Closing Another Book

At least you can’t accuse Mark Shapiro of not cleaning up his messes.

With the completion of last week’s annual July garage sale, Shapiro essentially closed the book on his role as general manager of the Indians, a job he took over in late 2001, by sweeping out most of the last remaining vestiges of his tenure as the Cleveland Indians’ general manager. .

It was hardly a rousing success. When his 9th year is completed, he will have posted exactly two winning seasons in a career that ultimately will be known more for bungled opportunities, bad decisions and misspent millions than anything else.

The good news, though, is that for the next few years general manager-in-waiting Chris Antonetti won’t have to preside over his own annual auction. Pretty much anything not nailed down already has been sold by Shapiro and all that remains in the cupboard that Antonetti inherits is an essentially minor league team with a mostly minor league budget.

Shapiro’s sale didn’t create much of a windfall for the team this year, assuming you define windfall as legitimate prospects. The good stuff had been picked over the past few years anyway and all that remained in the cut out bins were the likes of a sore-armed Jake Westbrook, an injury-prone Kerry Wood and an attention-challenged Jhonny Peralta. Indeed, in a few cases the Indians actually had to help pay the salaries of the departed. For their trouble the Indians received a few low level prospects who you’ll most likely never hear from again.

Given the voodoo economics of baseball and the draconian way in which Shapiro had the Indians participate, it’s hard to argue about any of these trades. Indeed, you really can’t argue much with any of his previous trades, either. The Indians under Shapiro were mostly desperate sellers because of their own financial issues and pretty much had to take what’s offered in order to meet their more immediate goals of fiscal prudence.

Under Shapiro’s careful direction, hammered out at the insistence of owners Larry and Paul Dolans, the Indians are officially s shoestring operation again, much as they used to be, with no business charging major league prices.

Shapiro’s teams made two runs at a championship and twice Shapiro wasn’t able to get the team over the hump. But those teams look like anomalies at this point because they had top-level talent making major league dollars. But as decisions Shapiro made didn’t pan out and age and impending free agency caught up with the players he mostly inherited the Indians have been on a slow, painful march to the bottom as they look to pare their budget to an absolute minimum.

Whether you think the team under Shapiro was shrewd or simply mismanaged depends on what you think about the contracts of the three players they just dumped. Along with Travis Hafner and his contract, they are at the core of why the Indians are struggling so mightily financially.

Let’s start with Westbrook. He’s under .500 for his career with an ERA of 4.34. Until his injury, his best attribute was as an inning eater, pitching over 200 innings in each of 2004-06. Those seasons led the Indians to sign him to a contract that’s paid him over $10 million in each of the last 3 seasons alone. It’s hard to know if Westbrook’s contract was market price or if Shapiro set the market by overpaying him in the first place. Suffice it to say though that more than a few people questioned Shapiro’s decision at that time to give Westbrook that kind of contract given his rather modest accomplishments.

Peralta is even more of a mystery. He’s a lifetime .264 hitter whose one decent season in 2005 convinced Shapiro to label him a core player. That led to Shapiro signing Peralta to a long-term above market contract to buy out of his arbitration years. Peralta never duplicated that 2005 season, coming relatively close just once in 2008. Meanwhile he proved to be a player who seemed oddly indifferent to his craft.

The signing of Kerry Wood still mystifies. Wood had been a closer for only one season with the Cubs when he was signed by Shapiro. While he did save 34 games, the Cubs didn’t seem particularly interested in re-signing him. Meanwhile it was difficult to understand Shapiro’s thinking giving the context of the Indians at that time.

Remember, the 2007 Indians went 96-66 with Joe Borowski saving 45 games. They beat the Yankees in the divisional series and were up 3-1 against Boston before losing 4 straight. But Borowski was a high-wire act and a better general manager would have made the move for another closer then.

But Shapiro stood pat and the team regressed in more ways than just on the mound. CC Sabathia, the reigning Cy Young award winner was traded. Thus by the time Wood was signed for the 2009 season, the team was a shadow of its former self. The Indians had far more fundamental problems that needed addressing and signing a player like Wood for just two years at that kind of money reeked of stop-gap. It’s money could have been much better spent.

Now back to Travis Hafner for a moment. The reason he’s still standing in an Indians uniform has nothing to do with either sentimental attachment or production. It’s simple dollars. His current salary is $11.5 million and there are still two seasons, plus a club option in a third, at $13 million per. There’s also a $2.75 million buyout if that club option isn’t exercised.

At that price, he’d have to be producing Albert Pujols numbers to move him, which if he were I still believe he’d be traded. But that’s a rather worthless debate. He’s been out of the lineup recently with a sore shoulder, though in fairness it’s kind of hard to tell. In July he hit 1 home run and had 4 RBI. He also had 21 strike outs and had more games with multiple strikeouts than in any other month of the season.

His is the contract that just keeps giving and giving. While there’s no reason to think that Shapiro wouldn’t have traded Peralta, Westbrook and Wood just for sport, in truth those trades are as much directed at Hafner’s unmovable contract as they were to conclude the process Shapiro started when he and the Dolans determined that they could never sign Sabathia.

In a sense, then, these recent trades provide a fitting conclusion to Shapiro’s career as a general manager. He was never able to climb the mountain with this team because for all his bluster and easy-going ways, he wasn’t a particularly good judge of talent. In making his one real run to a championship he consistently bet on the wrong horses and those bets ended up costing this franchise millions in unrealized value while inhibiting the real growth of legitimate prospects.

From this point forward, the team now is in the hands of Antonetti, someone who has been trained directly by Shapiro and who will be supervised by, wait for it, Shapiro. That means there’s no reason to believe that much will change, from the business model built on a one-word strategy “hope” to an endless cycle of trades and prospects.

So come season’s end, when Antonetti takes over for good and reboots the server, in all likelihood, there’s little chance it’s going to clear the error codes.

The Big Six

If the Cleveland Indians have a set of goals for the season scrawled on a piece of paper inside the mind of general manager Mark Shapiro, it probably says “when you don't know where you're going any road will get you there.”

Here's a test: on any night watch the Indians for as long as you can stand and then try to write down exactly what you think they were trying to accomplish. On the list of things you're likely to write down, “win games,” if it appears at all, will be down at the bottom. For a team rebuilding that's understandable. The real problem is that at the bottom also will be “developing a team that someday will win games.”

During this past off season Shapiro spent a lot of time talking about how this team needed to get a better start out of the gate than in seasons past. Shapiro all but painted the picture that the team's slow starts was the primary reason Eric Wedge now has “former Indians' manager” as part of his title.

To that end Shapiro and the brain trust that brought you this roster went about supposedly revamping the spring training experience as if the only thing that stood between this roster and on-field success was a better cut of steak at the training table. Manager Manny Acta placed more emphasis on winning preseason games than did his predecessor (as well as most of the other current managers) and indeed from that perspective the Indians' spring was a success.

But a distressed room doesn't suddenly get a makeover just because you move a few lamps around. When the season started this team was still the uneven mess it looked like on paper in the off season and thus it shouldn't have surprised anyone that April again was miserable. It was bound to be.

