Lingering Items--Battle Royale Edition

When it comes to the NFL, the only thing Cleveland Browns fans want to worry about is whether or not this team will ever win more than 5 games in a season again. But if you want a fun NFL-related distraction that is more competitive than the Browns have been in years, keep watch on the battle royale shaping up between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.

Smith has made almost a cottage industry out of trying to reshape the image of Goodell from guardian of the game to a power hungry dictator more concerned with his stature then the welfare of the game or its players. Goodell for his part treats Smith like the pest that he is.

Smith's strategy was borne from the moment he ran for and won his current role following the death of the previous executive director, Gene Upshaw. Smith took a strident approach to his campaign by implying not all the subtly that Upshaw’s relationship with Paul Tagliabue was bad for the players, never mind that Upshaw and Tagliabue presided over the greatest expansion of wealth ever of their sport.

Smith took this approach because he knew that new commissioner Goodell has won his job by reflecting the desires of a strong and vocal group of owners who felt about Tagliabue like some players felt about Upshaw—that he was selling them out. When Tagliabue pushed a settlement of the previous collective bargaining agreement on the owners, there were many that felt he went to far in terms of the guarantees that went to players.

It was hardly a secret that the owners wanted to blow up the last agreement as soon as it was legally possible and reclaim their economic footing. The recession of 2008 helped their argument.

So it made sense for Smith to play to the fears of the players that Goodell was nothing more than a bag man for the likes of Jerry Jones in Dallas and that strong, strident, combative leadership was needed as a counterbalance.

Most players are about as vested in the inner workings of their union as you’d expect, meaning not much at all. In truth, most would prefer not to have their paychecks lightened by union dues. But they’ll go along to get along and so when Smith’s siren song found voice with the few who pay attention, his hiring was almost a foregone conclusion. I wonder, though, if anyone ever checked his resume. Smith had absolutely no labor experience when he got his job and then went about proving how disastrous that could be.

The owners weren’t exactly private about their intentions with respect to getting out of the last labor agreement and Smith wasn’t exactly private about what he was going to do in response. Relying on his training as a trial lawyer and his lack of experience as a labor lawyer, Smith turned to litigation to get his way. It didn't work.

Smith seemed to be under the impression that he could get the courts to stop the owners from not just exercising their legal right to get out of the contract, but also get them to force new terms and conditions on the owners that they wouldn’t want to accept. It was always going to fail.

Labor laws strike a decent balance between the workers and the owners in virtually all industries. Those laws certainly provide needed protections to workers who ban together to bargain collectively (as well as needed protections to help them ban together in the first place). But they also acknowledge that business owners are the ones at risk and thus don’t require those owners to agree to any particular proposal put forth. Both sides have the legal right to ask for anything and both sides have the same right to always say no as long as all of this is done in good faith.

The owners had, in their view, plenty of economic incentive behind their proposals. It could hardly be said they weren’t made in good faith. The players had good faith reasons for saying no. Eventually though the only place this could ever get settled was the bargaining table and not in court. No court or administrative agency can dictate the terms of anyone’s labor contract, simple as that.

Smith’s pushing the union into a legal battle delayed bargaining for months without meaningfully increasingly the union’s leverage. The owners were willing to lose the season if necessary to take back control of their economic future and the players, whose careers are fleeting, were always going to cave. A more reasoned leader would have seen this from the outset and set about to find the best bargain available in a bad situation. As it turns out, the deal Smith did sign was not appreciably different or better then what he could have had before he let his members get locked out.

So Smith has been smarting from this embarrassment ever since and has gone after Goodell at every turn. Hardly a day goes by when the NFLPA isn’t challenging one issue or another or reneging on one agreement or another.

Consider, three recent examples.

First, Smith agreed to HGH testing in the latest collective bargaining agreement and has since been walking back that commitment and it still isn’t resolved.

Second, the owners voted to make it mandatory that all players wear thigh and knee pads, which is well within their rights to unilaterally make that call under the collective bargaining agreement. It shouldn’t be particularly controversial given all the attention that player safety is getting these days. Not surprisingly the union is contesting the owners’ right to force players to wear this protection. Remind me again who cares more about safety?

Third, the union filed a complaint this week alleging collusion by the owners in the uncapped 2010 season. Whatever claim the union had over that matter they waived when they signed the new collective bargaining agreement. Both sides waived all claims, known and unknown, that either had or could have had about any issues under the old collective bargaining agreement, the uncapped year, or the negotiations for a new agreement. Despite this waiver, which Smith signed, he’s suing anyway buttressed by a failed legal strategy which depends on the union's direct disavowal of the agreement it signed—again.

In each case, and irrespective of what the NFLPA might say publicly, these actions are about Smith trying to build his stature on the back of Goodell. A more reasoned leader would find a more reasoned approach but that hasn't been Smith's style.

The owners and the players are under a long term labor contract at the moment so an all out labor war isn't in the offing. But these constant firefights aren't helping the game and they aren't helping the players. They aren't even helping Smith. The union should have strong leadership. Goodell does need a foil and a counterbalance. But Smith at the moment isn't helping his stature or the union's by constantly reneging on the agreements he's signed.

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When did Jim Brown turn into Bob Feller?

People who never saw Feller pitch tend to know about him through old photos and newsreels or, prior to his death, from his gig as a so-called goodwill ambassador for the Indians. He pull on a uniform occasionally and throw the ball around. He'd also wax cranky on just about everything and everyone. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the cartoon character Crankshaft was based on Feller.

But Feller had a certain charm anyway. Jim Brown? Not so much.

Arguably the greatest running back ever and certainly the best player to ever play for the Browns, Jim Brown used to serve the role with the Browns that Feller did with the Indians. But then Mike Holmgren was hired and for reasons that have never been explained, adequately or otherwise, Holmgren jettisoned Brown and his $500,000 salary from the Stadium while owner Randy Lerner wasn't looking.

Since that parting, Brown has turned into the cranky old guy. He raised a few eyebrows when the Browns drafted Trent Richardson by calling Richardson ordinary. And he still tweaking his old employer, Richardson and Holmgren, per an interview Tony Grossi conducted with him recently for ESPN Cleveland.

Brown stuck by his assessment of Richardson, calling him efficient. Brown just doesn't see greatness. Fair enough since Richardson hasn't even played a down in the NFL. But Brown did take another shot at Holmgren. He said the Browns are still a mess and it is due in large part to what he feels is Holmgren's lack of commitment to the team or the area.

Brown certainly is coming across as embittered. Losing a half million dollar salary will do that to a guy. But it's not as if Brown's comments lack a basis.

He explained in detail why he feels Richardson is ordinary, mainly due to what Brown feels is a lack of speed and quickness. Brown says Richardson has the opportunity to be a good workhorse type back but fans shouldn't be expecting the second coming of Emmitt Smith. On Holmgren, Brown rightfully points out his penchant for giving revealing interviews to Seattle radio stations while being mostly invisible to the Cleveland media.

The Browns have been a strange organization for so long that it's hard to tell what Holmgren is causing vs. what Holmgren is continuing. But alienating Brown was one of Holmgren's dumbest ideas. Maybe it was a money saver but that probably wouldn't have been necessary if Holmgren has not exercised his dumbest decision to date, wasting a year in this franchise's life by keeping Eric Mangini around for another year.

**

There seems to be a growing consensus that Browns head coach Pat Shurmur isn't very good at his job, based mostly on the team's performance last season.

