Another Chance to Get It Wrong

Major League Baseball is at the forefront of professional sports in ridding its game of illegal drugs, just ask them. Rob Manfredi, executive vice president in charge of labor relations said as much in commenting on what he termed further improvement to what already is professional sport’s best drug testing policy, at least according to Manfredi.

What prompted this most recent self-congratulatory nod was the announcement that Major League Baseball and the players’ union had reached still another agreement regarding its drug testing policy. As reported by ESPN.com, Manfredi said “Going into this negotiation, the commissioner was 100 percent correct that we had the best program in professional sports. These changes just solidify that kind of premier leadership position in my view.”

Hardly. Under the guise of strengthening the current drug testing program, the players union, under the misguided leadership of Donald Fehr, once again outbargained management by using Commissioner Bud Selig’s paper tiger of threat to suspend players named in the Mitchell Report against him by giving MLB the sleeves off their vest. Fehr ensured that no player named in the Mitchell Report would be subject to punishment. To get that concession all they did was have to negotiate around the fringes of a seriously-flawed drug problem that only its authors think is world class.

Nonetheless, ESPN’s major league baseball shill Buster Olney bought the party line when he said on Friday that only an idealist would continue to find problems with baseball’s drug testing policies. If by idealist Olney means anyone with a brain, then a bunch of us are guilty as charged. Olney and his ilk may be weary from the distraction of having to report about baseball’s drug problems, but that is no excuse for not holding baseball accountable for its thumb-sucking on this issue.

As for Manfredi, he probably never really read the Mitchell Report or the various and sundry articles and opinions of real experts who have an opinion that if not 180° different than Manfredi’s is at least 178. See, that’s the problem with Major League Baseball. It’s never shown leadership under Selig in much of anything, particularly when it comes to ridding its sport of drugs. Virtually every action it has taken of any consequence regarding performance-enhancing drugs, including this most recent amendment to the policy, has been under pressure from an outside source. Left to its own indifference, MLB would have simply let Fehr continue to control the dialogue. It’s what it did until Congress showed up.

Undeniably, the latest iteration of baseball’s drug policy is an improvement, but that’s only because it would have been impossible to take a step backward. As I noted just a few months back (see here), when the denizens of baseball first appeared before Congress after the Mitchell Report was issued, Selig took a rather meaningless “bucks stops here” approach given how performance-enhancing drugs were allowed to flourish under his watch. He didn’t so much fall on his sword as shrug his shoulders, which is his wont.

At that Congressional hearing, Selig and Fehr were grilled about some of the more obvious flaws in their program, a few of which they addressed in the new agreement, but not fully. For example, although baseball began banning and testing for amphetamines in 2006, they opened up a therapeutic use exemption that the players are now exploiting with impunity. In 2006, 28 players were able to find their version of Samatha Stevens’ Dr. Bombay to write them a prescription for Ritalin, the amphetamine of choice among discriminating drug users in baseball. In 2007, that number jumped to 107, a number which Congressman John Tierney of Massachusetts labeled as eight times the general population.

Manfredi, responding to that report, seemed flummoxed as much as clueless, claiming he had no idea why the number would jump so precipitously. If Manfredi is really that unsure of how that kind of jump could occur, then he seems uniquely unfit to be in charge of labor relations at the local Dairy Mart, let alone all of Major League Baseball.

Surprisingly, the latest amendment to the drug testing policy didn’t even address this issue. Here’s predicting that Manfredi will be equally surprised when the number of players using the therapeutic-use exemption continues to skyrocket in relation to the additional drugs banned under the amended policy.

One area that the parties did address were the embarrassingly low number of off-season drug tests that occurred, although slightly. Until this latest deal, baseball was permitted to conduct only 60 total off-season drug tests among the 1300 or so players. No need to call the MIT math department to run the calculations on the odds of being tested under that formula. Under the amended program, that number jumps to 375 tests in a three-year period, or 125 a year. That basically doubles the number off yearly off-season tests, theoretically doubling the odds of a player getting tested. That all sounds good but when you’re starting with 60 tests, doubling it is hardly marked improvement. The chance of being tested in the off-season still isn’t likely to scare any drug-using player straight.

