revelation that the Indians are a budget first team. It’s not even an indictment. It’s the double-barreled reality of a poor economy and a fundamentally flawed economic structure in baseball. Even with the economic disparities between teams minimized the Betancourt trade might still get made, but the more likely scenario is that a better economic balance between major league teams makes moves like this a far different proposition.

If baseball ever had a commissioner with some wherewithal to actually effect fundamental change on the gaping economic disparities of its member teams, then perhaps teams like Cleveland can being places that players have to leave in order to seek their fame and fortune.

Right now playing for the Indians is like an actor working in summer stock. Think Tom Hanks working for the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland when he was younger. It’s done for the experience, not the money. But you can’t build a career here, in theater or in baseball. The Indians aren’t exactly the minor leagues but at this point to say that they play in the same league as some of the other teams, like the New Yorks and Boston, for example, is only technically true.

That is, perhaps, the fundamental difference between major league baseball and the NFL. In large measure, professional football is run like a game of Monopoly. The banker gives each team the same amount of funny money and success or failure is not just a matter of rolling the dice but a product of the cleverness of your decisions.

The NFL, with its hard salary cap and equitable revenue sharing, puts a premium on the ability to manage the cap. It doesn’t give, say, the Detroit Lions 50% less money than the New York Giants and then tell them to stop whining and go compete. In football, its playing field is actually level.

Baseball, on the other hand, sees no wisdom in such progressive thinking. It runs the league as if some teams have the divine rights of kings and others are perpetually relegated to serf status. From a business standpoint, baseball works about as well as feudalism did.

Still, it’s worth asking whether a salary cap in baseball would make any difference in the trade of Betancort. Probably not, but it certainly would in the case of Lee.

Even with a salary cap, the NFL off-season is like the Hartville flea market. Everyone just goes from one table to the next alternately selling their own crap and buying someone else’s. Football teams dump Betancourt equivalents all the time because their cap value exceeds their on-field contributions, usually for younger and cheaper players in the opposite category. But for teams that need a missing piece or two, a guy like Betancourt may just be the overpriced answer. The Browns signed Willie McGinest.

Still, it mostly works. Baseball does not. With better economic balance n football, it’s far easier to measure the effectiveness of both the front office and the head coach. One can tell, for example, what a dismal failure it was for Phil Savage to sign Donte Stallworth. It’s far harder to tell whether Shapiro’s signing of Mark DeRosa was a mistake.

Another key difference between the leagues is the absence of the late-season salary dump. In baseball, July 31, the trading deadline, becomes as important of a date if not more so than opening day. The yearly ritual of the also-rans dumping assets to offset the on-coming drop in attendance in August and September doesn’t exist in the NFL. Quick, or even not so quick, tell me the last memorable NFL trading deadline deal made? Ok, I’ll make it easier. Tell me the last NFL trading deadline deal you remember. Didn’t think so.

The reason this matters is that football teams can actually build some continuity from year to year. If the Indians turn over their roster by 50% each year, it’s because it has to for economic reasons. When that happens with the Browns it’s only because they made dumb decisions.

Shapiro already runs the team as if it is in a league with a salary cap, but that’s because he has no other choice. Constrained mightily by a budget that seems to shift on a daily basis, this can never take either eye off the bottom line. It may be cynical to say that the team seems focused first on economics and wins and losses second, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

A salary cap wouldn’t necessarily make the Indians a perennial contender, but they’d have a far better chance, mainly because the high-value players they actually developed would likely have remained with them during the prime of their careers. There would have been no need to dump CC Sabathia, for example, any more than there is a need, or at least a perceived need, to dump Lee or Victor Martinez for much the same reason—salary. This isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s how it would have played out absent some overanalyzing by Shapiro, which is always a possibility. And by the way, it would have obviated the need for anyone to ponder the merits of firing Eric Wedge because he wouldn’t have been hired in the first place. With the kind of talent that would have remained, no one in their right mind would have given the keys to a rookie manager.

Betancourt is going to fall into the deep recesses of most fans’ memories the way Jamie Easterly and Victor Cruz have. But when Shapiro takes to the podium to extol the virtues of the three or four bodies that he got for trading Lee, don’t act surprised. You’d have to be comatose not to see that speech coming.

Lingering Items--Man at the Top Edition

Is it possible that a team with the reigning Cy Young award winner in its midst doesn’t have an ace on its pitching staff? That’s the burning question that the Cleveland Indians are facing with less than two weeks before the season starts.

Cliff Lee, the putative number one pitcher on the Indians’ staff, has looked like anything but an ace in spring training. While that isn’t necessarily cause for great concern, the fact that he has been getting shelled most of the spring is raising a few eyebrows among the likes of manager Eric Wedge, general manager Mark Shapiro and, frankly, most of the rest of the league.

Lee came out of nowhere, literally, to win the Cy Young last year. His 2007 was nothing short of a disaster. It was a combination of physical injury and mental duress that made Lee a very shaky “yes” to make the team last season. While his spring 2008 wasn’t anything great, his contract and his track record gave him the edge for the last starting spot.

It proved to be faith rewarded. All Lee did was out-pitch CC Sabathia and the rest of the major leagues. It was one of the most surprising and satisfying season-long performances by any player in any sport wearing a Cleveland uniform ever.

Lee is a well-grounded player. He is mostly unemotional and seems to accept with equal aplomb the ups and downs that baseball delivers on a daily basis. Like golf, baseball is a game predicated more on failure than success. For a pitcher, far more balls are hit than are missed. For the hitter, far more balls are caught than not. To play and prosper at the highest levels, it is absolutely imperative that a player have the gift of perspective and the emotions of Bjorn Borg. Lee is that kind of pitcher.

But if there is one area of concern about his spring, more so than last spring, is the fact that he entered it lacking the hunger of last year. He was no longer fighting for his professional life but instead attempting to prepare himself to be “the guy,” a role he’s never occupied in the major leagues.