Then again, we're likely to be saying the same thing at the end of May, June, July and August as well. By September fans will be so focused on the Browns that they won't notice whatever fate awaits the Indians' then.

The Indians 9-13 record at the end of April projects to a 66 win season. Since most figure this team to win about 70 games anyway, it seems like they are right on pace.

It would be one thing if this team was built with the intent of taking its lumps early while it gels into a competitive unit late. That's just not the case. It's a team that seems to have been built with only one unifying theme: don't lose too much money.

Even that task isn't going to be easy, not with a lineup featuring the Big Six.

The Indians as constructed are mostly a mess. Of the seven players on the roster making over $1 million this season, 6 of them are among the least productive. Unfortunately, three of those six look to be around for a few more years. The Indians have no other choice.

What it all adds up to is a cringe-worthy lineup with only the occasional bright spot or, in mathematical terms, a team that deservedly is on pace to win 66 games, for years to come.

I've railed against Russell Branyan being on this team plenty of times so no need to turn over those shovels of dirt again. Nothing he's done since his return changes that assessment. The best that can be said is that he's not guaranteed any money for next year. All he's doing on this team is eating up space and inhibiting the development of players that might actually have a chance to be on this team a year from now. His $2 million dollar salary is essentially a gift that Branyan would be wise to put in a CD. I hope he sends a thank you note.

You could say the same thing about Travis Hafner, except that his salary is now in the multi-millions, 11.5 of them to be exact.

It's actually hard to watch Hafner these days because so much of what he isn't now is wrapped up in what he used to be. It may be that injuries have robbed him of his ability to be productive any longer. It also may be that his lack of productivity at the plate is exacerbated by his contract, with 3 years remaining, that has become the millstone around this franchise that prevents it from putting a more cohesive lineup on the field. Hafner not only is collecting $11.5 million this season, which equates to about $100 per bad swing at this point, but the Indians are also on the hook to pay him $13 million each of the next two seasons. Hafner is like that stock you bought at $85 a share and held on to even as the company went bankrupt. What else could you do?

The sad fact is that the Indians could be as productive with Andy Marte and pick a player making the minimum as they are with Branyan and Hafner in the same lineup at about 1/12th the cost. This alone goes a long way to explaining the mess that is this lineup.

Yet if these two were the only problems then maybe things would look brighter. But then I watch Jhonny Peralta slumber through his existence at third base like the kid in the back of your high school science class who, when he was there at all, was usually sleeping.

Peralta, with his $4.85 million salary, is like a trust fund baby just gliding through life hoping the money never runs out. Fortunately, it might. He's due $7 million next season, but that's a club option which, if exercised, means Peralta has some incriminating pictures of someone stored in a safety deposit box. If neither Shapiro nor his hand-picked successor Chris Antonetti can't find someone to be as productive as Peralta for 1/10th the price then the Dolans should sue for malpractice.

You could make the case, weakly, that Peralta is still pouting over being moved to third base. But really he wasn't any better at short, either. He has occasional streaks where he's semi-hot at the plate followed by long streaks where he looks like he'd rather be any place else. Mostly though he continues to occupy a spot in the heart of a very weak offensive lineup because his guaranteed salary makes it impossible for the Indians to put anyone else there.

Branyan, Hafner and Peralta are mostly old stories at this point. Unfortunately another player that's becoming an old story is Grady Sizemore. Like Hafner, Sizemore's high water mark was 2006. Since then he's been on a steady and mystifying decline.

That might be fine if Sizemore were still earning league minimum. Instead he's making $5.7 million this year and is scheduled to make $7.6 million next season. In fact Sizemore's salary and productivity make a perfect “X” on the chart with the crossover point being that 2006 season.

There's no question that Wedge had trouble grooming Sizemore in the same way that Wedge had trouble developing most players. Yet at this point the problems with Sizemore seem to be beyond the grasp of nearly everybody. Except for the occasional spectacular play in center field, he looks nothing like the player that was poised to become the Indians' next superstar to be traded. Right now he looks like just another spare part among the many cobbled together in order to field a line up each day.

You can blame Shapiro for giving Hafner an outsized contract and for placing too much faith in a player like Peralta who never quite deserved it. You can find a healthy number of baseball executives that would agree with you, too. When it comes to Sizemore, though, there probably isn't an executive in baseball that would yet turn his back on him. And yet, where he seems to be headed is for a career that mirrors that of Rick Manning. That isn't awful, but it you shouldn't pay nearly $8 million a year for it either.

Then there's the money being chewed up by Kerry Wood as he sits in the spot where he's apparently most comfortable, the disabled list. But his $11 million for next season is a club option which means that if he somehow survives the whole season in Cleveland he won't survive the off season.

The same applies to pitcher Jake Westbrook, with his $11 million salary. He is the last of the Big Six as he's a free agent next season. His injuries caused him to miss all of last season but let's be honest, before that he was a career .500 pitcher anyway with an ERA well over 4.00. His history indicates he would never have received full value from what they were paying him anyway.

Fausto Carmona is the last of the 7 players making at least $1 million this season. Of the group he's been far and away the most productive. He's also the most mercurial of the group and always on the verge of being a few pitches away from the mess he's been the last two seasons or, stated differently, on the verge of making the Big Six the Big Seven.

Which means, of course, that as long as the majority of this group stays in tact, and it will, for the next few seasons, there's really no reason to think that April 2011 or 2012 is going to be any better.

They Don't Keep Anybody

If anyone associated with the Cleveland Indians at the moment is a little irritated with fan reaction to their relatively decent play of late, he should know that the team has only itself to blame.

Indians fans, or at least a healthy majority of them, at this moment are so disillusioned with the leadership and direction of the franchise that nothing short of major, dramatic changes is going to change their indifference.

They’ve heard Indians president and co-owner Paul Dolan candidly admit that the best this team can ever hope for is to be in the playoffs rarely and be competitive occasionally. They’ve seen player after player after player after player bump up against a contract expiration date only to be traded as a result. They’ve seen a general manager spin and wring dry every available cliché about the young, cheap talent he’s acquired, knowing full well that not one of these players will reach his prime in Cleveland unless he’s abjectly mediocre.

The reasons to be cynical are as compelling as they are overwhelming. The reasons to be optimistic are as few as they are underwhelming. So what if the Indians take two of three from the White Sox? They still remain one of the worst teams in the league.

In truth, the fate of the Indians is gut wrenching to the true fan, and by true fan I mean anyone that’s been following the team closely at least since Cory Snyder was a rookie. They don’t want to see their team fail. It’s far more fun when every pitch thrown in September or October has meaning. Give these fans even the sliver of a reason to believe and they’ll excuse the years of mistreatment faster than Red Sox fans are forgiving David Ortiz.

Right now, however, the Indians represent the death of hope. And lest you see this as the misguided thoughts of a bitter writer consider no better source than Indians shortstop, third baseman, designated hitter Jhonny Peralta.

Peralta has had a modest second-half resurgence that in large measure reflects the modest second-half resurgence of the team. There’s probably a connection there worth exploring but for now let’s let that pass. Instead, focus solely on what Peralta told the media. No, not the “I’m not going to change my approach results notwithstanding” stubbornness but his discussion about his contract status.