Another key flaw in the previous drug testing program that was addressed, although not completely, was the fact that it was conducted in-house with the ability of either management or the union to fire the supposedly independent administrator at any time. Baseball still didn’t move the program to an independent outside agency, as recommended in the Mitchell Report, but did at least protect its administrator by adding a “just cause” provision before his removal by either side.

It sounds good, but in reality all the union needs to do in order to dump the administrator for one more to its liking is to trump up a reason to get rid of the administrator that goes beyond the current standard of not liking the cut of his jib. How hard can that be? After all, this is the same sport that pretty much accepted that the Indians’ Paul Byrd needed his dentist to prescribe for him human growth hormone in order to address a pituitary problem. Apparently Byrd’s gynecologist was unavailable.

But before we get too overridden with cynicism, let’s remember that baseball and its union decided that each of the top 200 draft prospects in the annual amateur draft would be subject to drug testing. If a player tests positive, he’s eligible for selection. If a player refuses, he can’t be selected. Under that rubric, why would a player ever refuse? Presumably, a positive test might impact a prospect’s draft position, but remember you’re dealing with major league teams here. Character, including prior drug use, is much further down the list of considerations in drafting or signing a player, above legal blindness, well below on base percentage or velocity.

Not surprisingly, the experts aren’t satisfied with baseball’s latest drug turn. According to the Associated Press, Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s committee that determines the banned substances list sad “This still falls significantly short of the mark, no matter what internal bureaucracy they've patched together.” Wadler was particularly critical of the fact that baseball’s policies still do not call for blood testing for human growth hormone and for not turning the testing over to an outside agency.

But Wadler, too, is apparently just some wide-eyed idealist because if Major League Baseball says it has the best testing program in professional sports than it must be true. So drinks all around. Kudos to Selig, Manfredi and Fehr. It is cause for celebration, particularly if you’re a major league ballplayer. They should be gratified to know that while their leaders may not have materially improved their regrettable history with coddling drug use in their sport, they did manage to insure that as long as they’re in charge, every player will remain a drug suspect.

The Truth Squad

If you follow a team long enough, there are just some truths you know. They may not be things you can necessarily prove or even things that the team would readily admit. But you know them nonetheless. And most of the time, unfortunately, the truths are as harsh as they are bitter.

When Art Modell owned the Cleveland Browns, for example, you just knew that the team would find a way to fall short in big games. Maybe it was because Modell tried to hard to bring a winner to town and thus misallocated his dwindling resources or maybe because he was too impetuous or maybe it was a little of both, but Browns fans knew they were always going to be disappointed under Modell one way or another. His decision to move the team to Baltimore was just the crowning blow.

With the Cleveland Indians these days and under this management, the list seems to be growing ever longer. First up is closer Joe Borowski. Irrespective of the fact that he saved 45 games last season, Indians fans know it would be a mistake to rely on him. They literally cringe at the thought of his getting the ball in a crucial game seven.

USA Today on Wednesday ran a feature on Borowski and Todd Jones, the Detroit Tigers closer, both castoffs of the Tampa Bay Rays and somewhat twin sons of different mothers. The point is that neither is an elite closer by conventional standards, which is the key to the fans indifference to their accomplishments.

According to Indians pitching coach Carl Willis, Borowski apparently has lost some velocity on a fastball that wasn’t all that fast to begin with. Whether or not that is alarming is a matter of context. Borowski, like Jones, doesn’t rely on heat. He relies on location and disrupting a hitter’s timing in order to get outs. He’s been relatively successful in that regard, but with him until the final out is actually registered you’re never really it ever will.