Lee was successful last season mostly because he had pinpoint control from almost the first pitch of the season until the last. He also benefited for most of the season from the simple fact that more eyes were on Sabathia. To the extent a pitcher carrying a miniscule ERA for an entire season can fall under the radar, Lee was that pitcher.

This season will be far different. There is no Sabathia. It’s Lee and a bunch of question marks. To put it in perspective, remember Lee was the last pitcher to make the team last year. Scott Lewis is this year’s Lee. Lee now finds himself having to serve as the role model, the stopper and the stud for a pitching staff that will be watching his every move. It’s far more pressure than he’s ever been under.

Sabathia was always being groomed as a number one starter. That’s never been true of Lee. Indeed, it’s unlikely Lee ever saw himself in that role. Based on his spot in the rotation, though, that’s exactly where he finds himself. He’ll be relegated to taking on the other team’s number one starter nearly every time out. That’s even more pressure.

Lee’s effectiveness is dictated by his control. His career has been the base case for what it looks like when control comes, goes and comes again. And that was without any of the added responsibilities.

That’s not to say that Lee’s lackluster spring is the result of his inability to cope with his new role. It may be simply the result, as he said, of using spring training this year to work on certain aspects of his game rather than trying to replicate an actual start. But time is starting to run short. He has one more start this spring. He doesn’t need to be great. He doesn’t even need to prove he was a worthy recipient of the Cy Young. He just needs to start showing that he’s the guy that can step up and lead a starting pitching staff that for the first time in years doesn’t have an obvious leader.

**

It was nice to see someone associated with the Cleveland Browns actually sit down and give a somewhat comprehensive interview. It wasn’t general manager, George Kokinis or head coach Eric Mangini, both logical choices. And it wasn’t the increasingly more mysterious owner, Randy Lerner. It was Mike Kennan, the team’s new president.

Tony Grossi’s interview had some interesting moments and Grossi hit Kennan with some pretty pointed questions, including questions related to the Browns’ spending to upgrade the Berea complex to meet Mangini’s needs while simultaneously laying off a boatload of low paid employees.

I thought Keenan came off pretty well in the interview overall. I do think he’s understandably downplaying what looks to be a hard economy for the Browns. There are several loges unsold that will go unsold. There will be plenty of season ticket holders that won’t be able to re-up. Sponsors will be lost. And this would be true even if this was a winning team, or at least a potentially winning team. The economy has had that kind of effect. On top of that, if Mangini can’t come in and immediately turn things around, 2010 isn’t going to be any better either on the business side of the operations.

But all that aside, the one thing that did come out of the interview was a clarification of the Browns’ organizational chart. Essentially, Lerner has three direct reports: Keenan, Kokinis and Mangini. It’s a somewhat atypical arrangement in that on most teams the head coach reports to the general manager. It’s also fairly typical for the general manager, in turn, to report to the club president. Thus the Browns are bucking some trends in that respect as well.

That doesn’t mean that there’s inherently anything wrong with Lerner’s org chart but it does signal in a significant way that he plans to stay far closer to the team than perhaps he was just a year ago. By having the three top operational employees in the organization report to him, Lerner doesn’t have a choice but to stay closely connected. If he maintains the kind of distance he’s been used to maintaining, then the organization is headed for potentially destructive and unresolved infighting sooner rather than later.

Any business is an amalgamation of the people running it. When they get along, org charts are irrelevant. But when disputes arise, org charts become a necessity. If a consensus can’t be reached, someone has to call the question. Consider, for example, how this could play out on draft day.

Presumably, Kokinis is in charge of the draft. Mangini is certainly going to have a prominent role in which players are selected as well as what kind of deals may be swung. But what if they end up in a legitimate disagreement that they can’t resolve themselves? By vesting himself with the final word, given how he’s arranged the offices, Lerner will make the call. If he sides with Kokinis, Mangini will be upset and vice versa. The more something like this plays out, the pricklier the atmosphere inside Berea will become.

It would be interesting to know why Lerner willingly put himself and his team in this kind of position when it’s a role he seems uniquely ill-suited to take on. Why is it that he believes this is the best path forward for his team? Kennan could have been asked those questions, but his answers would have been speculative. They really are better left for Lerner. The problem, though, is Lerner’s not talking these days so, as with so much associated with the Browns these days, it’s up to the fans to fill in the blanks.

**

If Kellen Winslow thought leaving Cleveland was going to be his ticket to a new contract, then he better think again. According to reports out of Tampa Bay, new general manager Mark Dominik is in no hurry to give Winslow a new deal, much to the chagrin of Winslow’s new agent, Drew Rosenhaus.

Apparently Dominik is concerned about Winslow’s longevity, which would hardly be a surprise except for the fact that he traded for Winslow in the first place. The Browns got a second round pick in this year’s draft and a fifth round pick next year from the Buccaneers. That may not seem like much but it is enough to suggest that the Buccaneers see Winslow sticking around for awhile anyway.

Winslow never is going to make back all the money he lost because of his foolish foray into stunt motorcycle riding. He can hire 10 Drew Rosenhauses and they’ll never be able to get him the kind of contract that a relatively injury-free career would have delivered.

There were rumblings that one of the reasons the Browns parted with Winslow now is that they had no intention of extending his contract and no appetite for a potential holdout. Kokinis may not have gotten as much as some fans would have liked for Winslow, but considering the business problems he divested himself of, it’s doubtful that Kokinis is second-guessing himself either.

**

With a playoff season that nearly rivals the length of its regular season, basketball is in the position of straddling both the football and the baseball seasons. This year could bring the real possibility of the Cavs playing into June and the Browns, with heightened interest due to a new regime, starting about a month after that. The Indians have about a month to prove themselves to the fans. Thus, this week’s question to ponder is simple: Will anyone even notice the Indians this year?

Lingering Items--Juiced Edition

Yea, it matters…
There is a point at which fans become so jaded by the constant revelations of off-the-field shenanigans by those who play the sport that they’d just rather ignore it all. Just play the game. The revelations that baseball’s arguably most talented player and certainly its highest paid was a steroid abuser (and may be, still, who knows?) doesn’t seemed to have twanged the buds of the average fan.

