Becoming Unhinged

If anyone was worried that the dismal performance of the Cleveland Indians has gone unnoticed by manager Eric Wedge, worry nevermore. With each passing loss, Wedge is coming far closer to becoming unhinged than at any point since he took over as manager in 2004.

The latest evidence was on display after Wednesday afternoon’s loss to the Chicago White Sox when a visibly angry Wedge uncharacteristically challenged relief pitcher Rafael Betancourt, claiming essentially that Betancourt is afraid to pitch inside.

That Betancourt is underperforming is hardly news. Heck, it means he fits in well with this group of underachievers. That Wedge has taken his complaints public, however, does qualify as genuine news on any number of fronts.

First, blasting a player publicly is something either a rookie manager or an icon does. Wedge is neither. He may be a veteran manager, but he doesn’t have the gravitas or resume of a Jim Leyland in Detroit, for example, to pull it off just yet. By showing what some would say is his human side, Wedge began a walk on a slippery slope in new shoes with wax paper on the soles.

A manager fills many roles, from babysitter to Godfather. But first and foremost, the players have to believe that the manger is like a Secret Service agent, ready to take a bullet for them if necessary. When the manager starts firing the bullets instead, the dynamic is inverted. Put it this way, do you think Betancourt believes that Wedge has his back? To the extent that there’s a sliver of doubt in their minds, the players will now be that much more cautious with Wedge. It’s not one of those good problems to have.

Second, as awful as Betancourt and the bullpen have been, you could have won a small fortune wagering that to the extent Wedge would lose it publicly it would be because anyone of his hitters just killed another rally by swinging at another ball four. Think about Wednesday’s ninth inning. Wedge, playing small ball with a team ill equipped to handle the task, watched, in order, Ben Francisco and Victor Martinez fail to get the tying run home from third base.

When Wedge has talked about the team’s offensive problems, it’s been mostly in a generic sense, complaining that “the hitters” keep giving away at-bats but generally not focusing on any particular player. To the extent he’s spoken about anybody, it’s been in even, measured tones about Travis Hafner and the need to get him going in the right direction.

One aspect of Wedge’s attack on Betancourt that is particularly intriguing was the statement that Wedge and pitching coach Carl Willis have been making the same points over and over again to no avail. It’s similar to Wedge’s statements that he’s talked with the hitters numerous times about their approach, again to no avail.

In some sense, it suggests that the players, for whatever reason, are beginning to tune out Wedge and his staff. Wedge admitted that Betancourt isn’t listening and it’s pretty clear that no one’s much listening to hitting coach Derek Shelton either, given how the ninth inning unfolded on Wednesday.

By taking on Betancourt as he did, Wedge unwittingly presented his general manager with an issue that probably wasn’t yet on his radar screen but probably should have been: that Wedge may be starting to lose the clubhouse. How true that ultimately is will undoubtedly be the key to the way the rest of this season unfolds. Right now, it’s doubtful that Mark Shapiro sees this as anything more than isolated examples involving one or two players. But if the struggles continue, Shapiro is going to reassess that premise. And if he thinks that team is no longer listening to Wedge or his staff, then Shapiro will have a bigger problem to deal with than whether or not to dump Andy Marte.

The guess, though, is that if the clubhouse is being lost, it’s not by Wedge but by Shapiro. Wedge is just the convenient target for a boatload of frustration stemming from a variety of failures, not the least of which was Shapiro’s inability to upgrade an offense that was struggling long before this season started.

Essentially, Shapiro stood pat on an offense that last year was too highly dependent on the long ball to produce runs. Forget about runs scored, the Indians struggled on offense last year and the players know it. It was masked by the emergence of Asdrubal Cabrera late last season, but most should recall that until Cabrera arrived, the Indians looked every bit as woeful as they do now for significant stretches, which is no surprise because it’s largely the same players.

Shapiro entered this season adhering to certain assumptions that, at the time, seemed pretty reasonable: that Hafner’s 2007 was an anomaly, that Cabrera and Sizemore would be even better and that Franklin Gutierrez looked poised to make a huge jump as well. Unfortunately, not a one of them has worked out so far.