The situation with Borowoski actually reveals another truth that Indians fans really know. No matter what manager Eric Wedge or general manager Mark Shapiro might say to the contrary, you just know they’ve never really had much confidence in Borowski either. In fact, you really get the sense that the worst thing about last season to Shapiro and Wedge was not losing to the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series but that Borowski led the league in saves. It kept them from looking elsewhere in the offseason. The USA Today story just highlights why they lack confidence in Borowski and in that, though, they’re not alone. As the USA Today story notes, both Borowski and Jones have been released twice.

The fact that Borowski wasn’t brought in the close out the Indians lone win in Anaheim earlier this week was chalked up by Wedge as more related to starting pitcher Jake Westbrook’s pitch count than the fact that Borowski had colossal meltdown the night before. Sure it was. Which brings up another truth, this one regarding Wedge.

Despite his age, Wedge is an old school by-the-book manager. The next time he goes with a gut instinct over what the Big Book of Managerial Strategy tells him to do will be the first time. That’s why his not using Borowski the other night was so significant in terms of underscoring his lack of confidence in his closer.

Any Indians fan can tick off at least a dozen instances off the top of their heads when a more instinctual manager than Wedge would have stuck with a pitcher with a hot hand over bringing in the next reliever in line simply because he was left handed as was the next batter. This isn’t a knock on Wedge necessarily so much as to highlight the disingenuous excuse he gave for not using Borowski. Fans aren’t that stupid, nor would they even necessarily disagree with Wedge or Shapiro about Borowski. So why sugarcoat it? It’s almost as if Wedge is afraid to reveal that there is more to him than the sum of his parts.

Just as Indians fan know that the support of Borowski inside the front office is shaky, they also know that Shapiro will continue to fall short in his quest for a more classic closer. It’s what he does. As important as that role is, Shapiro’s priorities have always trended more toward starting pitching and middle relief. When you’re wrestling with the kind of budget Shapiro has to work with each season, filling out the roster becomes a matter of priorities that all can’t get filled. Invariably, Shapiro will talk himself into spending money elsewhere even as he craves the next Goose Gossage.

Another thing that Indians fans just know is that Shapiro and Wedge have a preference for veteran role players rather over young players, almost irrespective of pedigree. To an outsider, this may seem like a ridiculous proposition and for proof they’ll point to center fielder Grady Sizemore and even second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera. You can argue this one all day with the guy on the barstool next to you if you want, but Indians fans would tell you and they’d be right that both Sizemore and Cabrera were reluctant additions that have worked out.

More typical of the kinds of players Shapiro and Wedge are more comfortable with are Jason Michaels, David Dellucci. At this point, most fans can no longer distinguish between Michaels and Dellucci. For the record, Michaels is the one with the lifetime .277 average, Dellucci is the one with the .260 average. Both are what might be termed “nice” players, but neither is anything special nor will they be capable of sporadic good play. Either is the kind of player that tends to fill out a major league roster, but having both of them isn’t exactly a luxury. It’s more an indictment.

Watching Wedge put both in the lineup recently is the quintessential Wedge being Wedge. Rather than watch a young player like Franklin Gutierrez struggle Wedge apparently much prefers watching established mediocrity do the same thing. Maybe they’re good in the clubhouse. At least that’s the excuse fans were fed when it came to Aaron Boone and Trot Nixon.

Another place this kind of veteran over youth thinking is playing itself out is in the Tribe’s fourth starter, Paul Byrd. Whether either Shapiro or Wedge want to admit it publicly, the fans know that Byrd is pretty much done. He can still get hitters out for the most part and will still give the team a bunch of innings, but what’s really the point?

Byrd was 15-8 last season, which is somewhat like Borowski getting 45 saves, so the case for not using Byrd isn’t easily made on the surface. But just as there are always those pitchers that never seem to get run support, Byrd was one of those pitchers that always seemed to throw on the days the Tribe’s offense came alive. His 4.38 ERA last season wasn’t particularly impressive so something else must have gone right.