I understand that sentiment. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about steroids and baseball as much as anyone. But that doesn’t mean that the onslaught of steroids allegations should just be swept away like the 2008 Cleveland Browns’ season. This stuff does matter far more than whether or not Eric Mangini painted the walls inside the Berea a shocking pink.

The steroids era, as it’s becoming known, has literally robbed baseball of its underlying integrity. Records have been established. Players and owners have been rewarded on the backs of a ticket paying public and the networks paying increasingly exorbitant broadcast rights fees. Part of the reason your cable bill is so high is because ESPN passes those fees right on to you. But far too much of those accomplishments and those riches have been earned under false pretenses. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.

It does make a difference if Barry Bonds owns the home run record and not Hank Aaron. It matters if a Roger Clemens exceeds the accomplishments of a Bob Feller or a Nolan Ryan. When the records and accomplishments of the sport’s icons fall to someone who used illegal means to do it, the fabric of the game begins to unravel.

In every sport cheaters are punished. If a high school or college team uses an ineligible player, the player is banned and the team forfeits the game. If the team won a championship, the banner is stripped and the record book expunged. But a major league baseball team winning games with players who are using performance-enhancing drugs aren’t punished in the least. Yet arguably those wins are far more in doubt than those of a college team using a player that got a “D” in a course but the professor reported it as a “C.”

It would be great if baseball could put the steroid era behind it. Everyone would breathe a sigh of relief. But ignoring the black mold metastasizing in the corner of the room because you’re too scared or tired or whatever to contemplate its ramifications isn’t the answer. The only way to address the problem is to clean it up for good. Rid the sport of the players whose performance was fraudulent. Force out the owners who hid in their luxury boxes in order to avoid confronting the seedy underbelly of their clubs. Rid the sport of the commissioner who fiddled why Cooperstown burned. Demonstrate true zero tolerance and not 10 strikes and “I’m sorry” or else face accepting the next inevitable scandal that could ultimately prove to be even worse.

We now return to our regular programming.

**

Stupid is as stupid does…

Problem, what problem?

In a nutshell, that’s essentially the position of Marvin Miller, the legendary architect of the absolute worst union in professional sports, the Major League Players Association. Wheeled out as if on cue every time there is a problem in baseball, the 91-year old Miller had plenty to say about the Alex Rodriguez situation and almost none of it is going to help.

Among the more controversial statements he gave to ESPN was that the union should never have bowed to public and congressional pressure to institute a drug testing program in the first place. In Miller’s view, there is absolutely no evidence that steroids actually enhance performance. Thus it is pure folly to test for them because all that ends up doing is causing a boat load of unintended consequences, the Rodriguez situation being just the most current example.

It would be easy to dismiss the comments of Miller as those of a doddering old fool still trying to look relevant. But Miller is no fool. He’s misguided, certainly, ill-informed, obviously, but absolutely nobody’s fool. He more than anyone else, is responsible for the establishment and adherence still to outdated horse-and-buggy thinking on almost any issue of relevance in baseball and these comments just perpetuate his antiquated thinking.

His ESPN interview created a veritable cornucopia of other misstatements and half-truths as well. Miller claimed rather boldly that there is no evidence that the use of steroids is even a health issue, pulling out the old “cigarettes cause far more damage and responsible for 400,000 deaths a year” as if that’s even a relevant comparison. In Miller’s world, steroids use has not been involved in “one documented death.”

That’s just Miller parsing for convenience of argument without bothering to check it for consistency. Claiming steroids hasn’t been a factor in several deaths is just plain false. For example, Lyle Alzado was 42 years old when he died of brain cancer. Alazado himself in his last days attributed his condition to his extensive misuse of steroids. There have been at least 5 pro “wrestlers” who have died in their 30s from various forms of coronary disease and all were abusers of anabolic steroids. The web site Athletes Against Steroids maintains a list of steroids-related deaths and notes, too, that most steroids-related deaths are not of high profile athletes and thus go mostly unreported. If Miller was being consistent, let alone genuine, then he’d have to say that cigarettes aren’t causing any deaths because no one is dying while taking a drag. It’s all that coronary disease and emphysema that’s really causing the deaths.

But even if Miller wants to play that game, it’s beyond question that the continued abuse of steroids has serious health consequences. You can Google “health effects of steroids” and find 486,000 entries to back that up. ESPN did an extensive series on the issue (see story here) that details the short and long-term adverse impact that steroid use has on an individual, both physically and psychologically. If Miller doubts the uncontroverted medical evidence, then he should be made to produce one scientific study to the contrary. He can’t.

Miller then trotted out the well-worn argument that drug testing is inherently unreliable because of the potential for false-positive results. This is a perfect example of a half-truth. What Miller doesn’t say is that the protocols of drug testing, particularly in professional sports, are so rigorous as to render false positives nothing more than a myth. Drug tests are conducted in phases. The initial test is more generalized and it is in that test where false positives may get reported. But any positive test in this phase is then submitted to a far more exacting test to eliminate the chance of a false positive. Ask Floyd Landis.

Personally, my favorite Millerism though was his statement that the union leadership was wrong to bow to the overwhelming pressure put on it by its own members to agree to random drug testing. According to Miller, “leadership can't just take a poll on what membership wants. You also have to judge whether this is in the best interests of the people you represent. If the entire membership voted unanimously to disband, would you do it?” In other words, just because the members want something doesn’t mean it’s in their best interests. And yes, by law actually, if the entire membership voted unanimously to disband, the union would disband, so there.

Miller always has been a polarizing figure in baseball. On the one hand his hard-nosed bargaining tactics advanced the cause of the players and, in the process, made the players’ union the strongest sports union. On the other hand, the next idea he has that’s in the best interest of baseball (as opposed to the best interest of an individual player) will be the first. It’s never been Miller’s agenda to further the interest of the sport, so it’s no surprise that he’s not doing so now. But to not appreciate how damaged the sport is by advocating for positions that would only further that damage may not make you a fool, but it does render you irrelevant.