It's an unfair conclusion to draw.

Shurmur was hamstrung from the moment he got the job. First, he was hired a year too late because of Holmgren's aforesaid dumb idea of retaining Mangini and his system for an extra year. Then Shurmur was hamstrung by the NFL's labor situation which prevented him from having any contact with any players in the off season. That set Shurmur back and set the players back. At most, the offensive scheme he was implementing wasn't fully in place until late in the season.

Finally, Shurmur was handcuffed by the front office's refusal to provide Shurmur with one credible receiver, which is a kind of important position in the West Coast offense. Sure, they drafted Greg Little, but he hadn't even played in a year and when drafted he was immediately their best threat. That's how bad it was.

Shurmur's now had a full off season. The front office still hasn't helped him by again refusing to provide him with credible receivers, but at least he now has a good running back and a quarterback in whom he's more fully vested. This doesn't represent a make or break year by any means for Shurmur but it will tell us far more about what kind of head coach he might ultimately be.

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The Indians' sweep of the Tigers leads to this week's question to ponder: What's more surprising, the play of the Indians or the play of the Tigers?

Lingering Items--Wishful Thinking Edition

Glancing at the baseball standings in early May is usually a fool’s game. The reason the baseball season is so long is that it takes a hundred or so games to actually get the full measure of a team’s worth. Anything short of that can and often does lead to false impressions. That isn’t just a cautious reminder about your team. It’s applicable to all teams.

Still, avoiding my own advice, it’s worth looking at the standings in the American League Central right now where the Indians find themselves in first place by 3 games over the Detroit Tigers. That’s the kind of lead that can be lost in the weekend and as we saw last season, a hot start does not necessarily beget a hot finish.

Putting the Indians aside for the moment, though, aren’t you at least tempted to draw some conclusions about the division generally? For instance, the Minnesota Twins are already 15 games below .500. Even at an early stage of the season that’s too huge of a hole to climb out of in terms of being a pennant contender. They’re done.

The Kansas City Royals are done, too. It doesn’t matter that they’re only 5 games under .500 at the moment. It might as well be their usual 50. The Royals were done when the season started for exactly the same reason they, like the Pittsburgh Pirates, are done as each season starts. They suck.

The franchise is poorly run because it is headed up by a management that secretly doesn’t believe they can ever be successful and then goes about its business proving just that. In Kansas City, they labor under the perpetual dread of their circumstances, like Eeyore, knowing that no matter what they do, who they sign, how they train, it’s never going to be good enough because all the best looking girls are still going to go out with the guys from Camp Mohawk. So they show up, make a little noise once in awhile but mostly try not to get in anyone’s way.

That leaves the race to three teams: the Indians, the White Sox and the Tigers. This is where it does get interesting because at the moment the teams are in a statistical dead heat despite the differences in their records. More time, much more, will be needed to sort it out.

The Tigers looked like a team that could challenge the Texas Rangers for the number of runs scored this year. Yet they have scored exactly the same number of runs as the Indians at the moment, which is actually quite stunning. The White Sox are lagging behind, but only by a few runs.

The Tigers are hitting better than the Indians, the White Sox a little worse and none are hitting particularly well. The difference is that the Indians have a higher on base percentage then the other two, but again the differences aren’t particularly statistically significant.

Pitching is somewhat a similar story. White Sox starters have a distinct advantage over those in Cleveland and Detroit, with a collective ERA that’s a half run better. But whatever advantage that gives is lost in the bullpen where the Indians clearly have the advantage at the moment.

White Sox relievers, at 38%, are second only to Baltimore in the percentage of inherited runners who end up scoring. Detroit is close behind at 34%. Indians relievers are third best at only 22%. Even more telling is that while the Indians bullpen has been called upon the most to enter games in save situations, they’re also converting 78% of those changes, which is fourth in the majors. Tigers relievers have been called upon 36 times in save situations and are only converting 57% of those chances. The White Sox relievers are getting even less chances and still only converting 57% of those chances.

What this all suggests is that like a horse race that’s at the quarter pole, the main horses are still too bunched to figure out who will win. The AL Central will be a 3-team race and could easily stay that way for the entire season. The Indians’ flaws are more known to the locals but in truth neither Detroit nor Chicago seem to be clearly superior at the moment.

It may be that Detroit eventually finds its footing offensively, but their bullpen will remain suspect for the season unless they find some new arms. It’s going to take a lot of runs to cover up for a bullpen that can only be counted on about half the time to hold a lead and get a save. Chicago would seem to need both more hitting and better pitching to stay competitive.

The Indians aren’t close to being the best team in the American League this year. In truth, they don’t compare all that well with the best teams in the West and the East. But the Central is proving to be weak and that, frankly, is Shapiro’s dream scenario. The Indians are never going to be able to go toe to toe with the bullies, but since they currently reside in a division of dipshits at the moment they have a fighting chance. Will the fans notice?

**

Have you purchased your Brandon Weeden Fat Head wall hanging yet? Maybe they’re on back order given all of the run Weeden’s been getting from the Plain Dealer lately.

Most certainly Weeden looked good to novice NFL beat writer Dennis Manloff at a rookie mini-camp. Weeden was wearing shorts and a helmet so that in part could be the reason for the gushing analysis of Weeden’s rocket arm and pin point precision. It was enough really to send Manloff into a rant about how Weeden shouldn’t have Colt McCoy looking over his shoulder when the season gets underway.

I’d talk about how little Manloff seems to understand professional sports and athletes but the call for dumping McCoy in order to clearly signal to Weeden that he’s our new man crush in order to soothe his psyche was more than enough proof. If Weeden’s is so tender as to be intimidated by the understudy just aching for the star to get sick, then Weeden has absolutely no chance to be a starter in the Arena League, let alone the NFL.

What’s surprising though is the complete lack of historical context Manloff and others have while anointing Weeden and clearing his path. Weeden plays for an organization that hasn’t had the same person starter at quarterback for 3 straight seasons since Bernie Kosar. They’ve made so many draft blunders over so many years that it’s insane at the moment to give the latest occupiers of the Berea headquarters the benefit of the doubt on any of their picks.

I’m not particularly laying the wood to Tom Heckert or Mike Holmgren, either. It’s just that whatever you might think of the players they’ve drafted thus far, if you’re measuring results by such pedestrian measures as wins, then they aren’t any better than the previous clowns or the clowns before them or the clowns before them. Remember, too, that Holmgrem is the same guy that deliberately threw away a season by retaining a head coach he didn’t respect just because he didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings. In short, until all these fine draft picks of previous years start actually producing more than 4 or 5 wins a season, there’s no reason to afford them any more benefit of the doubt then their predecessors.

That’s the context that Manloff needs to consider before he starts throwing all in on Weeden without the benefit of having seen him actually perform in one practice with the entire team. Weeden may very well be a franchise savior, but let’s wait a little longer for that judgment. In the mean time, let’s keep around last year’s starter as a hedge, even if he’s not your idea of the Answer. He didn’t he embarrass the team given the embarrassing group of players that aforementioned Heckert and Holmgren surrounded him with. Something tells me that this team just might need him.

**

As if Dan Gilbert didn’t have enough on his plate with his sparkling new casino, he now is a member of the NBA’s newly constituted competition committee. It’s an interesting development, to say the least, one he wanted and one he may come to regret.

The NFL has a competition committee, but it’s populated with head coaches and they debate the meaty issues of the day, such as the tuck rule and whether or not the bump and run should be further limited.