In many ways, 2008 is turning out like 2006. Having gotten painfully close the previous season, Shapiro once again resisted the urge to make any major changes. Just as they did in 2006, the players this year seem to have taken note and responded in the most negative way possible, by failing to live up to any reasonable expectations. Instead of being energized by the confidence in them that they’d be even better, they seemed to have taken Shapiro’s minor offseason tweaks as a lack of commitment.
There’s no way of really knowing of course what’s deep in the psyche of most of these players. And whether or not it’s too late to save a season that’s hemorrhaging hope by the inning is a matter of opinion that ultimately will take another 50 or so games to confirm. While this season may not end up amounting to much, it won’t be a total loss if Shapiro is now able to learn the lessons he didn’t learn following the 2005 season, that rare is the team that can improve by standing pat.

Heart

Baseball, as Indians manager Eric Wedge likes to remind us, is a very difficult game. It’s why he tends to resist the opportunity to upbraid his players, at least publicly, when they fail to perform. Indeed it’s why Wedge steadfastly stood by his team during this middle of the season when they otherwise looked like they were on vacation, at least from hitting.

The tendency, of course, is to dismiss Wedge’s assessment of the game as an excuse to cover for the mistakes that get made. If that’s true, that’s fine. Part of a manager’s job is to have the backs of his players during the lean times. But Wedge issues that reminder as often as necessary predominately for one reason: it’s true.

Of all the professional sports, baseball seems to be the easiest to play to the causal fan. Unlike football, there are few if any instances of all nine players ever having to move in concert at one time to accomplish a singular goal. Unlike basketball or hockey, most of the time the players seem to be just standing around waiting for something to happen. Americans, in general, like their entertainment like they like their people—direct and with as little subtlety as possible. In that respect baseball will always suffer in comparison. You have a round bat, a round ball and you have to hit it square.

But every once in awhile, a baseball game comes along that is so transcendental that it makes every other sport look lame by comparison. Saturday night’s game ALCS game between the Indians and the Red Sox was just that game. It set the table for Monday night’s victory and for all that will follow as the Indians continue their march toward the World Series.

Unfortunately, those who know that game only by its final score will never appreciate its beauty, drama and suspense. They’ll also never fully appreciate why this Cleveland Indians team deserves a special place in their hearts and minds.

By now, of course, everyone knows the story line. After about five hours of play, the Indians broke a 6-6 tie, scoring seven runs in the 11th inning and completely letting out whatever air remained in Boston’s Fenway Park. While this was dramatic enough, it pales well in comparison to all that took place before it.

This Cleveland-Boston series features all manner of intrigue all of which was on display this past Saturday. The starting pitchers, so feared because of their reputations, were not able to contain the bats of their opposition. There was hand-wringing, of course, every other inning or so when David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez came to the plate. Not only couldn’t they be stopped, they couldn’t be contained. And who knew how important a seemingly innocent ground out in the top of the 6th inning that scored Jhonny Peralta would be?

But once Peralta scored, the game was locked into an endless loop of near misses and as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, it was hard to imagine it would ever end. The fact that it did end and in such grand style for the Indians had nothing to do with luck, karma or any other such cosmic phenomena. It came down to heart.

Start, for example, with the very first inning. After the beat down of the night before, the easiest thing for the Indians to have done, knowing they were facing Curt Schilling, was lay down. Not intentionally, to be sure, but it would have had the same effect. Instead, Grady Sizemore, who took the collar the night before, started it off with a hustle double and came home on Victor Martinez’s double. It sent a message to the Red Sox that what happened on Friday night stayed on Friday night.

Boston, of course, is nobody’s weak sister. With Fausto Carmona struggling with his control, the three runs the Red Sox scored in the bottom of the third was no more of a surprise than how they scored them, mostly at the hands of Ortiz and Ramirez.

Ramirez, the displaced Clevelander by way of Washington Hts. in New York City, is quite a study. He is a testament to all that can be accomplished with a spotless mind. He could stand in the middle of a hurricane and eat a sandwich. Completely unfazed by the circumstances or enormity of any situation, all he does is hit, with his bat, your bat or a waffle bat. And if he’s not hitting, he’s still scaring the bejeezus out of opposing pitchers anyway. Whereas Alex Rodriguez has a sensitivity meter with a hair trigger, Ramirez suffers no such burdens. It’s why Ramirez will always perform whatever the setting and why Rodriguez will always struggle particularly when the stage gets bigger.

The third inning should have and could have buried the Indians, particularly with Schilling on the mound. But Schilling was not able to perform one of the most important tasks a pitcher faces: shut down the opposing team after your guys have just put a crooked number on the scoreboard. Following singles by Martinez and Ryan Garko, Peralta hammered a 3-run home run to temporarily give the Indians the lead, 4-3.