What the fans really know about the Byrd situation, indeed the whole veteran presence thing that Shapiro likes to tout, is that this is a budget issue masquerading as a philosophical imperative. If there is one thing Shapiro has specialized in since he became general manager, it’s taking a flyer on some other team’s previously injured castoffs. They cost less than premier free agents and thus the risk/reward equation is tilted much more favorably toward the Indians. This is all well and good, for as far as it goes, but when the roster starts filling up with these kinds of players at the expense of developing the prospects the team otherwise highly touts, it gets a tad frustrating to the average fan.

But for all these truths that Indians fans believe are self-evident, there is only one question they’re really interested in having answered and that is when, if ever, the skies will clear, the seas will part, and they’ll get their World Series pennant. It’s never easily answered, of course, but a good start will certainly come when the Indians stop living up to the truths that aren’t so much setting them free as holding them back.

Is It That Simple?

If nothing else, you have to give Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro credit for one thing, he certainly knows his team. Going into the season, Shapiro told anyone who would listen that as shortstop Jhonny Peralta goes, so goes the team. Nearly one-quarter into the season, Shapiro couldn’t possibly be more dead-on.

It hardly seems a coincidence that Sunday, Peralta hit his 10th home run of the season and the Indians won their 10th series of the season. In each case, both Peralta and the Indians are months ahead of where they were last season. Peralta didn’t hit his 10th home run until the 88th game last year while the Indians didn’t win their 10th season until mid-August. Can it really be that simple?

Perhaps it is that simple, but if you scratch below the surface, the resurgence of Peralta may be the most visible sign of the turnaround but it is hardly the only reason or even the most critical.

Start with Paul Byrd. Last season, his first with the Tribe, Byrd was the sort of fringe free agent whose signing hardly raised an eyebrow among the fans. Perhaps it was due to circumstances beyond his control. Remember, the Indians had diverted most everyone’s attention by pursuing higher visibility free agents to anchor the back of the bullpen while alienating the reliable but scary closer, Bob Wickman, leaving him to hang in the balance. In the meantime, the Indians couldn’t quite find enough room in the budget for Bob Howry, a key set-up man, showed virtually no interest in re-signing Kevin Millwood after he stabilized the starting rotation the year before, and let Scott Elarton, an iffy fourth or fifth starter, at best, to leave for the pastures of Kansas City. This allowed Byrd to fly a bit under the radar.

But not completely. Tribe fans were told that Byrd was the kind of player, like Millwood, whose steady presence, if lesser pedigree, would too bring stability to a young starting staff. In particular, Byrd was a control pitcher who kept his teams in the game by consistently throwing strikes. But things didn’t quite work out that way for either Byrd or the team. Byrd was up and down from opening day on. Had he not been the recipient of great offensive support, his record would have been far worse than the mediocre 10-9 it was. Byrd was hit hard and often, particularly early in the season. His vaunted control simply wasn’t there.

But as the season wore on, Byrd slowly got better, just not decidedly so. His ERA, which started off in the 10+ range ended at 4.88. Still even with this improvement this was second highest ERA in his career, the highest he had in his last 10 years, and by almost a full run! Peralta, as an everyday player, may have been a more visible target of fan wrath last season but Byrd was no less ineffective.

This year, Byrd has completely turned it around and is the pitcher Shapiro originally envisioned. After Sunday’s win, in which Byrd went eight innings, he is now 4-1. His ERA is 3.55 and he has pitched at least six innings in every start. His control has been phenomenal. He has walked only three batters all season and two of those came in his first official start against Chicago on April 14, a game the Indians won 4-0. In his two no-decisions, he’s given up only three earned runs. Peralta, as an everyday player, may be a more visible reason for the resurgence of the Indians this year, but Byrd has been no less effective.

Next is Casey Blake. At times this season, Blake has reminded fans of Aaron Boone last year, which isn’t a good thing. Early in the season, Blake simply wasn’t hitting. On April 10, following the fourth game of the year, his average was .312. Eleven days later, he was hitting .188. By May 2nd, his average had climbed to .202. But since then, he’s been on a virtual tear (for him). Following yesterday’s game he’s hitting .255, which is essentially equal to his career total of .260.