Until now, the NBA’s competition committee was an unsightly gangly mess of a group of all the league’s general managers. Getting them to agree on a lunch menu probably ate up most of the average meeting. Slimming down the committee and putting one of the more vocal owners in the league on it will certainly shake things up. Whether or not it’s for the greater good is a whole other matter.

The NBA does have a huge competition problem. Despite the rancorous labor negotiations that gave the owners a little more financial certainty and relief, the new collective bargaining problem didn’t solve one of Gilbert’s main issues: the fact that the rules are stacked against teams trying to rebuild themselves back into relevance.

Here’s Gilbert’s main concern. His team has Kyrie Irving, the recently named rookie of the year. Yet Gilbert knows that in a league with the fewest number of players per team, it remains the hardest league in which to turn around a team’s fortunes. Gilbert has already let the fans know that even next year’s team may not be playoff bound. Indeed, with luck it won’t be because in the NBA it’s far better for your team’s long-term prospects to not make the playoffs then to just make them.

One of the main reasons that it takes so long to graduate to the upper tier of the league is that you’re punished with purgatory for just making the playoffs. You’re out of the draft lottery and out of the running for the few really good college players that can make an immediate difference to a NBA team.

Most of the things that will keep Gilbert’s Cavs on the outer fringes of basketball relevancy can’t be changed simply because of a competition committee. He can’t, for instance, suddenly make Cleveland a warm weather city where available free agents want to winter, irrespective of how well his casino is climate controlled. He can’t change the bizarre, exception-riddled salary cap that keeps the really good potential free agents mostly tethered to their current teams. The time and place for that was at the bargaining table and it didn’t happen. In short, absent the overhaul that can only come through difficult labor negotiations, there isn’t much that can actually be done to shorten the Cavs 10-year path back toward relevance, Irving notwithstanding.

I have great admiration for Gilbert. He’s a guy that can get things done. But for as hard as he works and for as hard has he pushes, I think he’s starting to realize that the odds aren’t just long, but almost impossible for achieving meaningful change. And when he becomes frustrated with the process, which he will, just hope that the only thing that happens is that he quits the committee or rotates off. Neither the Cavs, its fans nor the city can afford to let Gilbert get fed up with a broken system and take his considerable talents elsewhere, unless it’s across the street to Progressive Field or down the road to Cleveland Browns Stadium. In that case, I hope his work on the competition committee breaks his resolve.

**

Apropos to nothing, but this week’s question to ponder: When did the NHL playoffs become more compelling viewing than the NBA playoffs?

Lingering Items--Winter Doldrums Edition

 When the Super Bowl ends sometime around 10 p.m. EDT this Sunday it will mark not just the end of a very curious but interesting football season. It is also will mark the beginning of the dullest period of the sports season.

Fortunately, the dull times don’t last too long as it’s at most a few weeks until major league teams report to spring training. Until then, though, you have time to catch up on Mad Men before the next season starts in March or waste your time with meaningless games in whatever sport you follow.

The Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball team, talented and athletic and a real contender for a national championship, have a difficult schedule ahead over the last half of their regular season, but the presence of a Big Ten tournament and the knowledge that the Buckeyes will be in the NCAA tournament come March render these upcoming games mildly interesting and overwhelmingly irrelevant, like the Plain Dealer on a good day.

Far worse, though, is the NBA season and not just because the Cavaliers are still in the early stages of a major rebuild which, if history is any indication, is a minimum 8 year process. If there are any NHL fans in this area, and I suppose there probably are a few, nothing much interesting happens this time of year, either. Like the NBA, more teams make the playoffs then should and only a few teams really have a chance of taking the crown. That much was known months ago and not much has changed in the interim.

So what we’re left with for the next few weeks is to engage in postseason speculation when it comes to the Browns, preseason bitching when it comes to the Indians and in season indifference when it comes to the Cavs.

**

Let’s start with the Cavs. With them, the current mostly boring debate surrounds whether or not the team should just continue on a losing path for the rest of the season in order to secure a better draft pick. Right now, the Cavs would make the playoffs and wouldn’t make the lottery. It’s a situation known as NBA purgatory. There are only a few teams with a legitimate chance to make the NBA Finals. There are a few others that are close to that level and thus would likely benefit from the seasoning that the NBA playoffs bring. The rest of the teams though are just spinning their wheels in the most unproductive manner possible in purgatory.

There is no good that could come from the Cavs making the playoffs this season. They are simply too far away to reap any tangible benefit from playing in the postseason. If/when the Cavs are able to cobble together enough pieces and parts to make a far more legitimate run, most of the players on the current team will be playing elsewhere. In other words, getting playoff experience under their belts, to the extent that matters, won’t benefit the Cavs anyway.

All that said, of course, it’s ridiculous to think about tanking an entire NBA season. Professional athletes for the most part are imbued with a strong sense of pride and competitiveness. They may know their team sucks, but when the whistle blows they still tend to play hard if only because they don’t want to be embarrassed.

There are notable exceptions to this of course. The Cavs, for example, have had rosters full of players that mailed it in for millions a year. But this Cavs roster isn’t of that ilk. They aren’t talented enough to compete at the highest levels but neither are they jaded enough to spend the rest of the season going through the motions.

I don’t think that fans need to worry anyway. Water finds its level and for this Cavs team, that’s somewhere far closer to the ceiling then the upper floors. The lottery looks secure for another season.

**

The Indians, on the other hand, are about to embark on another gun fight once again wielding a dull knife. They spent another offseason gathering spare parts and broken hearts through barter while the key competition around them acquired assets with cash.

It’s to their detriment but not their fault that they didn’t acquire Prince Fielder and his expanding waist line. It was an ill advised move by the Detroit Tigers. But it does emphasize why the Indians will always fall short of filling the gaps they need. They are essentially playing in a different league when it comes to better financed teams.

The acquisition of Fielder by the Tigers is interesting because it somewhat dispels the notion of small market vs. big market teams. I don’t think of Detroit as a big market anymore although that tide could be turning along with the fortunes of the auto industry. They're just a small market with a big market thinking owner.

That said, I don’t recommend that any team, least of all the Indians, overpay someone like Fielder who looks like he took training tips from an online consortium run by CC Sabathia and Dinner Bell Mel Turpin. The contract the Tigers committed to for Fielder will be a bigger millstone around their neck then the Travis Hafner contract has been around the Indians’.

I fully expect that Fielder will have some good numbers for the next year or two and some of that will come at the expense of the Indians as they try to claw back into relevance. But come years 6, 7, 8 and 9, if not years 3, 4 and 5, someone in Detroit is going to lose his job for green lighting Project Fielder for $200+ million.

Meanwhile, back at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, the Indians are putting on their usual offseason flourish designed to systematically lower expectations as part of their overriding goal each year to under promise and over deliver.

Indeed that’s why last season felt like such a revelation. With nothing promised, the Indians easily exceeded expectations. The problem is that with the limited bit of a success comes the implied obligation to further upgrade. Instead fans received the same warmed over players that can be had on the cheap as they rehab from injuries. About the only thing different from any number of seasons past is that the Indians applied that same criteria to one of their own, Grady Sizemore.

The key word in every Indians’ offseason is “if,” as in, “if Grady Sizemore can stay healthy” or “if Kevin Slowey can stay healthy” or, well, you get the picture. But as we know full well by not, most of the “ifs” become “buts” and the Indians, by virtue of their inaction, will again be scrambling to develop other revenue sources besides the more traditional route of good play-inspired attendance. And the circle goes unbroken.