See ya, Marvin. We’ll call you the next time your help is needed. And if the phone isn’t ringing, it’s us.

**

If only he had acted like he couldn’t speak English…

Somewhat lost in the Rodriguez affair was the news item that Houston Astros’ shortstop Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty on Wednesday to lying to congressional investigators about what he knew about steroids use in baseball. According to a report in the USA Today, Tejada admitted he lied when he told investigators in 2005 essentially that “I don’t know nothing about no stinking steroids.” Now Tejada awaits sentencing and is hoping against hope that probation is in his future.

What’s instructive about the Tejada situation is the simple fact that it underscores why investigating steroids use is so difficult. When George Mitchell undertook his investigation, the players’ union essentially told its members not to cooperate. That’s something they could get away with because Mitchell had no subpoena power and was not working under the color of law in order to compel cooperation.

But when a congressional investigator, working under the color of law and with subpoena power comes knocking, one is well advised not to dodge the questions or, as in the Tejada’s case, lie with impunity.

This is something that has to give pause to dear old Roger Clemens. Right now his testimony to Congress is under scrutiny and on that front, things aren’t going well. It’s one thing to damage your reputation by being exposed as a cheat. It’s a whole other matter to find your abscessed butt in a jail cell. Clemens may just see this all as another batter that he can send back to the bench with a series of fastballs. Sooner or later he’ll find out he was wrong.

**

A fool for a client…

Speaking of Clemens, this week a judge dismissed most of the defamation lawsuit that he filed against his former BFF, Brian McNamee. The dismissal was mostly on procedural grounds. The statements McNamee told congressional investigators, for example, are immune from a lawsuit. Most of the other statements McNamee made that weren’t otherwise immune were made in New York and thus if Clemens wants to sue him for those, he’ll have to re-file the case in New York.

There still is one count left in the lawsuit relating to statements McNamee allegedly made to Andy Pettitte about Clemens’ steroids use. If Clemens decides to continue to pursue that, he’ll be in the rather awkward position of having to depose his other BFF, Pettitte. The problem there is that Pettitte has already gone on record as vouching for McNamee’s credibility. Be careful what you ask for, Roger.

My guess is that this lawsuit will die the natural death it deserves. It was filed in the wake of the storm surrounding the Clemens allegations and was meant to deflect attention by portraying Clemens as . Clemens and his attorney probably never really intended to pursue it to a conclusion because doing so would put the entire Clemens family in play. But then again, Clemens has proven time and again that as a family man, he was a good pitcher so anything’s possible.

**

This Bud’s for you…

It’s been a busy week for The Worst Commissioner in the History of Organized Sports, Bud Selig. When the Rodriguez story broke, he gave his usual furrowed brow look of concern and talked, half-heartedly, about possibly suspending Rodriguez.

But that was never a viable option. There simply is no mechanism in place to suspend Rodriguez for misconduct occurring 8 years ago and Selig knew that even when he initially made the statements. That’s why he almost immediately backed down from that threat and simply left it as is by doing what Selig does best, wringing his hands while scolding Rodriguez as if he were Selig’s 16-year old kid and he had just creased a right corner panel on the family sedan. That had to hurt.

Frankly, Selig moralizing to Rodriguez will be about as effective as anything else Selig as done throughout his slumbering tenure as commissioner. The truth is that the revelations about Rodriguez say at least as much about Selig’s reign as they do about Rodriguez. If Rodriguez is telling the truth (a risky assumption, I know) that the culture of just a few years ago fostered his drug use, then how on earth could Selig not be clued in to that? The only way he could have avoided it was, essentially, by deliberately avoiding it. But deliberate ignorance hardly erases the underlying acts. If it did then a refusal to to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers win another Super Bowl would mean it didn’t happen. If only….

What’s truly amazing about this whole situation is that despite the fact that the longest, darkest and most shameful period ever visited upon professional baseball has occurred under Selig’s watch, those that employ him don’t seem to much care. During that time, all the owners have done is continue to elevate Selig’s status and salary without even once trying to hold him the least bit accountable. Maybe it’s because they know they are just as culpable. A band of brothers, indeed.

By this point, Selig’s become the sports equivalent to Ken Lay, the former (and now deceased) CEO of Enron. While essentially overseeing a criminal enterprise, each disclaimed either knowledge or intent and both profited handsomely. I guess for his sake it’s a good thing that Congress has its hands full with the banks at the moment.

**
There was an item in the Plain Dealer on Friday where several Cleveland Indians, including Cliff Lee, essentially gave Rodriguez and others a pass for their steroids abuse. The players, too, apparently are tired of this whole mess and just want to move on. Thus this week’s question to ponder: Would Lee still feel the same way if he had lost a perfect game by giving up a home run to a player who later admitted he was on steroids?

Just Fine is the New Better

It was pretty clear early in the season that Indians pitcher Cliff Lee was having a big year. For everything that went wrong last season, that much and more went right early and often this season. But who knew that in the process Lee would be the one more than anyone to help General Manager Mark Shapiro withstand the coming storm?

That coming storm would be, of course, the loss of Indians ace C.C. Sabathia. Lee was an afterthought going into the season, barely holding on to the fifth spot in the rotation. He’s emerged as the most effective starting pitcher in the American League, pushing his record to 11-1 and giving up well under three earned runs a game. And as he’s done so, he’s also becoming a key stake holding the safety net that Shapiro hauls out to blunt the impending loss of Sabathia.

Though Lee has a firm grasp on one corner of that net, he’s also being assisted by Jeremy Sowers and Aaron Laffey. When Fausto Carmona comes back in a few weeks, he’ll be able to grab another corner of that net as well. In other words, as Shapiro will tell you, even without Sabathia the Indians starting pitching will be just fine.

As far as that goes, it’s true. It just won’t be better and that’s the distinction Shapiro will coolly avoid. Be it at the trading deadline or when this miserable season closes, whenever Sabathia does leave the Indians won’t be immediately better and for a fan base that grows more exasperated by the day with what they see on the field that safety net offers very little solace.