Peralta is signed through 2010 with a club option that will never get picked up in 2011 unless Peralta continues to undermine his monetary value with his David Delluci-like consistency. Acknowledging that the players can see exactly the same things as fans, Peralta said, as reported by Paul Hoynes in the Plain Dealer, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next year. I don’t know if I’m going to be next or not. I have an option for 2011, but they don’t keep anybody. You never know.”

Though Peralta spent the most critical part of his season locked inside his man-cave in sweet slumber, blissfully ignorant of his responsibilities, at least he was awake long enough to understand full well the Indians’ business model and his place in it. “They don’t keep anybody” can now take its rightful place alongside of “building for a tomorrow that never comes” as the team’s recurring theme/mission statement. By the way, since the Dolans haven’t yet taken up my office for a royalty-free license for those statements, I hereby put the world on notice of my copyright. If the Indians don’t need the money, I do.

All this does is underscore what ultimately has the potential to lead to this franchise’s demise: the lack of an identity. Baseball fans, like those of any sport really, certainly appreciate the game itself. But the reason fans purchase the product associated with it is because they identify with it in a meaningful way. It’s why fans won’t go out of their way to buy tickets to a Chris Perez bobblehead day but might for a Grady Sizemore.

As Shapiro continues to respond to the economic forces that envelop him by tearing down the foundation of what he’s built even before he finishes furnishing it, he strips away from their fans their day-to-day reason to care about the team. Right now fans are about as emotionally invested in this team as someone watching a network TV show that’s about to be cancelled.

It’s certainly nice that the Indians can play better baseball late in a lost season, but nothing about Sunday’s win against the White Sox was particularly meaningful mainly because the front office long ago told them there was nothing particularly meaningful about any win. Ok, let me refine that. It’s meaningful for manager Eric Wedge. He can once again make the case that Shapiro’s already bought that he’s good with younger talent.

More damming though is the fact that the “they don’t keep anybody” approach works as a disincentive for any fan to find meaning in the team. If you were prone to be a Peralta fan (and if you are, let’s discuss off line as I have a phone number to a crisis center to send you), you’re actually far better off rooting for his failures than his successes. If he plays great, he will fulfill Shapiro’s prophecy. If he fails just enough, he’ll be around for years to come, kind of a baseball version of Dick Cheney.

The same holds true for Grady Sizemore. Why bother getting all wrapped up in his career when its success will only hasten his departure? Indeed, what Shapiro really has accomplished, perhaps without intending to, is to make the concept of core players irrelevant to not just the ardent but also the average fans.

Once upon a time a general manager had a goofy notion that good young players should be used as building blocks not trade bait. He had a dream that these building blocks would sustain a mid-market franchise for years to come. And he was right. The Indians of the 1990s were his signature and that general manager’s name was Moe Green. Sorry, I mean, John Hart. Now there’s not even a statute to commemorate his dream.

Shapiro, his protégé, tried to follow that pattern but could never quite replicate it. At this point it’s been all but abandoned in favor of a system whereby the Indians act as the feeder pool for the league’s sharks. Maybe once in awhile that feeder pool will have enough teeth to scare the sharks for a bit, but never for long.

Of course what Shapiro can’t admit is that the previous approach wasn’t nearly as flawed as his own execution of it was. If you put your trust and money in the wrong core it’s going to come back and bite hard, which is really what this season has proven.

It could be, I suppose, that Shapiro has become convinced that the risk-reward approach of the Hart philosophy is too much of a gamble with a franchise so financially fragile. If so, that’s worthy of a healthy debate. Hart wasn’t a genius but only a man with a plan that happened to work. That doesn’t mean another approach can’t. The problem is that when Shapiro deliberately lit the platform the team was standing on, he did so without another, less risky one to jump to that has the similar chance of paying off.

The Same Old Same Old

You don’t necessarily have to be out of the country for a few weeks and basically cut off from the local sports scene to really appreciate the numbing sameness that is the Cleveland Indians, but it helps.

For the last few weeks I’ve been in Italy enjoying the views from Rome, Florence and Venice and enjoying the lack of substantive updates on Project Shapiro V. 2009. Back in the country for mere hours though and it’s quickly apparent that this version is more bug-ridden and faulty than Windows Vista. And all Sheldon Ocker can tell us is that manager Eric Wedge isn’t at fault.

Maybe none of this is Wedge’s fault and maybe none of it ever will be, but it is interesting how a flawed team brings out his flaws as well. But this isn’t about trying once again to bury Wedge. By this point the arguments and counterarguments have been hashed and rehashed. You’re either glass half full or, in the classic words of George W., half glass empty.

The one thing you can’t be, however, is delusional. You can blame injuries, bad luck and bad decision making to explain away a season that looks far more inevitable than anomalous, but what you can’t take away from any of this is that this organization is any closer to figuring any of its problems out than it ever was.

This team is stuck in the mud and the front office seems to be standing slack-jawed at the wreckage as if this outcome never even appeared on the numerous computer runs the interns made of the team back in February. At the moment, this is a team more than 20 games under .500 and heading for 30 and you don’t have to look any further than one Andy Marte to understand why. So paralyzed have they become that they can’t even decide whether to give Marte another chance, despite the impressive season he’s having in Columbus.

It’s not that Marte, personally, would have made a bit of difference to this season’s outcome. He wouldn’t have. It’s what he stands for. Wedge and Shapiro shuffle pitchers in and out of Columbus with all the forethought of someone driving down the freeway at 100 mph while sending a text. But with Marte they wring their hands as if this very well could be the most important decision in the history of professional baseball. It isn’t even the most important decision they’ll make in the next hour.

It’s true enough that Marte has had his opportunities and it’s true enough that he’s squandered them. But that only matters if you view player development in a straight-lined fashion instead of the amazingly jagged line that it really is.

According to a story by Paul Hoynes in Sunday’s Plain Dealer, Marte’s seemingly breakout season in Columbus has drawn the organization’s attention but they remain reluctant to take another chance on him at the moment.

There are probably a number of reasons that Marte is still in Columbus but you get the feeling that when you sort through the organizational doublespeak, it boils down to one thing: Wedge. Marte just doesn’t seem to be Wedge’s kind of player. Either was Brandon Phillips. Now do you understand why the team seems to keep inserting new CDs into the player but the same song keeps playing? Marte would have had to have hit .271 at some point in his career and been “good in the clubhouse” for him to get on the right side of whatever ledger Wedge keeps.

You can almost hear the pain in his voice when he told Hoynes that “[Marte] doesn't seem to be the same guy who was here the last couple of years. We have to see if it translates up here at sometime.” Yes, sometime. What’s the hurry? It’s only late July in a season that was effectively over months ago. Don’t rush.

The issue, though, really isn’t Marte. It’s the organization. Marte is having a good season in AAA and the front office treats is like a mysterious rash on its arm. Beyond just the Wedge factor, which can’t be underestimated or overstated, you had to almost smile at the Lewis Carroll meets Joseph Heller rationale offered by assistant general manager Chris Antonetti, when he explained, presumably straight-faced, that Marte remains in Columbus for the time being because he is out of options and thus he couldn’t automatically be sent to the minors if he flames out again.