**

The Browns have underwhelmed thus far in the off season, but it’s early. They're is still time to massively disappoint. The only move of consequence was the addition of failed former head coach Brad Childress as the offensive coordinator.

But like most things that happen in Berea, it looks like it will come with the odd condition in the form of not allowing Childress to exercise the full benefits of his title by being the team’s play caller. But perhaps Childress was chosen exactly for that reason. As Andy Reid's offensive coordinator in Philadelphia, Childress didn't call plays then either.

Still, it smacks of a compromise reached between head coach Pat Shurmur and his boss, team president Mike Holmgren. Shurmur doesn’t appear to want to relinquish what little power he has and Holmgren needs to quell a fan insurrection over the awful state of the offense. Who better to step in and play the part of a well paid patsy then another client of both Shurmur’s and Holmgren’s and Tom Heckert's agent, Bob Lamonte, the out of work Childress?

Like most compromises of this nature, its structure suggests failure and not success. If the Browns need an offensive coordinator, and they do, then hire one and let him do the job. The last thing this team needs is another consultant, which is what Childress essentially has signed on for.

This is the kind of thing that really is starting to grate on the nerves of fans when it comes to Holmgren. Brought in to make tough decisions, he continuously backs away at the sign of any internal resistance. He kept Eric Mangini on for a year because Mangini literally pleaded to Holmgren to spare him the ax. It was nice for Mangini but awful for the fans and the progress of the franchise.

When he brought in Shurmur, who hadn’t been a head coach at any level, Holmgren allowed Shurmur to control the narrative by suggesting that he could handle both head coaching duties and the job of first assistant. It only sounds reasonable if the Browns were trying to cut costs on the number of assistants, but then when have the Browns ever been on that kind of austerity plan? They trend in the opposite direction, doling out money to meaningless coaches long since gone.

Armed with empirical proof that Shurmur (or any head coach) is ill suited to do the job of two coaches at once, Holmgren nonetheless again backed away from forcing Shurmur to relinquish some control. This can only mean more of the same for next year. If Childress lasts the entire season under this construct I’ll be amazed.

As for upgrading the roster, the first thing the Browns need to decide is which of their free agents they want to pursue. It would seem like D’Qwell Jackson and Phil Dawson are layups. More interesting is running back Peyton Hillis. Heckert is now leaking it to the media that the Browns do want Hillis back.

Hillis, when healthy, is exactly the kind of running back most teams need these days. While the presence of a running game is still important to the overall effectiveness of an offense, attitudes have changed on exactly what a presence means. There can be no doubt, for example, that a team does not need a Walter Peyton or a Barry Sanders to be successful. Quick, name me the starting running backs for the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.

Hillis is exactly the kind of effective no-name player that most teams look to have on board, as long as he doesn't cost too much. His problem is that he is injury-prone. He plays football like Grady Sizemore plays baseball and it leads to more injuries and less effectiveness.

The injuries have hurt Hillis’ bargaining power, but not in the same way they hurt Sizemore’s. Because there’s very little guaranteed money in the NFL, the chances are much better that a team would be willing to sign Hillis to a long-term contract. Sizemore couldn’t sniff anything more than the one-year deal the Indians offered him.

If Hillis is lost to free agency, it won’t be a major blow. I like his game, but he’s fungible with backs like Chris Ogbonnaya, a point that will become more evident when the Browns develop a better right side of the offensive line and employ credible receivers. At that point they’ll become far more pass oriented, like the rest of the league, with just a dash of running thrown in to keep teams honest.

**

The other Browns story that remains in the background concerns the fate of former Plain Dealer beat reporter Tony Grossi. The PD’s public editor, Ted Diadiun, gave a rather farcical account of what he termed a painful but necessary decision to demote Grossi, as I anticipated in my earlier column on this subject.

Diadiun pulled out the old “standards” card and essentially suggested that it wasn’t Grossi’s views of Browns owner Randy Lerner that got him in trouble but the fact that he expressed them publicly. Apparently the Plain Dealer discourages its sports reporters from having opinions.

Diadiun is making a distinction without a difference. Irrespective of whether Grossi expressed the opinion publicly, the fact of the matter is that he didn’t respect Lerner and that didn’t seem to matter to the PD until Grossi said it out loud.

And for what it’s worth, I’m not buying the whole “inadvertent tweet” defense Grossi offered in order to save his job. Maybe Grossi did mean to respond only privately but the fact remains that he didn’t and it doesn’t matter anyway. Whether he made his views of Lerner known publicly or privately is irrelevant. He held the opinion and it did impact in some fashion on his coverage. That isn’t a sin because every reporter has an opinion on his subject matter and many times it isn’t favorable. So be it.

Indeed, I think it’s cowardly for Grossi to try and hide behind a defense that relies on the phrase “inadvertent tweet”, two words that shouldn’t ever be uttered consecutively, by the way. He feels that way, he said it, end of story. But even more cowardly is the journalistic yarn the PD is hiding behind in order to assuage the feelings of a pathetic and irrelevant billionaire and his ineffective and weak first lieutenant.

The Plain Dealer demonstrated, to the detriment of the rest of its staff, that when the going gets tough, the reporters get tossed.

**

With the Super Bowl upcoming and Bill Belichick further affirming his status as one of the all time great head coaches in NFL history comes this week’s question to ponder: When Art Modell hired Belichick, he said it would be the last head coach he’d ever hire. If Modell has stuck to it, would he now be in the Hall of Fame?

Lingering Items--Judgment Edition

Armando Galarraga was denied perfection Wednesday evening and in the process may have helped to save baseball. Or not.

When Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers entered the ninth inning Wednesday night against the Indians, a perfect game was just three outs away. Moments later it was two and then one. But somewhere along the path he took from the pitchers mound to cover first base on a grounder hit by Jason Donald to the gap between first and second base, Galarraga lost his chance of history due to one of the great choke jobs in baseball history.

When umpire Jim Joyce signaled safe on a bang-bang play at first it was the embodiment of both the beauty and consternation of sports and their frustrating lack of precision. Pick up a copy of the baseball rule book and you’ll have trouble finding a page where the phrase “in the judgment of the umpire” isn’t used. That’s the bargain anyone who’s ever played the game signed on for.

It was the ill-considered judgment of Joyce that came at the precise flashpoint where speed, nerves and history coalesced at the most critical moment that cost Galarraga his place in history. And yet, the alternative for Joyce or any of his fellow umps that night wasn’t much better. Had Donald, for example, actually beaten the throw only to have been called out in order to preserve a perfect game, Galarraga’s achievement would have always been tarnished.

In other words, Joyce found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time with only one exit route: get the call right. Whatever instinct made Joyce think Donald was safe when he was clearly out will now haunt him for the rest of his career every bit as much as Galarraga’s probably only real shot at perfection will haunt him.

Now, of course, will come the usual scream and cries for instant replay. And perhaps if major league baseball were run by almost anyone other than Bud Selig, I’d say that Joyce’s handiwork might actually be the springboard for baseball fully embracing technology.

But this is Selig we’re talking about and thus the chance of him doing anything more than dithering until the latest ground swell dies out is nearly non-existent. Sure, he’s talking about considering expanding instant replay. But Bud thinks a lot. That’s never been his problem. Action, on the other hand, is as foreign to him as good taste is to Lady Gaga.