More than anything else, what this season is revealing, particularly placed in context with the previous four, is that the Indians remain in perpetual rebuilding mode under a general manager prone to occasional delusions. At times, that yields a team good enough to compete with the best in the league. At other times, like now, it finds itself looking up at the Kansas City Royals. Being fine, no matter how much fans are told otherwise, is not the new better.

What this season also has revealed is Shapiro’s growing tendency to sacrifice action at the expense of analysis. Time and again, Shapiro has expressed his disappointment with this team’s performance in terms of the inability of several players to meet internal expectations. The reality is that these were hopeful projections masquerading as foregone conclusions. The further reality is that by turning these hopeful projections into the expected reality, Shapiro was really providing himself cover for why he stood pat with a roster that begged for further manipulation.

To illustrate the point, as last year’s trading deadline approached, the Indians were struggling mightily to score runs. Designated hitter Travis Hafner was a big part of the problem, but hardly the only reason. I noted at that time:

… the Indians may be second in the league in runs scored, they also are second in the league in runners left on base. … But where the real difference starts showing up is the simple act of putting the ball in play. If you have the sense that the Indians strike out a lot, it’s because they do. Only Tampa Bay and Texas have struck out more than the Tribe….Digging deeper one can see why that lingering feeling about the offense is well justified. Not only is Hafner, for example, struggling with the bases loaded, so too is the rest of the team. Overall the Indians have had 104 at bats this season with the bases loaded and have just 24 hits for a .230 average….If that doesn’t tell enough of the story, consider the averages with runners in scoring position. The Indians have had 879 at bats with runners in scoring position. They have 230 hits for an average of .261. That’s a full 14 points under the overall team average.

Given these flaws, which were on full display for weeks at a time, it was reasonable to expect Shapiro to attack the problem in the offseason. Instead, he was seduced into thinking that any offensive woes were magically solved by the temporary spark provided by rookie Asdrubal Cabrera. When Cabrera became just another struggling sophomore and no one else stepped into to fill the breach, the Indians offensive woes returned with a vengeance. To date, the Indians have scored two or fewer runs in 27 games. The resulting record is hardly a surprise.

Listening to Indians’ broadcaster, Tom Hamilton, try his best to put lipstick on this pig of a season as the team was losing to San Francisco 4-1 on Wednesday evening, what struck me was how he touted the recent signings of Tony Graffanino and Juan Rincon as evidence that Shapiro is trying to improve the team. Hamilton’s a team employee and it’s hard to begrudge him the occasional suck-up to his employer. But seriously, if signing these two is evidence of a team working hard to improve, then it’s not hard to figure why things have gone wrong: management is nuts.

What those signings really signal is that Shapiro’s never-ending quest to find chicken salad among the chicken droppings continues unabated by prior failures. Shapiro has become Fred Sanford, always looking for gold among the junk because once or twice he spotted something shiny under a pile of discarded jock straps. Soon enough though Graffinino and Rincon are poised to join the likes of Trot Nixon, Roberto Hernandez, Aaron Fultz, Keith Foulke, Aaron Boone, Todd Hollandsworth, Brady Anderson, Jason Johnson, Lou Merloni, Alex Cora, Chris Magruder, Chad Paronto, Shane Spencer, Jeff D’Amico, Jose Jimenez, Rick White, Scott Stewart, Ricky Gutierrez, Jason Bere and Scott Sauerbeck on the island of misfit toys. And those are just the charter members. There are several other potential members on the current roster and others still to be signed by Shapiro.

If Shapiro is really hell-bent on improving this team, he must lose his fascination with reclamation projects and utility players. He also must lose his fascination with building a team for a just-out-of-reach future and focus much more intensely on the presence. But first and foremost, Shapiro needs to lose his fascination with the rose-colored glasses he wears in the off-season. They’re giving the fans a migraine headache.

The Hole in the Middle

Before the start of last season, Mark Shapiro, the Indians general manager, said that a key barometer of the Indians offensive success would be whether or not shortstop Jhonny Peralta regained his rookie season hitting stroke. It seemed like a stretch. This year, not so much.

It’s not that Peralta himself holds the key’s to the Indians offense. It’s just that banner years from Peralta, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore and even Ryan Garko may be even more critical to the Indians returning to the post season than whether Fausto Carmona and C.C. Sabathia can apply the same kind of pitching one-two punch. With designated hitter Travis Hafner continuing to perform like Travis Bickle at the plate, the Indians can ill afford anything less from Peralta et al. than they got last season. They likely will need even more.

If the team that Shapiro has constructed is going to overtake the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees or any of the other pretenders/contenders in the American League, it can’t afford another season with a hole in the middle of the lineup that Hafner was from May through the playoffs last season. That means that the Indians either fix what’s been ailing Hafner, they get even better production from the rest of the lineup or they find another answer. Likely, it will be a combination of all three.

By all accounts, Hafner is a good guy and he works hard. He seems to have an even demeanor with a player’s perspective on his 2007 season, which is to say that his memory is short. That’s all good. But what Indians fans want to know but don’t is whether any of that will translate into a better 2008 season. Good luck getting an answer to that.

Shapiro thinks he’s putting salve on the wound by downplaying Hafner’s struggles, suggesting that Hafner had a decent 2007 season, just not a great one. Manager Eric Wedge probably thinks he has the back of his player and the respect of the rest of the team by proxy when he publicly claims he’s not worried about Hafner. Hitting coach Derek Shelton probably thinks he’s being helpful by minimizing Hafner’s struggles, reducing them to a rather ubiquitous “he was just a little off.” But these three sat through the same season everyone else did and know in their heart of hearts that Hafner didn’t have a decent season, they should be worried, and they need to find some greater insight if this problem is going to get fixed.