Let’s stop and pause on that for a moment. The Indians were so dismayed with Marte that they sent him outright to Columbus earlier this year even though he was out of options. In doing that, they sent the message that they were completely indifferent to whether or not he remained in the organization at all. In fact, the only reason he’s in Columbus is because no other team in the league claimed him, which is saying plenty. Factor in that the reason Marte’s playing time increased only because of an injury to Wes Hodges and you can understand where he sat on the team’s depth chart. If this was the Browns and Marte was a tight end, he’d be behind Martin Rucker.

But like a 12th alternate just lucky to get into the tournament, Marte has made the most of what is surely his absolute final chance and that seems to be the worst news the front office has heard since the Princeton men’s tennis team finished 6th in the Ivy League this past season.

Now that Marte’s playing well, for the first time, the Indians are suddenly managing around the potential of losing him. The question is, why? In the worst case scenario, Marte comes back up to the big leagues and fails, for the fourth time. If that happens, Shapiro can outright him again, just as he did a few months ago. Marte either gets claimed or he doesn’t but either way his career is over in the Indians’ organization anyway. In other words, what downside?

It may very well be that Marte is the second coming of Karl Pagel. Every team has had its share of players over the years that can’t take that final step. But with the kind of year Jhonny Peralta is having you would have thought that Marte would have been in Cleveland the moment he hit his second home run, if only to light about the 83rd fire under Peralta this year.

As I said, Marte isn’t really the issue, it’s the organization. In context, the fact that it is even fretting over him is more a marker for everything that’s wrong than it is a sign that everything is going as planned. Every day Wedge continues to pound the square peg that Peralta has become into the round hole that is the lineup is another day lost to actually trying to build a team for the future.

The Indians right now are a team without much of a plan. They can’t decide if they have enough money to keep Cliff Lee and/or Victor Martinez and they can’t decide if they will have any pitching and hitting if they don’t. They refuse to commit to Asdrubal Cabrera but seem oddly fascinated with the car wreck that’s become Peralta’s career. The next player that Wedge develops will be his first all the while he and the front office continue to pin their hopes on an eventual return to form by players like Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook.

This team, this organization is far more coulda than shoulda at the moment and the only ones that seem to notice are just about everyone who doesn’t rely on the team for a paycheck.

Yes, it’s late July, the season’s lost but there is one saving grace. The Indians season is like a Spike Lee movie. You can leave for 20 minutes in the middle to get some popcorn and talk to a friend inSa the lobby and when you get back you will not have missed anything and it will make just as much sense as it did when you left.

Another Slice of Irony

The line between love and hate is paper thin, as is the line between hope and despair. If you’re a Cleveland sports fan, though, not to worry. Razor thin or as wide as a bus, it’s a line you can walk with one eye closed, playing a banjo in one hand and balancing your checkbook with the other.

To the doubters, meaning those outside Cleveland without any sense of history or perspective, all you needed to do was listen to the reaction of hardcore Indians’ fans following their team’s improbable four-game sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays this past weekend to understand the inherent contradictions of an Indians fan.

More than a few see great hope in a team even as they secretly admit it was against a team that may be more media-created pretender than legitimate contender. This detail aside, many of these were the same fans alternately bemoaning the trade of CC Sabathia and then putting their best smiley face on it last week. If this all sounds rather oxymoronic, that’s because it is. The only thing Cleveland fans, so conditioned to also-ran status, hate worse than a losing team is a winning team. That’s life through this looking glass and the Tampa Bay series is an object lesson.

It really is rather difficult to figure out just what the Indians rather modest four-game winning streak means, particularly, and naturally, coming as it does on the heels of a 10-game losing streak. The glass half-full (or as George W. would say, the half-glass full) types see this as a portent of things to come, a confirmation of sorts of the inexplicable faith general manager Mark Shapiro had in this crew going into the season. The half-empty folks see it as an aberration. The truth doesn’t lie necessarily in the middle somewhere, but it’s out there nonetheless.

The weekend did show a few things worth noting, especially for those in the “remain calm” camp. First, shortstop Jhonny Peralta’s off-season laser eye surgery seems to finally be kicking in. Or maybe he’s drinking more Mountain Dew or getting more sleep. Undoubtedly, though, he’s more or less slowly but definitively seizing control of the clean-up spot in the Indians’ batting order, making it less of the black hole it’s been for over a year.

Second, Ben Francisco can hit. In his last 10 games, he’s batting .333 with two home runs and seven RBI in 39 at bats. Of course, it was clear in spring training that Francisco could hit. But the team and the town living as it does in a sort of Bizarro World where down is up and right is left, the Indians deep thinkers needed to make really, really certain that the Jason Michaels/David Dellucci platoon wouldn’t work. Here’s hoping they’re satisfied.

Third, when catcher Victor Martinez returns, nearly half the lineup can actually hit, assuming center fielder Grady Sizemore doesn’t misplace his stroke during the All Star Game’s Home Run Derby. While that won’t fully limit the maddening number of times the team scores two or less runs a game, it should make a serious dent in it.

Fourth, the combination of good starting pitching and scoring runs can cover up a healthy number of sins in the bullpen. Even with those sins, it’s not as if this year’s model is the reincarnation of the Bullpen From Hell, 2003 edition. There is no reason to give up on Rafael Betancourt, for example, even if he looks like he is battling demons on the mound. In actuality, Betancourt looks more like a guy struggling to understand his role than a pitcher struggling generally. Massahide Kobayashi has shown enough promise to keep marching him out there to close out games, at least until Shapiro invests in a legitimate closer. Rafael Perez, Tom Mastny and Jensen Lewis are still decent prospects, if nothing else. We’ve seen far worse.

For those in the “bring on the Browns” camp, they are nonplussed with the Indians’ ability to impose its will on the Rays. It’s a turn really on the Groucho Marx joke of not wanting to belong to a club that would have you as a member. If any team can let this Indians team push it around for four straight days, it wasn’t a team worth beating in the first place.

Celebrate all you want in Peralta’s latest hot streak, but haven’t we been here before? In fact, that’s the biggest problem with Peralta. He’s becoming a baseball version of Kordell Stewart, a player who impresses just often enough to keep around and fails nearly as much. Peralta may not be a coach killer like Stewart, but if Shapiro’s not careful, he’s on his way to being a GM killer. With intermittent talent spurts, Peralta remains the ultimate tease that keeps Shapiro from finding a more consistent player, ultimately threatening Shapiro’s own tenure.

Injuries may have hurt this team, but its problems were more fundamental in the first place. Even if the chance that the team will be bolstered by the return of its injured players is likely, the impact is far from certain. Of the three key players slated for return, Martinez, pitcher Fausto Carmona and designated hitter Travis Hafner, only Martinez is likely to pay immediate dividends. Carmona will need time to round back into form and build up arm strength. As for Hafner, his problems never appeared to be physical in the first place. Easing him back into the lineup in a way that doesn’t interfere with Peralta will be tricky under the best of circumstances and this year is hardly the best of circumstances.