To Joyce’s credit he quickly acknowledged his colossal mistake and apologized to Galarraga. The question though is why does this type of scene have to play out at all? Why can’t baseball be proactive and find a way to make technology work for them instead of treating it as if it’s just another passing fad?

Some of that is wrapped up in the traditions of the sport. Baseball purists, which represents far less of the sport’s fans than they would ever admit, tend to think of baseball as it was played by Babe Ruth in the 1920s. Any change from that construct induces panic. They still get hives knowing that uniforms are no longer made out of 100% wool. To them the designated hitter is still an abomination on the game.

The rest of baseball fans, however, mostly don’t give a crap either way. If pushed they’d probably venture an opinion but if better technology were thrust upon them they’d accept and move on to more pressing needs, like cutting the grass before it rains again.

It usually takes the considered judgment of decision makers to act on a glaring problem illuminated by the ill-considered judgment of another. If baseball can find a positive path forward out of this mess it will be of little solace to either Joyce or Galarraga but it will be of great solace to the sport itself.

**

Speaking of judgment, it looks like Ben Roethlisberger is taking a deep dive of his own into the incredibly poor and reckless conduct he’s engaged in over the last few years.

Attending the Steelers’ “voluntary” off-season training activities, Roethlisberger finally took a few questions from reporters. While the questions to that point were softballs, the Steelers’ public relations rep cut off any further questions, probably for fear that Roethlisberger would be asked directly about the night the lights went out for him in Georgia.

Roethlisberger mostly said the right things about evaluating his own life, taking stock of his abject stupidity and making some positive changes. He also bracketed it in the context of the hard line laid down on him by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

It would have been nice if Roethlisberger had made a more direct reference to the fact that he’s essentially a twice-accused sex offender or to the fact that most of his problems seem to stem from an inability to hold his liquor. Had that occurred Roethlisberger might have given the fans of the Steelers some comfort that he has a good grasp on his growing list of personal flaws. Instead, by bracketing everything in the context of doing what it takes to reduce a 6-game suspension to 4, Roethlisberger came across mostly like a guy pleading his case to a parole board and was just as convincing.

Whether he wants to admit it or not, Roethlisberger is at a professional and personal crossroads. To this point his professional accomplishments have been sufficient for his employers to overlook the embarrassments he’s created for them off the field. But that isn’t always going to be the case.

Owners of professional sports teams have a large capacity for forgiveness when the player in question is still likely to enhance their bottom line. That capacity gets depleted quickly, however, when that equation changes. And for Roethlisberger, just like every other person who’s ever played professionally, that equation will change. It’s just a matter of when.

In the meantime he can continue to delude himself into thinking that mouthing a few trite words about change actually constitutes change or he can go about doing the hard work of changing. But if past be prologue, and it certainly is with professional athletes, then it’s going to take more than a few drunken nights before Roethlisberger faces reality.

**

It was fun to read Paul Hoynes’ “Indians Insider” on Thursday in the Plain Dealer in which he discussed with Indians general manager Mark Shapiro the team’s horrid start to the season, assuming you're in the camp where 50+ games constitutes merely a start.

Shapiro indicated that this isn’t what he envisioned certainly but that the season’s natural cycle hasn’t yet dictated that he sell off what’s left of this disastrous roster.

Admitting anything differently, of course, would have been tantamount to Shapiro admitting, shall we say, certain lapses of judgment when it came to putting together Indians v.2010.

Assuming that Shapiro is going to continue to be patient with the plethora of “prospects” currently on the roster, the only currency he really has left anyway are players like Jhonny Peralta, Austin Kearns, Mark Gudzielanek, Russell Branyan, Mike Redmond, Jamey Wright, Jake Westbrook and Kerry Wood, so it's not as if he has much choice but to stay this miserable course. If this were fantasy baseball you couldn’t find a trading partner for any of these players, except perhaps Wood and Westbrook and even then the yield would be some other team’s rough equivalent. Why would it be any different in real baseball?

What this really demonstrates is that 2010 is already a lost season and not one of growth. Short of simply cutting some of those players in order to make a little more room on the roster for some minor leaguers, what you see now is what you’ll see for the rest of the season and nothing like what you'll see next season. That may be change but that isn't necessarily progress.

Meanwhile, if Shapiro thinks the attendance is languishing now, and it is, just wait. No amount of goofy promotions are going to distract the fans from exercising their considered judgment to not throw any more good money after bad. And until something dramatic changes in the organization, that isn’t going to change. Just ask the Cleveland Browns.

**
Given the inglorious end to the Cavaliers' season and the inglorious existence of the Indians, today's question to ponder is whether six months ago you actually thought you'd be looking forward to the upcoming Browns season?

Delusional Envy

I was trying to determine who was more delusional, Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini for trying to convince the public that every other sign notwithstanding he’s really not a power-hungry maniac or Cleveland Indians general manager Mark Shapiro for trying to convince the public that signing Russell Branyan and taking away at bats from two prospects makes sense, when it dawned on me. The answer is Indians owner Larry Dolan for trying to convince the public that the Indians’ organization is the envy of major league baseball.

It never occurred to me that anyone, let alone other major league executives, would view the Indians with envy after it just polished off the near complete alienation of its fan base with a two-season garage sale in which nearly anything of value was sold for spare parts. But yet there was Dolan justifying his promotion of Shapiro to club president as season’s end because of the great shape this franchise is in. As I pondered again Dolan’s assertion I started to wonder about the New York Yankees and why, for example, they might not be a tad more envied.

In a not unrelated way, I came across still another story about still another off-season acquisition by the Yankees that makes them arguably stronger than last season’s World Series champs, this time superstar-in-the-making Curtis Granderson. How could you not envy that?

As for Dolan, I understand that a little salesmanship goes along with any announcement and so I forgive Dolan’s wild hyperbole. And the Indians’ front office may actually be a great place to work. Shapiro and Chris Antonetti, for example, seem nice enough. They’re constantly working on new and exciting ways to identify players that they can never acquire. Their offices are downtown.

All that does is make it fun to go to work in the same way it might be fun to dress up as Mickey Mouse at Disney World. But if the ultimate goal is something greater than a good time, then on the envy scale the Indians seem like they are occupying the same tier as Kansas City, Pittsburgh and pretty much every other team whose ambitions can never match their realities and feeding off the bottom of pieces that no longer fit elsewhere.


As for Granderson and the circumstances that take him to New York, to me, they represent ground zero for baseball’s impending economic apocalypse. I don’t mean to come across like Glenn Beck trying to scare the weak and vulnerable about a nefarious shadow conspiracy that is trying to take over our country through mind control and liberal-biased textbooks, but I am worried about baseball. Quite a bit, actually.

The reason a guy like Beck can attract so much attention is precisely because his points can’t be proven. Sure you can cobble together half-truths and innuendo, but the minute someone points out the obvious flaws they just become part of the conspiracy. Pretty powerful stuff, actually.

The reason that baseball’s impending implosion attracts little interest is precisely because baseball lays its intentions so out in the open. There aren’t any half-truths and leaps of faith required. Anyone can look at facts because they’re printed everywhere. Google “major league salaries” and you’ll find plenty of databases that set out in stark terms the growing economic disparities. You can do the same with attendance figures and on and on. The problems are so obvious and so many that anyone trying to draw attention to them looks like the wacko.