Though Carmona did struggle, his ability to hold Boston in the bottom of the fourth inning after the Indians had just taken the lead was bigger than most even recall at this point. It didn’t work out so well in the fifth for Carmona, but getting out of the fourth was critical.

Like a boxer temporarily staggered, the Red Sox were able to regain the lead in the fifth, thanks in no small measure again to Ramirez. But by the time Franklin Gutierrez’s chop grounder allowed Peralta to tie the score in the top of the sixth, it was obvious to all that this was a team that wouldn’t die. No matter where the Red Sox pounded the wooden stake, either they were missing the heart or, more likely, the heart of this team was just too big to be stilled.

If the Red Sox had any doubts about that at all, they were silenced in the bottom of the 10th. With Ortiz, Ramirez and Mike Lowell coming to the plate and reliever Tom Mastny on the mound, there were few fans in either city that gave the game much of a chance to make it to the 11th inning. Even when Ortiz grounded out to Peralta, that still seemed the most likely outcome.

But all Mastny did was retire Ramirez and Lowell on harmless fly balls to right field. That momentum shift turned into the onslaught by the Indians in the top of the 11th and is what, ultimately, tied this series at one game apiece.

Every game is ultimately the sum of its separate parts and often the mini-dramas that brought about that final result get lost in the mix. And even if they do in this case, there is a major takeaway not to be missed. This team has heart and it has it in spades. The strength, character and will, all sports synonyms for heart, that it takes to prevail in such circumstances is widely talked about it but rarely witnessed. But when it’s there, it’s awesome in its power.

It directly led to Monday night’s victory, not by momentum but by shear force of will. It propelled Jake Westbrook to reach down to find something that had been missing for most of the season. It pushed Kenny Lofton’s hit over the right field wall. It’s the reason Rafael Betancourt was able to squeeze still another magic inning out of his tired arm. It’s why the Indians will win this series.

It’s one thing not to be favored in a series or being forced to play in an unfriendly environment. It happens to every team. Simply overcoming those odds is not, in and of itself, much of a deal. But overcoming adversity whatever the circumstances and with limited experience in dealing it is a much different issue. Not only did the Indians not let Friday’s demoralizing loss carry over to Saturday’s game, neither did they let the gut punches within the two games derail them from the mission at hand.

The Indians have had more talented teams in their existence that have accomplished much less. By winning on Saturday and again on Monday this team already has gone beyond expectations that were reasonable to make in the first place. The only thing that’s left is to finish the job. Don’t bet against them.

Carl logic

There was an interesting letter to Sheldon Ocker, Indians beat writer for the Akron Beacon Journal, published on Sunday. Given how cranky and dismissive Ocker usually is, it’s a wonder why anyone bothers writing to him in the first place. But write on they do and this one asked:

After the news of Roberto Hernandez's release, I realized, ``Wow, Mark Shapiro is terrible at signing free agents.'' This past year, Mark brought in David Dellucci, Trot Nixon, Hernandez, Aaron Fultz, Joe Borowski and Keith Foulke.
In years past, his free agent signings were Aaron Boone, Todd Hollandsworth, Brady Anderson, Ramon Vazquez, Eduardo Perez, Jason Johnson, Brian Sikorski, Lou Merloni, Alex Cora, Jose Hernandez, Chris Magruder, Bill Selby, Chad Paronto, Shane Spencer, Jeff D'Amico, Jose Jimenez, Chad Durbin, Rick White, Scott Stewart, Ricky Gutierrez, Matt Lawton, Jason Bere (twice!), Jeff Liefer and finally Scott Sauerbeck.
Outside of Millwood, Borowski and probably Fultz and Scott Elarton, Shapiro has done awful at signing free agents.
I am not completely bashing the guy because I do realize that he has pulled off some great trades involving minor-leaguers, but that is not enough. This team has a very limited budget and, basically, money is getting thrown away to a collection of stiffs.

In answering the question, Ocker made the legitimate point that the writer was mixing in major league free agents, minor league free agents and trades. But he also pointed out what is also more or less obvious: when you’re only shopping for bargains don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work out.

What Ocker should have done but didn’t was expand on this answer by addressing the writer’s real point: that Shapiro repeatedly throws money away with little or nothing to show for it.

This raises a more interesting question, which is the flip side of that same proposition: can a team be successful shopping only in the cut-out bin or does in need to buy from the designer racks once in awhile?