For the most part, the Cleveland media seems to be buying the company line regarding Hafner, probably because Hafner is that aforementioned “good guy” that you really want to see succeed. But pitcher Cliff Lee is a good guy and that didn’t stop the media from burying him early last season after taking their cue from Indians management even though Lee was essentially the pitching equivalent of Hafner last season. Maybe the answer really does lie in a little extra time in the batting cage for Hafner, but so far that doesn’t seem to be working all that well either.

Just a cursory look at the spring training stats tells you that not much has changed in Pronkville. His preseason has been pretty much a microcosm of his 2007 season. Hafner started off well enough in February only to trail so much that by the end of spring training he was back to swinging wildly at pitches in the dirt. In his last 10 spring games, Hafner hit .156 with one home run and three RBI. If you believe in trends, as Shapiro and his cadre of statistical wonks tend to, there aren’t enough Rolaids in the world to ease the queasy stomachs that Hafner currently is foisting upon them.

One of the more popular excuses that have been made for Hafner for his dismal 2007 is that he was just a slump. That’s possible, but it was far longer and 10 times deeper than what most would otherwise consider a slump. Last April, Hafner hit .338 with 16 RBI, five home runs, and two doubles. His on-base percentage was .471, his slugging percentage was .550 and his On Base plus Slugging Percentage was a more than respectable 1.021. Those numbers compared favorably and, in most cases were better than his career numbers.

For the next four months, Hafner turned into Gorman Thomas, but with less power. In May, he hit .228, which actually was better by 10 points than his June. In July and August he averaged right around .251. But beyond just simple hitting, Hafner wasn’t producing runs. His power numbers were down, way down, but that only tells part of the story. With runners in scoring position, where someone like Hafner really is supposed to earn his keep, he was an embarrassing .226. That’s a full 50 points under his career average.

Even more telling is the so-called “clutch” statistics. With two outs and runners in scoring position, Hafner had 15 hits in 70 at bats for a .214 average. Though he had 15 walks that was confined mostly to the first half of the season when pitchers were more careful out of respect for his history. As the season wore on, careful wasn’t even part of the equation. Hafner had 65 walks in the first half of the season, 37 in the second half.

Hafner was only marginally better last season when the game was late and close (defined as a plate appearance in the 7th inning or later with the Indians either tied, ahead by one run or with the tying run on deck). But only marginally, hitting .253. Pick a statistic that matters and across the board Hafner was 30 to 40 points below his career averages in each of those categories.

In a way, I feel like Owen Wilson’s character in “The Wedding Crashers” when he was guessing the contents of wedding presents. I can go on all day like this. Hafner with the count 0-1 hit .238. With the count 0-2, he hit .176. In fact, the best Hafner hit with the count in the pitcher’s favor was .244 when the count was 1-2. That may not be any great surprise for any hitter, but again in each case it was still lower than Hafner’s career averages. In fact, it’s hard to find a measure by which Hafner didn’t significantly regress last season.

While this may seem like so much piling on, it’s really meant to emphasize that what Hafner experienced wasn’t any mere slump, the apologists notwithstanding. The fact that it has continued unabated during this spring only makes it more troubling. But beyond the impact on Hafner, it also deeply affected the rest of the lineup. There were lengthy stretches last season in which the Indians looked like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at the plate. As Hafner so often went, so did the rest of the order.

The question then is what’s really being done to fix what to this point is being written off as an anomaly. Again, to hear it from the Indians front office, not much. The party line is that there is nothing physically wrong with Hafner, but that same party does acknowledge that Hafner has a gimpy right elbow, enough so that the Indians do not even consider him to be in the mix at first base, except during some inter-league games. You don’t need to play a doctor or detective on TV to suggest that checking whether Hafner has changed his mechanics, even just a hair, to compensate for the lingering pain might be a good spot to start looking for some answers.

In a way, Hafner’s situation is like the person suffering from a pain in his shoulder that a team of doctor’s can’t isolate. Eventually, someone figures it out. Likewise, if Shelton and Wedge aren’t seeing something, then the Indians need to get some more opinions. A player doesn’t build a career with the kind of numbers Hafner had until 2007 only to suddenly go deeply south. There’s a reason for everything and right now the Indians entire strategy seems to be built around hope, as in hope that the pain will subside.

The Indians did win 96 games last season, tied for most in the league. By any measure, that’s impressive particularly considering it was despite Hafner. But for anyone watching the Red Sox playoff series last year, it presented an interesting picture. There were three keys to that series for the Indians: Sabathia, Carmona and Hafner. They didn’t need all three to play well in order to win, but neither could they withstand the ineffectiveness of all three. Unfortunately, that’s what they got.

The Indians are on the precipice of doing something great. The impending loss of Sabathia after the season only highlights how critical it is for the Indians to take advantage of the open window in front of them. But if they don’t want to spend the post-season watching someone else celebrate again, their choices are few. Get Hafner righted or get a Plan B. Another season of watching and hoping is not an option.

The End of the Beginning or...

Cleveland Indians fans, having had a few days now to fully absorb their latest disappointment, have been left to wonder whether the loss to the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.

The popular theory is that the 2007 Indians, particularly the version that stormed its way to the best record in the American League with a late season surge, is a young team on the come with even better days on the horizon. There certainly is enough young talent to justify the perception, which only suggests that the loss brought merely a sudden end to what looks to be a good two or three year run, at least.

But whether that ultimately turns out to be the case is far less certain than it might otherwise appear on the surface.

The problem with baseball economics as practiced in markets like Cleveland is that every season is ultimately a crapshoot. You enter with a hundred questions that only money, properly allocated, can solve. The problem, of course, that major league baseball is not played on a level field. A lack of revenue sharing and a salary cap ensures that’s the case. Consequently the Indians are not ever going to be funded in the same way that George Steinbrenner funds the Yankees. In the first place, the Dolans don’t have that kind of money. In the second place, they don’t have the same inclination toward deficit spending.