On the surface, Granderson is exactly the kind of player that gravitates to the Yankees. He’s young, productive and hasn’t quite hit his prime. When he does hit his prime only the Yankees will be able to afford him so the chance of him becoming a free agent is minimal. I’d say non-existent but as long as the Mets and the Red Sox are open for business there is a chance that the Yankees could be outbid, but I doubt it.

The real problem is below the surface. For one thing, Granderson wasn’t even a free agent. He was traded to the Yankees and by the Detroit Tigers, a team that has been throwing around money like the Cub Scouts throw around candy at a Memorial Day parade. This wasn’t the Royals dispensing with an approaching iceberg or even the Indians dumping another Cy Young winner. It was the free-spending Tigers finally coming to grips with the notion that no matter how much they spent they could never outspend the Yankees. As the economy has finally caught up with Detroit, it’s been shedding payroll like a contestant sheds pounds on The Biggest Loser on its way to joining the Indians and others in the race toward the middle.

What makes this so disturbing, too, is that Granderson is a great guy. He’s well raised, well schooled and charitable with his time and money. He’s committed to his craft. In short, he’s exactly the kind of player that should be on a team like the Indians, at least until he becomes too expensive to keep. Instead, he was dumped in a preemptive move well before the July trading deadline. You could actually see Shapiro making exactly the same deal.

I no more expected baseball to step in and use this trade as a prime example for why it needs to make fundamental changes in the way it does business than I expect Rush Limbaugh to vote for Barack Obama in 2012. But it would be nice to think that the forces that pretend to run baseball, like Bud Selig and the various victimized owners, could actually wrest control of their sport from those who actually do run it, the union and the agents and in doing so, save baseball from itself.

That isn’t going to happen either.

But here’s what I do know and it all goes back to Dolan’s reason for promoting Shapiro. The Tigers traded Granderson in order to acquire prospects as it changes its business model to more match the surrounding economy in Michigan. Arguably it’s something they should have been moving toward the last several years but a well-healed owner stymied that descent for a long time. One wonders why.

In the last 20 years, the Tigers have had just 5 winning seasons. On the other hand, they had 9 seasons when they lost at least 90 games and 4 seasons when they’ve lost over 100. Overall they are 356 games under .500 for those 21 seasons. Sure they went to the World Series in 2006 and lost 4-1, but that’s their only playoff appearance during that stretch. From a cost/benefit standpoint I doubt there’s another team in the league that has spent as much in payroll per win over that same period of time as the Tigers.

The Indians on the other hand have had far more success and have spent far less in the process. They’ve had only 3 seasons in which they lost at least 90 games and only 1 season when they lost at least 100. They made the playoffs 7 times, losing twice in the World Series. Overall, they are 91 games above .500 in that stretch.

What the Tigers really have proven during that period of time is that it’s easy to waste bundles of money. Actually, they’ve really proven something far more valuable to the overarching dialogue. If you can’t actually spend like the Yankees, there’s no reason to try and come close. Financially, the Tigers would have been in better shape and no further behind with half the payroll that they were carrying.


Which, of course, gets us right back where we started. It’s not that Larry Dolan is delusional, not in the least. If the Indians are one of the most admired teams in the league, then it’s because they were well ahead of the curve when it came to assessing the course of baseball economics. The fact that the Tigers finally, reluctantly, seem to be joining their ranks actually is something of a testament to Dolan’s point. It’s a start, but only a start.

But then if Dolan isn’t the most delusional person in Cleveland who is? As usual, my vote goes to Mangini.

A Matter of Economics

Call it a case of Cleveland envy. How else to explain the headline in Wednesday’s sports section of the USA Today saying that the Detroit Tigers are basically in a dead heat with the New York Mets for the second highest payroll in baseball?

Apparently the reality of coming up short against the Cleveland Indians last season in the only place that matters, the standings, was enough to send Tigers owner Mike Illitch back to his calculator and his bank book. The Tigers couldn’t beat the Indians last season with a payroll that was $34 million higher, so perhaps his thinking is that his Tigers can get it done this year with a payroll that is not almost $60 million more.

It’s not as if Detroit is enjoying an economic boom that is somehow eluding the rest of the country. If anything, the Detroit area is being hit harder than most. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Detroit metro area had the highest unemployment rate in the country in February at 7.7%. The Big Three auto makers continue to bleed money like a room full of hemophiliacs with a knife cuts. The foreclosure crisis hasn’t missed Detroit. In short, nothing about the Detroit area economy looks positive for the foreseeable future.

Yet there the Tigers are spending like Paris Hilton in a Louis Vuitton boutique, hell bent on winning a pennant whatever the cost. According to the analysis by USA Today, the Tigers 2008 payroll, which stands at $137.7 million, is but a mere $100,000 behind the Mets. The Yankees, of course, dominate at well over $200 million.

The finances of the Tigers aren’t exactly open for public consumption so it’s somewhat hard to know what extent Illitch may be dipping into his personal fortune in order to fund this project. But it’s fair to presume that he’s playing with more than just the house money. At an average ticket price in the mid $20 range in Detroit and an anticipated attendance of around 3 million for the season, the Tigers can’t make payroll on ticket prices alone. Luxury boxes, concessions and local broadcast rights fees figure into the mix but it still hard to fathom that those other revenue streams can completely make up the difference.

Thus while Illitch’s view on what it takes to get to the Promised Land seems rather obvious, it’s an economic model that not many other teams are able or willing to follow, certainly not the Indians. Wherever one comes out on the issue of whether or not an owner has an obligation to spend some of his own money to keep pace each year, it is at least clear that the Indians’ owners, Larry and Paul Dolan, like many others don’t view the quest for a World Series ring as necessarily compelling that sort of outcome. That’s not a criticism, just a fact.

Though that is always going to be an issue with a certain segment of the fan base in Cleveland and predates the Dolans, the one issue that really was grinding at many Cleveland fans was the Dolans’ acknowledgement that more money ultimately would be needed to get the Indians over the hump and that they would spend what it took to make that happen when the time was right. To many fans, the time never seems right.

As evidence, there was the surprising 2005 season where a final week collapse kept the Indians out of the playoffs. The Indians seemed on the verge but instead dumped payroll in 2006, angering both players and fans who thought the time certainly seemed right. But if you’re going to ding the Dolans for that, which is fair, you also need to acknowledge they slowly started to turn it around by signing a variety of its players to long term deals. Not all of these investments have yet paid off, but building from within is a legitimate business plan.

In furtherance of that plan from last season to this, the Dolans increased the payroll from $61.6 million to nearly $79 million, an increase of nearly 30%. The problem though is that the Tigers increased their payroll by over 40%. The Indians already were struggling to keep pace with their rivals. The gap just got bigger.

While you’re at it, you might as well throw in the other big spender in the AL Central, the Chicago White Sox. For 2008, the White Sox increased payroll “only” around 20%. Sure, that means that the Indians closed the payroll gap on the White Sox a bit, but it’s a rather ridiculous point of reference. In 2007, the White Sox payroll was over $108 million and this season it’s well over $121 million, meaning that the Indians trail still the White Sox in payroll by the equivalent of two Derek Jeters. They trail the Tigers by about three Manny Ramirezes.

The question that remains unanswered by either of these situations or, more generally, the massive payrolls disparities that exist in baseball, is how this ultimately will play itself out on the field. In other words, how meaningful is the payroll gap?