If you want to put a gloss on the future of the bullpen, feel free but that bit of wishful thinking won’t magically turn Mastny, Lewis and Kobayashi into reliable, proven veterans. If there is one conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from the present administration, it’s that its history of actually developing players is uneven. Neither Mastny, Lewis nor Kobayashi, among others, come with the pedigree of Sabathia. Until manager Eric Wedge actually can eke out the last drop of talent from these borderline kinds of players that dot this roster, mid-level prospects will stay in the suspect corner.

The case is easily made either way. But in actuality, what really took place this past weekend was a little bit of sunshine in an otherwise dismal season. It was a reminder that things aren’t usually as bad as they seem or as good as hoped. In a season full of much consternation and contradiction, it was just another nice slice of irony—a team finally getting hot just as a three-day break arrives.

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.

A Mystery Wrapped in a Riddle

As mysteries go, it’s hardly the most compelling. But with major league baseball at the halfway point, it’s a question worth both asking and answering: why are the first-place Cleveland Indians one of the best kept secrets in Cleveland?

Over the weekend, the Indians finally surpassed one million fans for the season, the last division leader to do so. There was a time, of course, when the Indians front office handed out key chains in gratitude for having a million fans for the entire season and there were many seasons in which the Indians didn’t come close to drawing a million fans at all, so everything is relative. But the thought then was that if the team is ever a winner, the fans will show.

That was certainly true in the ‘90s. Now, not so much. The team is a winning and the fans aren’t showing, at least as much as a first place team deserves. And it’s not as if they aren’t a good home team. As of July 3rd, they have, at 31-12, the best home record in the entire major leagues. And it’s not as if they lack for promotions. The Indians front office runs so many fan promotions to this point the only things left are a cow-milking contest and bring your dog to the park night.

There are all sorts of theories as to why the Indians aren’t drawing. Some have suggested that the bad taste of last year’s disaster, particularly given the promise of the previous season, is mostly responsible. There’s probably something to that.

There is no question that generally many fans feel let down by the Dolans. The team has one of the lowest payrolls in the league still and despite owner Larry Dolan’s often-quoted promise to spend when the team was competitive it’s a promise that still remains mostly unfulfilled. The fans felt betrayed by the decision not to spend going into last season when the Indians seemed on the precipice of greatness and felt further betrayed when the Indians dumped salary last year. Those feelings were hardly assuaged by the lackluster free agents signed going into this season.

But whatever the ramifications of such fan mistreatment, the point remains that right now the Indians are 50-31 and only one team, the Angels, have a better record, and only then by one-half game.

Another popular theory is that the yearly roster turnover has created a team without an identity, making it more difficult for fans to embrace. There’s probably something to that theory as well.

Given the way the Dolans choose to fund this team, every off-season involves a fairly healthy amount of turnover. GM Mark Shapiro spends nearly every moment of his life with a cell phone glued to his ear for a reason. There are always 5-7 roster spots that he needs to fill. And it’s not as if those roster spots are being filled by identifiable, marquee-type players. Jason Michaels? David Dellucci? Joe Borowski? If anyone has their baseball cards, it’s by accident.

But on the other hand, the Indians have their share of stars. C.C. Sabathia, Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore. These are guys that could and would start for any team in either league. They’re all young with incredibly promising careers.

Which leads to a corollary of the “lack of identity” theory: even if they have identifiable players, the Indians won’t re-sign them when their contracts come due, thus investing the time now is mostly time and money poorly wasted.

There is something to this, too. Despite the Indians record, one of the most popular topics among fans is whether or not the Indians will re-sign Sabathia and Hafner. Though neither is a free agent at the end of this season, there is an abject fear, rightfully obtained, that the Dolans will not spend to sign either player. It’s difficult to know exactly how much this fear plays in the overall calculus of fan disinterest, but it would be foolish for either the Dolans or Shapiro to ignore it completely.

While each one of these theories likely plays some role in the number of empty seats at Jacobs Field each night, there is also a more obvious reason you don’t hear much about: the 2007 Major League baseball season simply isn’t very interesting.

Consider the American League East. Right now, exactly one team is over .500, the Boston Red Sox. Whatever your feelings may be about the New York Yankees, they are a flagship franchise and when they struggle there is a ripple effect throughout the league. In the AL West, the Angels remain a top-tier team and while Seattle is playing well and Oakland is a few games over .500, none of those teams capture the imagination, at least here in Cleveland. Unlike the Yankees, the quintessential team that fans love to hate, every team in the AL West garners, at best, a shrug.

In the AL Central, the White Sox this year are like the Indians last year, a major disappointment. But other than that, the division is playing out pretty much as expected, meaning that there is no compelling story to capture the imagination.

The National League is every bit as uninteresting. Whereas every division leader in the American League has at least 50 wins, the closest in the National League is Milwaukee with 48. Milwaukee! Most fans couldn’t name more than two players on the Brewers. The National League East, on July 2nd, had the dubious distinction of going 0-5. That pretty much captures what that division is all about. As for the NL West, it is highly competitive, but given its geographical distance and the fact that most of its games start at about the time most people go to bed around here, it remains an afterthought.

Contrast all of this with just last season. At this point last year, the AL East was the strength of the league, with Boston, New York and Toronto all at least 10 games over .500. In the AL Central, the Tigers had re-emerged after a lengthy slumber and were dominating the division, which makes for a very interesting storyline for Cleveland fans given how many times the teams play each other. Moreover, three teams in the division were at least 10 games over .500 with the Tigers having won 56 games by this point. The National League was still a mess, but the Mets were dominating their division and even the Reds were fighting it out for first place in the NL Central.

Moving beyond the league in general and to the Indians in particular, despite their record there is the lingering feeling that this team really isn’t all that interesting or all that good. That may be true if your benchmark is the 1920 Yankees or even the 1995 Indians, but in context to the rest of the league it’s untrue.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this team revolves around how it is that it finds itself with 50 wins already. At times, it seems held together by paper and paste. The defense is average, they aren’t hitting as well as anticipated and the middle relief remains a source of frustration.

But yet they are one of the best teams in the league. It’s this paradox that begs for further analysis not indifference. For example, the starting pitching has been nearly as good as advertised. In fact, with the emergence of Fausto Carmona, in some ways it’s better. That’s a story worth following, in and of itself. If that isn’t good enough, consider that Borowski has 24 saves despite the fact that nearly everyone of them was a struggle and is probably the team’s MVP to this point.

If that still isn’t good enough, look at some of the others. Sabathia is easily having the best season of his career and is well on track for a 20-win season. For anyone watching closely, this is the season that Sabathia has officially gone from a potential number one starter to an actual number one starter. When he takes the mound, good things generally follow.

It would be hard for any player, let alone a catcher, to play any better than Victor Martinez is playing to this point. His offense, always solid anyway, has been spectacular. Defensively, his improvement has been dramatic. Currently, he is ninth in the major leagues (third in the American League) in the percentage of would-be base stealers thrown out. For comparisons sake, consider that Ivan Rodriguez is 14th overall. His selection to the All Star team was every bit the no-brainer that was Sabathia’s selection.