Though Blake will never be much of an offensive force for the club, what is interesting is that he is hitting .282 batting in the second slot in the order this year. He’s also hitting .267 since being reinserted as the regular third baseman. In the field, Blake’s defense at third base has been terrific, particularly for a defensively-challenged team. Marte, in 13 games, had committed 4 errors. Blake has appeared at third base in more than twice as many games—32--this year and only has four errors. His fielding average is .945, a significant improvement over Marte’s .857. These statistics are the reason the Indians waited until the last possible minute to bring Marte back from his rehabilitation assignment. Simply, Blake, for all his shortcomings, has stabilized the lineup thus far in a way that Marte, whose upside far exceeds Blake, couldn’t.

Next up is Fausto Carmona. His pitching thus far has been the biggest, most pleasant surprise for Indians fans in years, particularly after the way he imploded in such a spectacular fashion last year when he was used in the closer role following the trade of Wickman. This truly is where luck comes in and is why, for all the statistics Shapiro and his staff may want to crunch, success is so difficult to predict. If not for the early season injury to Cliff Lee, followed closely by the eerily similar injury to Jake Westbrook, Carmona would be toiling at Triple A. But since losing his first start on April 13, in which he didn’t make it out of the fifth inning of a game against the White Sox, Carmona has given up only eight earned runs in six starts, culminating in last week’s brilliant shutout of the Twins. When Westbrook returns, the guess is that Jeremy Sowers, who has been ineffective all season, will find his way back to Buffalo while Carmona finds himself pitching in the All Star game.

And if Carmona doesn’t find his way to the All Star game, C.C. Sabathia certainly will. He’s already 6-1 and has pitched at least six innings in every start. His ERA is 3.65. Though he has two no-decisions, the Indians ultimately prevailed in both of those games, meaning that the Tribe has won eight of the nine games he’s pitched. By almost any pitching measure, Sabathia is among the elite in the league this year. When it’s Sabathia’s turn in the rotation, opposing teams go into the game knowing that they are at a disadvantage. In fact, the only thing Sabathia has yet to solve is how to pitch in Oakland, which isn’t much of a problem given the unbalanced major league schedule, unless the Indians face Oakland in the playoffs. But most importantly, this season, more so than in any other, Sabathia has stepped up his performance and established a presence on the mound that the Indians simply haven’t had in years.

Finally, there is the bullpen which, along with defense, was last season’s Achilles’ heel. Last year, the Indians scored almost 90 more runs than they surrendered. Using the Pythagorean Won/Loss statistic as developed by Bill James and published on Baseball-Reference.com, that should have yielded a recorded of 89-73. As we know, the Tribe instead finished at 78-84 and it wasn’t because of the starting pitching, either. But this season the bullpen has made a remarkable turnaround, although the exploits of Fernando Cabrera of late are a source of some concern. Closer Joe Borowski has performed as good as Shapiro hoped and better than most fans have expected. He has 13 saves in 15 opportunities, even if his few meltdowns have been particularly ugly.

But the closer role wasn’t really the problem when it mattered last year as much as it was middle relief. Recall that early in the season the Wickman simply didn’t see many save opportunities. And when he left, well, the season was effectively over anyway and whatever save opportunities came the Indians way were an adventure, to say the least. But one of the more telling statistics about the relief pitching last year is that its earned run average was .4 more than the starting pitching, which isn’t where you want your relief pitching to be. This year, the bullpen’s ERA is now .4 of a run less, which is nearly a run per game difference over the course of a season. That may not seem like much until you consider two things. First, the Indians starting pitching is even better than last year and second, last season the Indians were 18-26 in one-run games while this season they are 8-4.