On pure talent, the Tigers and the Indians seem pretty evenly matched and both ahead of the White Sox. And the impending departure of C.C. Sabathia notwithstanding, the Indians seem well positioned to compete favorably with both teams on talent for the next few years as well. In that context, the payroll disparity between these teams seems rather irrelevant. In fact, a case can be made if the Tigers chase of the Indians can’t be overcome purely by spending, then Illitch is either a fool or closer to implementing a dramatic payroll cut sooner than most Tigers fans might realize. Given the recent commitment he made to Miguel Cabrera, the former seems more the case than the latter.

But even if it’s somewhat irrelevant as between these three teams, that doesn’t mean payroll disparity is completely irrelevant in baseball. The remaining two teams in the AL Central, Minnesota and Kansas City, actually cut payroll in 2008. Last season, both the Twins and the Royals had higher payrolls than Cleveland. This year, each is some $20 million behind Cleveland and some $80 million behind Detroit and no one gives either the Twins or the Royals much of a chance to compete for a divisional title. On the far end of the scale lives the Florida Marlins, whose team payroll is less than what the Yankees pay Alex Rodriguez. You could get better odds on Ralph Nader winning the presidency than you could get on Florida winning the World Series.

There is always going to be the debate over just how big a difference payroll ultimately makes. Every year, a smartly run lower budget team finds its way into the playoff mix while a corresponding high budget team craps all over itself, so the correlation between payrolls and victories isn’t perfect. But the trends between a high payroll or at least a consistently growing payroll and sustained success are unmistakable. Like the larger economy, in baseball the rich just get richer while the poor are left with cake.

For now, this may not be as much of a concern in Cleveland as it might be elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a concern, one that ultimately it impacts every fan. Unfortunately, until baseball as a whole begins to feel the same economic pinch that its fans are feeling every time they head to the gas station or the grocery store, don’t look for it to change. But if baseball doesn’t start doing a better job of policing itself, this may come to pass much sooner and hit much harder than the owners ever thought possible.

Internal Improvement

The major league trading deadline is July 31 and most of the non-game stories you’re likely to read these days will focus on some variation of the same theme: what will the contenders do, what will the also-rans do?

Over the last several years, fans have become so conditioned to the trading deadline that the days leading up to it are some of the most anticipated of the season, no matter which side of the equation you’re on. Teams who thought they would be in better shape but aren’t (the Indians last season, Chicago this season) look to dump payroll. A team can lose just as easily with less expensive players than with those currently taking up space and getting the same results, so why not save a little salary in the waning months of the season?

Teams that find themselves contending, on the other hand, are in search of that elusive missing piece—the one or two players that might deliver them to the promised land. Though this is often more myth than reality, enough trade deadline deals have been cut and been relatively successful to cause teams and their fans to look outside for additional help.

To this point, the consensus seems to be that the Indians need to look externally. The middle relief has been shaky and an additional bat or two is always helpful, so the conventional wisdom has gone. Given the shaky nature of the middle relief, the consensus is well taken, particularly as Cliff Lee and Jake Westbrook continue to struggle. But whether the Indians need an additional bat or two is a much more difficult question, far more difficult than whether additional pitching would be useful.

Friday night, the Indians squeaked by the Texas Rangers, 3-2. You could explore any number of storylines about that game, not the least of which was how the defense nearly blew the game by giving the Rangers extended opportunities in the bottom of the ninth to win that game. But surprisingly the one storyline that won’t get much thought, given that the Indians are second only to the Detroit Tigers in runs scored this year, is the fact that the Indians only scored three runs Friday night.

But the truth is that’s the storyline that most fans should be following because it unlocks the key to the question of whether or not offensive help is needed for the remainder of the season.

Despite the number of runs scored, anyone closely following the Indians, particularly the last six weeks or so, has had to have the lingering, if unstated, feeling at various points that the offense hasn’t been that good. Admittedly, that’s a difficult conclusion to draw given both the record and the runs scored. But the Indians still trail the Tigers in the standing, the Seattle Mariners are coming on strong in the wild card race and the hottest rumor regarding trading deadline help has a creaky Kenny Lofton coming to Cleveland for that final push.

Lofton might be a good addition if the tradeoff is sending Trot Nixon and his bad back packing. But if the sole issue is whether Lofton or anyone else for that matter is needed for the final push, the answer is probably not. The answer, actually, lies in simply getting more production out of the players currently in the lineup.

That conversation starts with, but is hardly confined to, Travis Hafner. Though he has been starting to pick it up as of late, Hafner seems to have spent most of the season trying to prove that he can hit singles to the left side of the field. Maybe that will ultimately cause teams to stop using the “Hafner shift” nearly as often, but Hafner’s a natural dead-pull hitter and that has proven to be pretty successful to this point in his career. Even if it is just a matter of being out of sync, unless Hafner significantly picks up the pace, he will come up well short of the promise of last season. He has 16 doubles to date. Last year he hit 32. Though he hit is 16th home run against the Rangers on Friday, he looks to fall well short of the 42 he hit last year. With 64 RBI to this point, Hafner looks to fall well short of last year’s total of 116.

Though Victor Martinez is the better overall hitter and probably always will be, Hafner is the face of the Indians offense. And as he has struggled, it has made the Indians offense look inconsistent, if not ineffective. For example, with the bases loaded, Hafner is hitting only .182 this season. This is nearly 200 points under his career average in that category. With runners in scoring position, he is hitting .198, which is almost 100 points under his career average. With runners in scoring position and two outs, his average dips even further to .186, again well below his career average of .239 in that category. If Hafner can improve in those areas for the rest of this season and get close to his career averages, that is likely to provide much more of a spark than an aging Lofton could provide.

And while Hafner to this point is a big part of the problem, the issue is larger, demonstrating that while a team has to score runs to win games, that statistic is hardly the best way to measure a team’s offensive effectiveness.

For example, while the Indians may be second in the league in runs scored, they also are second in the league in runners left on base. In fact, they have left 77 more on base than the Tigers, which isn’t surprising since the Tigers team batting average is .287 compared to the Tribe’s .275 average. Thus, while the Tigers are barely ahead of the Indians in total runs scored, they clearly are getting more out of their scoring opportunities than the Tribe.

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. The Tigers, on the other hand, have struck out 126 times less. While an out may be an out, some outs are much more effective than others. You can’t advance a runner unless you at least put the ball in play, something the Tigers do much more effectively than the Indians.

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. By contrast, the Tigers have only loaded the bases 86 times, but they have 37 hits, 13 more than the Indians overall, and an average of .430. Broken down further, as of Friday, the Indians have had five players who have come up with the bases loaded at least 10 times: Garko, Blake, Peralta, Barfield and Hafner. Hafner’s .182 average is the lowest of the five. The best is Garko, at .250. Blake and Peralta are at .200 and Barfield is at .188. The Tigers, on the other hand, have had three players come to bat with the bases loaded at least 10 times and every one of them is hitting over .400 in that situation.

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. The Tigers have had 883 at bats with runners in scoring position. They have 289 hits for a .327 average, which is full 40 points higher than the overall team average. The same trend holds true with runners in scoring position and two outs. The Indians have 421 at bats, 107 hits and a .254 average, 21 points under their overall average. The Tigers have 399 at bats, 123 hits for a .308 average, 27 points higher than their overall average.

Considering how much more effective the Tigers have been in their at bats than the Indians, it’s amazing that the Indians are just one game behind the Tigers in the standings. This is even more amazing when the pitching stats are thrown in. Though the Indians pitchers have been solid overall all season, the Tigers have been even better. Tiger pitchers have a better ERA, and opponents are hitting worse against them and have scored less runs than they have against the Indians. The Tigers even have more saves than the Indians.