Sizemore may not be a superstar yet, but he continues to play like a superstar in the making. Offensively, only Torii Hunter of the Twins is enjoying a better year than Sizemore among American League center fielders. Defensively, there are few better right now. Casey Blake has been, perhaps, the biggest surprise, particularly defensively. He is playing so well at third base, it will be tough, barring an injury, for Andy Marte to get back to Cleveland before September 1.

But rather than see these positives, too many fans seem to waiting for the other shoe to drop and are doing that waiting anywhere but at Jacobs Field, which is a shame.

It may be that the Dolans, once again, fail the fans by not investing in what it might take come trading deadline. It may very well be that Joe Borowski may wake up and realize that he is Joe Borowski or, maybe even more likely, that Casey Blake wakes up and realizes he is Casey Blake. Travis Hafner may stay in a slump all season. But for right now and for half the season already, that isn’t the reality.

Considering how few winners this town has known in any sport, one would think that whatever its warts, this is current Indians team should be embraced, not ignored.

Is It That Simple?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If You're Not Part of the Solution...

Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. Sometimes it’s the beginning of a trend. The challenge for Mark Shapiro, Eric Wedge and the rest of the Cleveland Indians is figuring out whether the rather mediocre play of the team to this point, particularly defensively, is just a series of coincidences or the continuation of a disturbing pattern that defined its disappointing 78-win season of a year ago.

When it’s early in the season like this, the information from which one is forced to draw conclusions is limited and hasn’t had time to settle. But the victors are often those who get out ahead of the curve rather than waiting until the definitive pattern is set. By then, it may be too late.

At this point, the Indians find themselves in frighteningly familiar territory, stuck in neutral and unable to gain any early season traction. Much of this is due to failures in the most fundamental aspects of the game. First, the Indians simply aren’t hitting in the clutch. Going into Sunday’s game, they were among the worst hitting teams in the American League with runners in scoring position, even with Travis Hafner finding a groove over the last few games. Second, when they do get on base they commit far too many embarrassing base running mistakes. Third, and perhaps most alarming, they continue to play incredibly poor defense.

As Indians fans saw with this team last year, starting pitching and scoring runs alone won’t get you to the playoffs. Heck, it won’t even guarantee you a winning record. You need a solid bullpen and good, if not great, defense. To this point, though, the bullpen seems relatively settled, the starting pitching average, the hitting poor and the defense abysmal. It’s no surprise, again, that they have shown themselves thus far to be merely an average team.

You have to think that the hitting will sort itself out, at least to the point that it’s the least of the worries. The early season injury of Victor Martinez destabilized the middle of the lineup and no one really stepped up to fill the breach. Recall that last year, Casey Blake and Martinez got off to great starts at the plate and this allowed the rest of the lineup to the time it needed to settle in. Though that hasn’t happened to this point this year, the return of Martinez to the lineup will help tremendously, given his track record. Hafner, as noted, has warmed up as of late after a terrible spring. Grady Sizemore has cooled off since his hot start the first week of the season but he’s the real deal and will hit .300, giving those behind him ample opportunities to drive in runs.

There are still some questions to be answered with respect to the offense, however, particularly with respect to players like Jhonny Peralta, Andy Marte and Ryan Garko. Shapiro and Wedge, too, need to figure out what to do with Blake. Playing him every day and watching his repeated failures at the plate to this point is eerily reminiscent of Aaron Boone last year. But again, there is enough pop in this lineup that to this point you have to believe the Indians will score enough runs.

But what of the constant base running errors? Hafner, a seasoned pro, ran himself into outs twice in Friday’s game. Others have done similarly, many times. Perhaps this is a string of bad luck but you can’t like the trend, particularly when one factors what is still the most glaring shortcoming of this team: defense.

Going into Sunday’s game, the Indians were the worst defensive team in the American League. Peralta has been credited with three errors, Marte four and Barfield two. And these are just the official errors. To anyone watching, there are many more defense lapses that weren’t labeled errors by generous scorekeepers but were every bit errors by omission. Barfield’s misplay of a pop up in shallow right field on Saturday was the perfect example. Venturing too far out of position to make a catch that was more easily made by right fielder Trot Nixon, Barfield was not able to make the play and Delmon Young was credited with a double. On the one hand, the official scorer likely felt that the difficulty of the attempted catch made it more reasonable to credit the batter with a hit. On the other hand, the failure of Barfield to beg off the play in favor of Nixon, coupled with Nixon’s failure to communicate that he was barreling in on the catch, made it an error of omission. But however categorized, it was a case of bad fundamentals as it led to two Devil Rays, both of which were technically earned but neither of which were deserved.

This kind of thing has happened repeatedly this season to the point that Shapiro and Wedge can’t simply hope that the situation will correct itself. It’s early, but Peralta doesn’t seem to have improved in the field. His range factor, which is the number of plays made per games at the position, is still a very mediocre 4.68. His zone rating, which tracks the location of balls hit into his zone and the ability to turn those balls into outs is less than mediocre at .824. Currently, he ranks 15th in the league in that statistic. This has to be alarming given Shapiro’s statements earlier that an improved Peralta is integral to the Iindians season.

Marte, someone whom Wedge assured the fans was a major defensive upgrade at third, has been even worse. His range factor is an appalling 2.13 and his zone rating is among the worst of all third basemen at .619. Barfield, another player whom fans were assured was a major upgrade defensively, ranks a paltry 18th among American League second basemen in range factor, though his zone rating is .900, putting him 7th in the league.

Finding meaning in such statistics is a favored past time of most GMs these days, including Shapiro and his band of statistical wonks that support him. But the statistics only tell part of the story. The tougher question that needs to be answered is whether mistakes were made in the assessment of the talent collected for this year’s version of the Tribe or whether it portends of something more serious. In particular, fans and Shapiro alike have to wonder why these same things keep happening to Wedge’s teams.

Wedge says all the right things during each post-game mortem. He appears visibly upset at the recurring defensive and base running lapses and he continues to promise to get it corrected. But the nature of the baseball season is such that there are few off days. That makes making in-season corrections difficult, at best. Sure, there is always time for additional hitting and batting practice, but unless a team is willing to send a player back to the minors, the learning is mostly on-the-job. Unfortunately for Indians fans, they’ve been forced to endure more than their share of players learning on-the-job.

But in the end, the question still remains: why do these things continue to happen to Wedge’s teams? Does he not place enough emphasis on fundamentals during spring training? Is he so interested in maintaining some sort of mythical team chemistry that he is reluctant to take any sort of action against the offending players? Is he unable to communicate with his players in a way that resonates and produces the intended results? Does he have the right coaching staff? It’s likely that there is no single answer to this lingering issue but there most assuredly remains a problem and to this point Wedge has not effectively corrected it. It may not be due to a lack of determination but instead a lack of ability.