This kind of debate reminds me of a guy named Carl that I used to work with at a local factory. I was earning money for college and Carl was earning money for, I guess, booze. Carl used to tell me that he’d rather buy 10 cars for $100 each than one car for $1000. His logic was that occasionally one of those 10 cars would run just as well as $1000 car and he’d still have nine other cars to tinker with. Of course, Carl had trouble showing up for work on time due mostly to the unreliability of his fleet of vehicles and eventually he got fired for it but he was passionate about his theory nonetheless.

As theories go, it’s fine for Shapiro to essentially utilize Carl logic in stocking the Indians every off-season, but at some point someone in the Dolan household is going to wake up to all the money that’s been frittered away and realize that maybe, just maybe, Shapiro might have been better off buying one or two quality free agents instead.

There is no dispute over why Shapiro is forced to employ Carl logic, year after year. He simply hasn’t been given the budget space within which to do anything else. But the flameouts of most of the free agent crop that Shapiro bought this last off-season just emphasizes that the Indians success to date is at least as much smoke and mirrors as anything else.

Right now, the Tribe is blessed with strong starting pitching with enough depth to withstand a fair amount of ineffectiveness at the bottom of the rotation. This is a tribute to Shapiro’s ability to find quality arms through the draft and trades and a farm system geared toward developing them. The concern though, once again, is in the bullpen. Two of Shapiro’s 2007 crew of free agents, Roberto Hernandez and Keith Foulke, aren’t with the club anymore, Foulke having given up the ghost before the first nerve was pinched in spring training. Joe Borowski, another free agent pickup, has been a pleasant surprise to date with 21 saves. But he’s basically Bob Wickman, albeit at a lower salary. The only thing Shapiro really accomplished in foolishly trading Wickman last season is that in Borowksi he saved some money to get similar results. This isn’t necessarily a bad formula for success, but the few million saved in this arbitrage just got wasted anyway, along with an extra million, with the signing and release of Hernandez. One step forward, two steps back.

What’s truly puzzling about all of this in terms of the bullpen is given how critical it is to a team’s success, why do the Indians constantly take such risks? It’s not as if their history just this decade hasn’t demonstrated two or three times now that good starting pitching, good hitting and a weak bullpen is a recipe for mediocrity not the playoffs.

The other truly puzzling aspect of Shapiro’s approach to free agency is the over reliance on the so-called “veteran presence.” Trot Nixon certainly embodies that approach. Nixon is a really decent guy who had a great career in Boston. You can’t always measure someone like Nixon’s effectiveness by pointing at the statistics. But on the other hand, he is taking up $3 million in salary on a team that simply cannot afford that luxury. Put it this way, if Boston couldn’t afford that luxury, and their payroll is about $82 million more than the Indians, how can Cleveland?

All Nixon does is take up salary space and retard the growth of what look to be legitimate prospects just hankering for a legitimate chance: Shin-Soo Choo, Ben Francisco, and Franklin Gutierrez for instance. Thus, if you’re keeping track, utilizing Carl logic, Shapiro bought two agents for over $6 million, which is nearly 10% of the payroll of the Indians 40-man roster, instead of one quality free agent for $6.3 million. Of course, Shapiro would say that spending that much on a middle reliever is foolish and perhaps he is right. But a reliable closer that would have allowed Borowski to assume the set-up role would have been a decent alternative, too. In short, there is any number of ways that Shapiro could have done better than simply giving away such a substantial portion of his limited budget.

This really highlights another flaw in the thinking of both Shapiro and manager Eric Wedge. Despite the chances that both of them were given at relatively young ages, they are extremely reluctant to take similar chances on young players. It’s exactly why this team has Dellucci, Nixon and Jason Michaels on the roster.

But combined, those three make over $8 million. Maybe having one of the three was necessary, but all three seem excessive, particularly since that is money that easily could have been better spent on the bullpen.

One can play this game all day with the Indians roster and salary data for this year or, really, any year of the Shapiro regime, but the overarching point is that Shapiro keeps doing the same things in the same way each year hoping for a different result. Whether that makes him insane or simply stubborn is of little consequence given the fine line between the two.

But what it does do is highlight perhaps the major flaw in Shapiro’s continued quest to build a team that consistently contends: his dogged adherence to Carl logic isn’t working any better for him than it did for Carl. Not only does it makes it a guessing game from season to season and within each season what kind of team the Indians ultimately might have, it is also robbing this team of a fair amount of what little money the Dolans are actually willing to spend in the first place.