Given this double whammy, which is experienced in other cities as well, fans can never be quite sure what kind of team they’ll have entering a given season. Whereas the Yankees or the Red Sox, for example, can keep an already good team intact by simply spending, they can also go out and acquire whatever else they need, unconstrained are they by such pedestrian concepts as budgets or prudence. The Red Sox paid over $50 million just for the right to then pay Daisuke Matsuzaka another $50+ million in salary and didn’t give up any player in the process. It may be an insane way to run a business, especially when you consider the Red Sox were already deficit spending to the tune of $18.5 million a year before that deal, but it’s the reality in which major league baseball operates.

Of course not every investment turns out particularly well, but a bad decision in Cleveland can have tragic consequences. In Boston or New York, it’s often a rounding error. That’s why teams like the Indians, the Colorado Rockies, the Oakland As, and several others, are forced to rely on young talent far enough from free agency to play for minimal salaries to fill out the bulk of the roster and then spend what limited funds they have left on a few veteran pieces to round out the team.

The problem with this formula is that it can be very volatile for reasons almost completely out of anyone’s control. For example, the progression of a young player is not always a straight line. Sometimes there are setbacks, long stretches lasting weeks or months when the player looks overmatched. It takes time and experience to understand and then execute the adjustments that must be made in order to deliver on potential. As for the kinds of free agents that economically-challenged teams end up signing, mostly it’s based on hope. In Cleveland, for example, we’ve seen an endless parade of free agents over the last few years who might as well been inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys, banished there by their former clubs for ineffectiveness, injury histories or both. Some of these signings work, many do not. For every Joe Borowski or Kevin Millwood, there’s an Aaron Boone or a Roberto Hernandez.

If you’re unconvinced how truly volatile the formula is as practiced in Cleveland, just look at the last three seasons. The 2005 Indians finished 93-69. A final week collapse is all that stood between then and the playoffs. A team on the come? Well, it didn’t quite work that way in 2006 when the Indians were worse by a full 14 games! A team on the decline? Well, it didn’t work that way either as the Indians of 2007 improved by 18 games!

The pattern that emerges, really, is that which is dictated by the economics of the times, seasons defined by how well the homegrown talent progressed and the fractured free agents performed.

In truth, offensively the 2006 team was far better than the 2007 team. It had a much higher average (.280 to .268), a better on-base percentage (.349 to .343), scored more runs (870 to 811) and had more home runs (196 to 178). The difference, as everyone knows, was pitching and particularly the bullpen and particularly the middle relievers. The 2005 team, on the other hand, was similar offensively as this year’s team. Again, where they succeeded and the 2006 failed was pitching and particularly the bullpen and particularly the middle relievers.

When GM Mark Shapiro decided, for example, not to sign Bobby Howry going into the 2006 season, he cut the legs out of the bullpen. The young talent did not perform as hoped and the free agents were a disaster.

On the other hand, the 2007 team was aided immeasurably by relatively homegrown talent such as Rafael Betancourt, Rafael Perez, and later Tom Mastny and Jensen Lewis, performing beyond expectations at the same time that the free agent acquisitions of Joe Borowski and Aaron Fultz were doing likewise.

But in the larger sense, the story of these teams was simply a case of one year the formula working another year, not so much. That’s why it’s so difficult to project where the Indians really stand on the heels of this past season. All this year’s stability does is ensure that the Indians are likely to go into next season relatively intact in the bullpen and hope it works out just as well. The flaky nature of relief pitching, particularly when dominated by such young talent, makes that far from a sure thing.

It’s why, ultimately, Shapiro will find himself tinkering. Despite his 45 saves, would anyone be surprised if Shapiro decided he could do without the rollercoaster ride that is Borowski and instead went with Betancourt, particularly when Betancourt seems to be developing into the same kind of lockdown reliever as the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera, a pitcher who, when he has to, can come in the game in the eighth inning and still get the save in the ninth. But if Betancourt finds himself in the closer role, can Lewis or Mastny pitch as effectively over an entire season as Betancourt did this year? Will that force Shapiro to sign another middle reliever or hope someone else also emerges from the minors?

The questions, though, are hardly confined to the bullpen. Is Fausto Carmona the real deal or a one-year wonder? Who is the real Cliff Lee anyway? Can Paul Byrd really be counted on for 15 wins next season? Will Jake Westbrook return to the kind of form that earned him that huge contract? And what about C.C. Sabathia? He is entering his free agent year and decisions need to be made. No player has yet given Cleveland the “hometown discount” whatever that means and there’s no reason to believe that Sabathia will be the first. Besides, do the Indians even want to keep Sabathia beyond next season? There is talent just waiting its turn in the minors that works much more cheaply. But will they be as effective? What’s the right trade-off, 13 wins at minimum wage vs. 20 wins at $1 million per win?

You could spin yourself into knots just thinking of all the questions that are dictated by the Indians economics, despite how relatively tranquil and stable things otherwise seem with this team. And you can be sure, too, that’s just what Shapiro’s doing. How these turn out, however, are the key to whether or not the Indians are entering into another golden age for the difference between right and wrong is the difference between the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

Making Moves

In baseball, it’s always best not to try and draw too many conclusions from any one game. But a series, particularly a four-game series, is a decent gauge of the state of a team. That being the case, there was much to draw from the Indians recently completed home series against the surging Boston Red Sox.

Because the series featured so little that was positive for the Indians, discussing what went right first seems appropriate, if only to get it out of the way. First, Franklin Gutierrez continues to show he belongs in the major leagues both with his glove and his bat. If that means less playing time for Trot Nixon, all the better. Second, the only other positive to be gleaned were the performances of C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona. Each proved that he can well handle the best the league can throw at him. Sabathia, in his 1-0 loss to Daisuke Matsuzaka, was as much a tough luck loser as Carmona, in his 1-0 victory over Josh Beckett, was a good luck winner. But the bigger picture was that when you throw four of the best pitchers in baseball on the field, the hitting is going to suffer on both sides. And it did. Offense was in scarce supply for two games that ended up being two of the most compelling games of the season anyway.

But when you push back from those two games, the series also showed that if the playoffs started tomorrow, they’d be over quickly. The Indians, as the wild card, would be matched against the Red Sox and the gap between the two seems significantly wider than, say, the one between the Indians and the Kansas City Royals.