When Shapiro named Wedge manager, it was an under-the-radar screen hiring because the Indians were in rebuilding mode. As a result, the fans asked few tough questions and made even less demands of him. But this season is the first time Wedge and Shapiro are no longer tethered by contracts of similar length. Shapiro recently signed on to another five years while leaving Wedge to labor under his old contract that has essentially two years left. This, more than anything else, seems to signal that Wedge is now being evaluated on a different matrix than in the past. Whether or not you are a Wedge fan, this heightened scrutiny is a welcome development.

Baseball is now in the golden age of the general manager. Thanks to people like Billy Beane in Oakland, managers have become, in the minds of many GMs, nothing more than mid-level supervisors. This systematic de-emphasis of their role has caused fans to place an overemphasis on the acquisition of talent, as if merely getting the players is all that matters. But though the job of manager has been devalued over the years, it’s still the most vital link between what happens in the front office and what happens on the field.

The offensive lapses of this early season may very well be merely a series of unhappy coincidences but given the repeated failures each season on the base paths and in the field, it is getting well past the time that this should be written off in the same way. It may be too much to suggest that Wedge is the real problem here but until he finds a way to reach Peralta, Marte and the others whose mistakes are now defining this team it also is not too much to suggest that he’s not been part of the solution either. And that, more than anything else, will determine not only his future, but that of this team.

Payroll Apologists

The headline was promising too bad the story didn’t live up to it.

In Sunday’s Akron Beacon Journal, an enterprising copy editor must have read only the first few paragraphs of Sheldon Ocker’s story about the Indians pathetic payroll and decided that the gist of the story was “If money talks, Indians are mute.” Unfortunately for that poor copy editor, he or she missed Ocker’s point. Beat writer turned team apologist Ocker essentially defended what has become nearly indefensible—the fact that the Dolans continue to drift further and further from funding the team at a competitive level.

Ocker’s story was on the heels of Terry Pluto’s column earlier in the week in which team president Paul Dolan suggested that the team is in a “win now” mode, has money to spend and that General Manager Mark Shapiro has the payroll flexibility he needs to make a deal he likes.

Pluto’s column was more or less an interview with Dolan and was presented simply as Dolan’s viewpoint. Fine. But it doesn’t appear as though Pluto really challenged much of Dolan’s assertions. But more on the Pluto/Dolan interview in a moment because more offensive was the column by Ocker who has gone from an enterprising, insightful beat reporter to a cranky, lazy team shill who probably should either be removed from the beat or start getting his paychecks directly from the team.

It is true, as Ocker notes, that teams with a lesser payroll can be more successful than teams that spend more. In making this rather pedestrian observation, Ocker mocks those who think otherwise, referring to his “e-mails and the learned opinions of talk-show callers” who believe that if the Dolans would spend more the Indians would be perennial competitors in the World Series.

What Ocker, and by proxy, the Dolans, doesn’t want to acknowledge is that it’s also true that when lesser spending teams are successful, it’s fleeting and still the exception and not the rule. Teams that consistently spend like the Yankess are consistently in the hunt, plain and simple. The Yankess might not win it all every year or any year, but they are always in the mix. Kansas City, on the other hand, never spends and is rarely competitive. In the last 17 years, they’ve had a winning record just four times. Even then, their high water mark was 84-78 in 1993.

Tampa Bay, another team that never spends, has never won more than 70 games since they entered the league in 1998. But since ending a four-year sub .500 streak that began in 1989, the Yankees haven’t come close to a having a losing record. In that time span, however, they’ve won 100 games four times, and between 95-99 games five times. Even the one team that seems to defy the odds on a regular basis, the Oakland As, have not won 100 games during that period. Ocker’s right, the fans are idiots. There is no correlation between spend and result.

But far more offensive than Ocker’s slam at fans who rightly question the Dolans commitment to consistently producing a competitive team is the exercise he went through to try to prove his point. He compiled a list of former Tribe players “many” he claims, were traded because they “made more money than the Cleveland market could sustain.” The problem with his list is that it is wildly inaccurate and in most cases doesn’t support his underlying premise.

The “fantasy roster” as he dubs it is the highest-salaried former Indians player at each position who, again, were discarded by the Dolans for money reasons. Of the former pitchers, only a handful meets those criteria. Most were unsigned free agents. And of those unsigned free agents, salary wasn’t the issue, effectiveness was. The salary casualties were clearly Bartolo Colon, Kevin Millwood, Bob Wickman, Danys Baez and Bob Howry. The suggestion that injured Jaret Wright, barely effective Scott Elarton, Julian Tavarez, Justin Speier, Jose Mesa, Alan Embree and Rheal Cormier weren’t signed because “the made more money than the Cleveland market could sustain” is laughable. The Dolans may be cheapskates, but this is hardly the list one would compile as evidence.

The same goes for the position players. Jeff Kent played exactly 39 games for the Indians in 1996. That was four years before the Dolans even owned the club. Brian Giles left in 1998, two years before the Dolans took over. Sean Casey was traded in 1997 again well before the Dolans’ ownership. Josh Bard, Aaron Boone and Kenny Lofton salary casualties? Hardly. In fact, in almost every case, the player Ocker identifies fails to even minimally meet the criteria set forth.

That’s the problem with being a team apologist. It requires you to bend and stretch reality to fit the talking points. Having set up a ridiculous straw man of an argument, Ocker rightly concludes that this “fantasy” team would not be superior to the current Cleveland lineup. But far more useful is considering which of the actual salary casualties should not have been and then add them to the current roster and determine whether or not the Indians would be better off.

On this score, the results are far different. Colon is a legitimate number one starter, but his trade did yield two starters: Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore. Moreover, if the Indians are in good shape anywhere, it’s starting pitching so that salary dump, while painful, has worked out fine and shouldn’t be revisited. Millwood is a different story. He wasn’t a salary dump but the Indians decided not to pursue him out of salary considerations solely. Keeping him would only have cost the Dolans money, $9.8 million to be exact. While starting pitching is strength, a rotation with Millwood would make the Indians even stronger. Of the relievers Ocker chose, the three that were salary casualties, Wickman, Baez and Howry, all would make the Indians much stronger. Of the position players Ocker names, only Omar Vizquel was really a salary casualty. The jury is still out on Jhonny Peralta, his replacement. Certainly the Indians would have been much better off last year with Vizquel at short. In fact, Vizquel’s presence would have solidified a shaky defense that cost the Indians a winning record.

Thus, assuming Millwood, Wickman, Howry, Baez, and Vizquel had been signed, it would add about $30 million to the current payroll. However, the net addition to payroll would be about half that when you lop off the players on the current roster they’d replace, such as Jhonny Peralta, Joe Borowski, Roberto Hernandez, Aaron Foltz, Jake Westbrook or Paul Byrd. Thus, that would put the Indians 2007 payroll at, roughly, $75 million, which would place them 17th in the league and third in the AL Central, well behind Detroit and Chicago and just slightly ahead of Minnesota. You could take this exercise a step or two further by throwing in Jim Thome, but that would probably put the payroll in the top 15, which is too much to ask of current ownership.

No one is saying that the Indians should have the highest payroll in the league. But they shouldn’t have among the lowest, either. But the frugality of the Dolans, to put it generously, is why the Indians find themselves these days on the outside looking in.