The remarkable thing about baseball though is that for all the sum of its parts that it really is, sometimes it really is as simple as one player. Maybe Jhonny Peralta is the bellweather for this franchise for this season as Shapiro suggests. Maybe. But the suspicion is that Shapiro knows better, which is why so much time was spent in the off season reconstructing the bullpen. But however Shapiro wants to sell it, the truth is that for Indians fans, they can take at least take decent comfort in knowing that should Peralta regress to the indifferent player on display last season, the Indians, with even better starting pitching and greatly improved middle relief, are much better positioned than last year to withstand such occurrence.

The Edge

It all started with a cold snap.

The miserable early season weather, which included an unprecedented snow-out of an entire week of games in Cleveland and has caused the Dolans all manner of financial losses at the box office and concession stands, may actually turn out to be the best thing that has happened to the Indians in a long, long time. It seems to have fostered an us vs. them attitude that has allowed the Indians to develop a competitive edge not typically seen under manager Eric Wedge and has pushed the Indians to a hot streak that started two weeks ago and has continued into early May.

But it wasn’t just the presence of snow and cold that did it. Breaking it down to a much finer point, the first person to get under this team’s skin was, ironically, one of the better-liked individuals in recent Indians history, Mike Hargrove. Hargrove, as manager of the Seattle mariners, became the human snow delay by essentially preventing Paul Byrd from pitching an abbreviated no-hitter on a truly miserable opening day. In retrospect, it may have been better for Hargrove and the rest of baseball if Byrd could have at least finished pitching to Jose Lopez.

Most recall, of course, that Byrd had a 1-2 count on Lopez when Hargrove sauntered out on the field to discuss the snow that was flying, again. Hargrove’s sublimely-timed visit and the ensuing heated discussion allowed the intensity of the snow to pick up just enough that home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez and crew chief Rick Reed were forced to call for another delay. Ultimately this led to the game being called when the weather didn’t much improve. The game, which was to start at 4 p.m. was officially called at 8:41 p.m. The Indians lost a sure victory and Byrd lost a probable, though severely truncated, no hitter. But in the process, an attitude began to develop.

The way the rest of that weekend played out only allowed this attitude to further percolate. There were endless questions from the media, locally and nationally, to Byrd and Wedge and others about what took place, particularly given the perception that Hargrove was responsible for what took place. While Wedge and GM Mark Shapiro were appropriately politically correct in addressing Hargrove’s antics, Byrd was less gracious. In one of his milder statements he said, “the snow was coming for five minutes. If the count's 3-0, nobody is saying anything. They [Seattle] tried to get away with something, and it worked. Nobody was saying anything when I wasn't throwing strikes. I thought it was handled poorly.”

As the snow continued to fly that weekend, the front office, the players and the fans began watching the Weather Channel as if it were CNN, trying to figure out what would happen next. As prospects dimmed for any real improvement in the weather with the Los Angeles-by-way-of-Anaheim Angels coming to town, major league baseball did what it does best and muddied the situation further by telling Cleveland, in effect, that this next home series would be played in Commissioner Bud Selig’s hometown of Milwaukee. While not complaining publicly, you could almost hear the teeth grinding of Shapiro, Wedge and the players who now had to pack their bags. It would be hard for an attitude not to develop under this set of bizarre circumstances. Fortunately the Indians used this new found lack of respect for good and not evil by taking two of three from the Angels.

With a touch of swagger, the Indians were permitted to return home to play the White Sox, a key divisional rival made all the more hateful by a mouthy manager in Ozzie Guillen and an arrogant Chicago media breathing down their necks that is constantly compensating for the fact that they are not in New York. The Indians proceeded to take two of three from the Sox, just a week after taking two of three from them in Chicago.

Often the kind of edge that a team gets from such slights, perceived or real, is as easily lost as gained without something intervening to remind them why they were mad in the first place. As they embarked on their trip to New York, they knew they were facing a team decimated by injuries, particularly to their pitching staff. The Yankees were hardly barking, about the Indians or much else. Whatever edge existed seemed to be temporarily replaced by arrogance as the Indians laid a colossal egg, losing three straight. In fact, they really weren’t competitive in any of those games. And it wasn’t as if the Yankees were on a roll. In fact, that series has been the only high spot in an otherwise miserable early season for New York. Following those wins, the Yankees went on to lose 8 of their next 9 games.