That may have to do, in large part, to one of the biggest disappointments about the series, the performances of pitchers Jake Westbrook and Cliff Lee. It’s become apparent to everyone, but particularly their teammates, that when either Westbrook or Lee pitches there is little chance of a victory. On Monday night, Westbrook’s first inning meltdown was eerily reminiscent of Lee’s performance against Texas a few nights earlier. The conventional wisdom is that if you’re going to give up runs, give them up early in order to give the offense a chance. But that wisdom is seriously being challenged in the case of both Westbrook and Lee as they are giving up runs early and often.

Thursday night, Lee was able to get through the first inning unscathed, but it proved to be only a tease. In the second inning, Manny Ramirez sent Lee’s first pitch of the inning to dead center field. When it finally landed about 20 minutes later it measured as the third longest home run in Jacobs Field history, which seems dubious because it disappeared behind the trees that sit well behind the center field wall and was probably hard to accurately measure. Put it this way, you’re more likely to see Britney Spears singing opera at the Met than to ever see a ball hit further than the one Ramirez hit against Lee.

And that was just the beginning. From that point, Lee couldn’t have been more ineffective if he was throwing batting practice, and often it looked like he was, except for the fact that most batting practice pitchers get the ball over the plate more often. If Red Sox hitters weren’t actually sending the ball screaming back up the middle, they were standing with the bat on their shoulders watching one ball after another land about a foot short of the plate before casually walking to first. Mercifully, Lee was finally gone after failing to record an out in the fifth.

Which leads to another disappointment about the series, the performance of the Indians bullpen. Tom Mastny’s entry into the game Thursday in the seventh inning was the microcosm. Jason Standford was hardly dominating after taking over for Lee and was spent after giving up singles to Jason Varitek and Coco Crisp in the seventh. Mastny came on and Willy Mo Pena, who was barely hitting .200 at the time (and was actually under .200 when the game started but got “healthy” feasting on Lee in the first few innings) sent the first pitch over the left field wall for a three-run home run. A good many in the crowd, meaning most of those who were not Red Sox fans, began the slow walk to the parking lot thereafter, eschewing the opportunity to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballpark” during a seventh inning stretch that seemed, at that point, still hours away.

There will be a tendency by the apologists among us to see some positive in the fact that the Indians did score nine runs Thursday night. But the fact is the Indians offense scores runs in the same way that Joe Carter used to collect RBI, often when they don’t matter.

For example, despite Lee’s intent to put the game as far out of reach as possible, the Indians were actually only one swing of the bat from tying the game in the fifth. When Ryan Garko came to bat with the bases loaded and four runs already in, a grand slam would have tied the game at nine. That’s a tall order, particularly for a team like this with an uncanny inability to get hits when they’d have the most impact, but it was doable. Unfortunately, Garko flied out to center field and the rally was over.

Ultimately, of course, the Indians did score nine runs, just not when it would have meant something. A Garko slam and the game played from that point forward would have been significantly different. For one, Stanford would never have started the seventh inning. Even if Mastny would have come in at that point, he’s much more effective starting an inning than coming in with runners on base. More likely, though, Rafael Bentancourt comes into the game and he would have stood a much better chance of shutting down Boston than anyone else in the bullpen at that point. But if there is anything else positive to be taken from all of this, it’s that the good arms in the bullpen should be well rested for the start of the Minnesota series.

What the series revealed is that right now anyway even if the Indians can hold on to their position and make the playoffs, they have significant holes to fill before they can be considered serious threats to win a World Series.

Going into the Minnesota series and unless GM Mark Shapiro moves either Lee or Westbrook, 40% of the rotation is reliable, 40% of it is unreliable, and the remaining 20%, in the form of Paul Byrd, is giving up nearly 4.5 runs per game. The question is what to do about the 40% that is unreliable. Barring a trade, manager Eric Wedge is going to have to consider moving either Lee or Westbrook to the bullpen. Of the two, Lee seems to be the more likely candidate, although a sinker ball pitcher like Westbrook, who gets a lot of ground ball outs, might be an interesting choice for just that reason.

The truth though, is that though Lee has more victories than Westbrook, he seems further away from returning to form. Frustration seemed to ooze from every pore on Lee Thursday night. He takes to the mound expecting bad things to happen and the prophecy is fulfilled more times than not these days. He may privately grouse about a shaky defense Thursday night that could have helped him out a bit more, the truth is that given the way he’s pitching it’s no wonder the players behind him are back on their heals. If Lee isn’t traded, it would be a mistake for him to take his next turn in the rotation.

The same is true, unfortunately, for Travis Hafner. Right now, he’s really hurting the team. As detailed earlier this week (see article here) Hafner’s overall batting average isn’t just down, so too is his situational average. He’s not hitting with the bases loaded and he’s not hitting with runners in scoring position and two outs. In fact, he’s not hitting with runners in scoring position, irrespective of the number of outs. His lack of production, given his position in the lineup, is the main reason that the Indians offense appears so anemic. Put it this way, as lost as Josh Barfield has looked at the plate all season, he’s got the same average as Hafner.

For Wedge, he has very limited options regarding Hafner but that shouldn’t stop him from making a move anyway. First, he can put Hafner on the shelf for three or four games in a row, perhaps more, and alternate Garko and Victor Martinez as the DH. This would require more playing time for Kelly Shoppach but in the near term it’s hard to see how this hurts the Indians either offensively or defensively. Alternatively or possibly in combination with, Wedge can move Hafner lower in the line-up. Switching him with Garko might be a good move near term. Either way, or maybe a third way, Hafner can’t keep hitting in the middle of the lineup while he struggles like this.

The trading deadline is looming and it appears as though the Indians are poised for Kenny Lofton’s third tour of duty. But that move is hardly an answer to what is currently hurting this team most. Even if a more significant move can be made it won’t be the complete answer anyway. Whatever else they do, it’s become increasingly clear that Wedge and/or Shapiro need to re-deploy some of the players they currently have in order get different and hopefully better results.