There are still about 65 games left in the season, enough time for trends to turn. But simply pitching better, even in middle relief, isn’t likely going to be the key to overtaking the Tigers and winning the division. The key is offense. And while fans may want the Indians to make a move just to prove that they are in it to win it, with nine days remaining until the trading deadline, the answer really lies not externally but internally, unless the Indians decide to trade for the Tigers offense. The truth, while much more mundane, is that the Indians don’t necessarily need to make a move to get better. They have enough horses. They just have to get much better production out of them, particularly in clutch situations.

Pain Infliction

Is there anything more painful in sports than watching a team in an offensive slump? As Cleveland sports fans, you can take your pick: the Indians or the Cavs. Whichever you chose, though, is mostly irrelevant. The local teams lately have been an assault on the eyes and the senses.

While it may be difficult for the moment to forget about the results of the Cavaliers-San Antonio Spurs snore-fest in Game three of the NBA Finals, try. While you’re at it, dispense with the notion that the game was some sort of sublime defensive struggle. Focus instead on what you were forced to endure: 48 minutes of really bad basketball by two teams playing in their sport’s premier event.

One team had to win that game and one team did, the better one. But if San Antonio is truly the elite team of the league, a dynasty in the making, then the league needs to do some serious soul searching and figure out how to re-introduce offense to the game. The level of play by both teams has been remarkable only in its ability to sap the enthusiasm of even the most die hard fan, let alone the casual fan whom the league needs to really reach.

A good game need not result in a 122-118 score, but neither should it ever devolve into a 78-72 grind. The supposedly top two teams in the league played 48 minutes of basketball, collectively took 185 shots (38 of which were 3-pointers) and made only 70, for a rousing shooting percentage of 37.8%. If you want to get picky, the Cavs 3-19 from the three-point line was a major contributor to that figure, but looked at from the other angle, the Spurs 10-19 shooting on their three-pointers helped raise the two teams overall shooting percentage .8%. From inside the line, the teams were a collective 57-147, or 37.0%. When professional basketball players can’t even make four out of every 10 shots with the championship on the line, something is wrong.

There is always a certain amount of defensive pressure that results in forced shots. But anyone witnessing Tuesday nights’ game knows that defense was hardly the reason. The Cavs had so many open looks at the basket from nearly everywhere on the court, they could have been playing the Knicks. Players were missing all manner of layups and 10-footers. Time after time, player after player bounced shots off the back of the rim. Maybe it was defensive pressure or maybe it was the pressure of the moment, but when players are missing long, it tends to mean they are having trouble controlling their emotions. Besides, if defensive pressure was really the culprit, then why were the teams a collective 10-31 from the free throw line?

If you dig deeper into the statistics of this series you’ll see that in each game the Cavs have had two quarters in which they’ve failed to score even 20 points. In game one, it was quarters one and three. In game two, it was the first and second quarter. In game three, it was quarters one and three again. That accounts for half of all the quarters played in the entire series. More to the point, the Cavs simple inability to put the ball in the basket in the first quarter has set an offensive tone that has carried on throughout each game. Thus, if the Cavs are to be successful in game four, and they have to be, a good place to start would be a way to score at least 20 points in the first quarter. It hasn’t happened yet.

You could point to the second half of game two to counter the argument that the Cavs haven’t scored all series, but you can’t consider the second half without taking into account how deep of a hole they dug for themselves in the first half. The Spurs had a whopping 25-point lead going into the second half of that game which obviously changed the nature of how the rest of that game would be played. Moreover, it’s hardly as if the Cavs carried over that momentum in game three. They scored only 38 points in the first half and 34 points in the second half. At best, the second half of game two was the anomaly. Game three was the standard.

While the Cavs and their offensive woes are partially responsible for a series that is devoid of any real drama, the Spurs shouldn’t be given a pass. They have failed to score 20 or more points in three quarters and have scored only 20 points in three others, which accounts for exactly half of the entire series as well. No wonder you’re left with a sense that this series is being played in monotone. Maybe the grind of the playoffs has taken its toll on both teams, but if that’s the case then the NBA needs to find a better system quickly or they’ll find themselves splitting time on the Versus network with the NHL begging people to watch their playoffs.

And as if the Cavs offensive ineptitude hasn’t been enough to cut the legs out from most Cleveland fans, then the Indians are doing their level best to complete the job these days. In the month of June, they are 5-7. While two of those losses were against the Detroit Tigers, five have been against the relative dregs of the league: Kansas City, Cincinnati, Seattle and Florida. The formula for success in baseball hasn’t changed in a hundred years: beat up the bums and play .500 against the rest. That’s certainly not the formula the Tribe has used lately, but if they plan to return to post season, they simply can’t keep playing down to their level of competition, something they seem to do all too frequently.

Where the Indians have really suffered of late, though, is on offense, much like the Cavs. They’ve been shut out twice in their last four games. Against Florida on Wednesday and on the heels of just being shut out the night before (and two nights before that), the Indians remained in a coma until the 6th inning, when they scored six runs. But that “explosion” was aided greatly by some really bad baseball on the part of the Marlins as five of those runs were unearned.

The one really bright spot of that inning was David Dellucci’s three-run home run. Prior to that and even going back over the previous three games, the Indians hitters were having trouble getting themselves into good hitting counts and even when they did they either popped out or grounded out. You’d search in vain for a hard hit ball. Even more difficult was finding a way to take advantage of a pitcher in trouble, exemplified by their ineptness on Sunday against the Reds with the bases loaded and the game on the line.

When Dellucci came to bat against the Marlins in the sixth inning, it was just after relative chaos had ensued. Byung-Hyun Kim, as most will recall, is a converted closer after having been run out of Arizona following his post-season Jose Mesa impressions while with the Diamondbacks. As a starter, he’s been the kind of pitcher that would make a team long for Scott Elarton. In other words, his appearance on a major league roster wouldn’t be possible without expansion. Still, there he was shutting out the Indians until his defense took on the character of a Sunday morning beer league and booted the ball around.

Taylor Tankersley, who is hardly Dennis Eckersly, came in for relief, an appearance notable only because he was summarily tossed by home plate umpire Brian Knight for drilling Grady Sizemore in the shoulder on a 0-2 pitch. By that point, all manner of argument had broken out and Aaron Boone (yes, that Aaron Boone) another beneficiary of baseball expansion, found himself with an early shower as well. By the time order had been restored, Lee Gardner was suddenly on the mound for the Marlins and four pitches later Dellucci put the game out of reach.

It’s hard to know when a team’s offensive slump might end, but an at-bat like Dellucci’s is often a good start. Not only had it been awhile since any Indian had gone deep, but it also was the first time in awhile that the Indians had actually taken advantage of a gift-wrapped situation. While this may not be the most critical point in the season, it is pretty clear that the Tigers aren’t going away. As such, the Indians can ill afford a prolonged offensive slump, particularly with the Atlanta Braves making their way to Jacobs Field this weekend.

As for the Cavs, they really have no choice but to end their offensive slump. No team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit and nothing the Cavs have done thus in thus far in the series foretells any change in that precedent. All that says is that it’s unlikely that the Cavs will win the championship. What it doesn’t say is that they shouldn’t at least use every opportunity they still have in the waning days of this season to find their stroke, if only to make watching the game a bit less painful.