Thankfully, though, baseball continued to pick on the Indians. First, major league baseball, under the skittish and indecisive leadership of the aforementioned Selig, continued to dilly dally around with the conundrum of how to reschedule four lost Indians home games against a team that is not scheduled to return this season. While major league baseball continued to fiddle with what was now apparently the hardest problem they ever faced, it wasn’t lost on the Indians front office or the players that responsibility for this situation rested solely with major league baseball and its schedule makers who made sure that two west coast teams, one that plays in a dome and another who plays in near perfect weather, were making their only trips to Cleveland at a time when the weather is always iffy.

Although baseball still hasn’t announced how the games will be rescheduled, word has leaked over the last several days out that at least one of those “home” games will be played in Seattle, bringing the total to four the number of games the Indians will not get to host this season. While that may be the best alternative among a set of really bad options, the fact remains that the major league front office created this mess and, in the process, gave the Indians another reason to believe that they weren’t being respected.

On the heels of this came the bizarre happenings in the game against Baltimore last Saturday night. Unquestionably, the home plate umpire made a mistake in waving off the run that had scored prior to centerfielder Grady Sizemore doubling up Miguel Tejada who, resembling one of the Indians, forgot how many outs there were and ran on contact and failed to return to first base after Sizemore’s catch. But it also is unquestioned that neither Baltimore nor the umpiring crew realized the blunder for several innings. When it was finally brought to their attention, the umps didn’t claim “rub of the green” as is usually the case. They put the run back on the board and Baltimore now had a 3-2 lead. You wouldn’t be alone if you were left with the feeling that this was something you’ve never seen before.

This eventually led to the protest that the Indians lost. While acknowledging that the umpires made a mistake, the essence of the Indians protest was that Baltimore didn’t lodge a timely complaint, which was true. This was a legitimate argument that has decent support within the rule book. Perhaps it didn’t help their protest that the Indians buttressed their argument by claiming that by putting the run on the board it caused Wedge to manage differently. Anyone with a set of eyes and the patience to watch this team through Wedge’s tenure knows that this may be theoretically true but realistically impossible.

Though denying the protest, Selig and crew did the Indians a favor by failing to discuss the basis for the denial, as if the protest was so frivolous that it didn’t warrant a two-sentence explanation. This only led to the perception that baseball either didn’t want to uphold the Indians argument on a technicality (the failure of Baltimore to timely complain) or simply didn’t want to have to reschedule still another Indians game, which seems more likely. Whichever, this gave the Tribe still another reason to believe they were being disrespected and allowed an edge that may have been dulling to once again sharpen.

If you witnessed either Wednesday’s or Thursday night’s game, that sharp edge was on full display. On Wednesday night, shortly after the protest was denied, newly-rich Jake Westbrook had to leave the game early due to an abdominal strain and the Indians trailing The bullpen kept the game close and the Indians ultimately prevailed in extra innings on a bloop single by Travis Hafner. Thursday night marked Cliff Lee’s return to the rotation and he promptly put the Indians in a 4-0 hole, although a shaky defense helped that cause. But a close play at the plate in which Toronto catcher Jason Phillips blocked the plate from Josh Barfield led to a few choice words from Phillips to Barfield and the intercession of David Dellucci, who was coming to bat. Dellucci took offense at Phillips irrational exuberance and a bench-clearing nearly ensued.

Following that exchange, Dellucci promptly made a stunning catch in left field and followed that up in the bottom half of the inning with a double. In the process, he personally took a whetstone to the edge that has now clearly developed on this team and that led to another victory, a 7-1 homestand and a streak that has seen the Indians win 10 of their last 11.

It’s hard to know whether these series of early season slights will continue to occur as timely as they have thus far. But even if they don’t it may just be enough for this team to at least develop a personality, something it has never done under Wedge. And that, just as much as anything else, is necessary if this team is going to be a serious contender this season.