As for Pluto’s interview with Paul Dolan, it’s easy for Dolan to say that the Indians are in a win-now mode and have payroll flexibility when the season is young and there are no trades to make. The real test, which the Dolans have failed in each year of their ownership, comes in late July when the trading deadline approaches. But while Pluto didn’t take a similar disdainful view of the fans in favor of an ownership that has failed these fans, neither did he do much to challenge the assertions of Dolan on behalf of the fans.

For example, Pluto didn’t seem to push Dolan on his claim of a $69 million payroll when the true 25-man payroll is $8 million less, or about two Bobby Howrys. And while Pluto gave Dolan a forum for recounting all the coulda woulda trades and acquisitions that the team has tried to consummate but did not in the last few years, Pluto never asked the harder question of why it is that Shapiro can never seem to get the deal closed.

There is no question that any difficult issue is imbued with a variety of perspectives. Baseball economics certainly falls into that category. But the most telling aspect of the Pluto interview was Dolan’s admission that luxury suite sales are down, precipitously, as is attendance. In the end, that is the most visible evidence that the fans are fed up with the product and its prospects under this ownership. Simply spending more may not be the only answer, but if you’re compiling a list, it’s in the top two.

Predictions

Each week, as a writer with TheClevelandFan.com I get an email asking for a pithy response to a question posed for that week’s roundtable which then gets posted sometime on Sunday. With the Cleveland Indians season poised to begin next week, this week’s question naturally asked for predictions regarding the upcoming season.

Predictions, of course, are like nose hair in that most people have some. And it seems to be the role of those who write about the accomplishments of others to not only write about the accomplishments as they happen but to predict what might happen next. In other words, if there’s no news, invent some.

The last time anyone saw a prediction under this byline was related to the Cavaliers. In that column we noted, with great accuracy, that if the Cavaliers were as good as advertised they’d win 50-52 games, if not, they’d win 46-48 games. There was little genius behind that prediction, by the way. It was made under the simple analysis of what the schedule held in terms of how many back-to-back games they played, particularly when the second of the two was on the road. In other words, and for various reasons, the home advantage seems much more pronounced in the NBA than in any other sport and thus makes it much easier to extrapolate the schedule’s impact on the overall record.

In other ways, the NFL is almost as easy to predict. You rarely see anyone predict a team going 12-4 for example or 2-14, for that matter. Instead, you’re always safe if you predict that a respectable team will go 9-7 since most of them do. You’re also always safe if you predict that an acknowledged lousy team will go 6-10 or 5-11 since, again, most of them do.

Major league baseball, on the other hand, is easily the most difficult sport to handicap, whether it’s game by game or over a whole season. In the first place, 162 games is boat load of games by any measure. While that sort of marathon tends to ensure that the better teams will ultimately prevail, it also increases the variables one needs to consider in forecasting the upcoming season. Though baseball is the least physically demanding of the three major sports, the injuries nonetheless pile up. Outfielders run into walls or to each other. Infielders are prone to tough landings on ground balls in the hole or down the line or suffer the occasional spike to the leg. Pitchers eventually show the wear and tear of throwing curveballs since they were 10 years old. Catchers tend to show the strain of all that squatting. Runners pull hamstrings. Thus, much of the season can turn on the performance of players who currently reside in the minors or with other teams.

Another variable is the weather. Rain outs tend to get rescheduled as doubleheaders and doubleheaders tend to result in a splits. The use of the unbalanced schedule can be particularly rough on teams in good divisions and teams with an easy interleague schedule can get fat while their counterparts on the other end of the spectrum can get slaughtered.

If all this sounds like a cop-out for not participating in a rite of passage, you’d be wrong. There are still plenty of predictions to make:

First, I predict that Peter Gammons will predict a good year for the Boston Red Sox.

Next, I predict that there will be 132,654 stories about the deteriorating relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. In April.

Next, I predict that Larry Dolan will tell Indians fans that he won’t hesitate to spend money if need be in order to help put the Indians over the top. I also predict he’ll never see the need.

Next, I predict that Mike Trivisonno will conduct three interviews with Mark Shapiro during the season. I also predict that the toughest question Shapiro will get asked in any of those interviews is what he had for lunch earlier that day.

Next, I predict that the Kansas City Royals most current rebuilding plan won’t work, either. I also predict that they’ll consider another managerial change although I also predict that most fans inside and outside of Kansas City couldn’t even name their current manager.

Next, I predict that Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Chicago White Sox, will say something stupid every other day. I also predict that Guillen will be forced by Bud Selig to seek a refresher course in sensitivity training after he goes all Ann Coulter on a writer who happens to highlight any number of the stupid things he says.

Next, I predict that Peter Angelos, owner of the Balitmore Orioles, will express dismay over his team’s latest woeful performance. I also predict that Angelos will consider another managerial change although I also predict that most fans inside and outside of Baltimore couldn’t even name their current manager.

Next, I predict that someone will do an interview with Billy Beane about how he manages to keep the Oakland As competitive despite such a small budget. I also predict that within the first two sentences of the lead-in to that interview, the writer will mention “Money Ball.”

Next, I predict that there will be 456,794 stories pondering whether the home run record Bobby Bonds is about to set is tainted by the lingering suspicions that Bonds used steroids. In April.

Next, I predict that Bobby Bonds will act surly toward the next reporter that asks him whether he’s concerned that he might be prosecuted for committing perjury before the grand jury.

Next, I predict that ESPN’s Baseball Tonight will spend the better part of 4 hours of their All Star game coverage discussing whether the winning team in that game deserves to get home field advantage in the World Series. I also predict that one of the participants in that discussion will be a contrarian and insist that having home field advantage at stake makes the All Star game more meaningful.

Next, I predict that Bob Costas will give at least a dozen different interviews in which he says that having a wild card team in the playoffs detracts from the purity of the game.

Next, I predict that there will be 658 stories suggesting that managers in the National League have an advantage when it comes to the World Series because they are more used to managing without a designated hitter and are, conversely, more versed in the beauty of the old double switch.

Next, I predict that at least three managers will be fired during the season, possibly four.

Next, I predict that there will be 978,943 stories about how baseball is alienating its younger fans by kowtowing to the networks by starting World Series games at 8 p.m.

Next, I predict that at least four games in April and three playoff games in October will be interrupted by snow.

Next, I predict that at least 687 callers to WKNR (assuming they have that many different callers) will suggest trading C.C. Sabathia for prospects so that we don’t risk getting nothing for him when he opts for free agency. I also predict that all 687 of those callers will say that the Dolans cheapskates.

Next, I predict that following Jhonny Peralta’s first error, either one of the Indians beat writers or Terry Pluto will say that Peralta looks uninspired in the field.

Next, I predict that there will be 954 stories in which Omar Vizquel is referred to as an ageless wonder as he continues to play flawless defense and hit around .300 for the San Francisco Giants.

Next, I predict that the next time Manny Ramirez commits an error in the field or on the basepaths or takes his iPod into left field during a game, 4,567 commentators and/or writers will say “that’s just Manny being Manny.”

Next, I predict that there will be 886 stories pondering why teams in the north and the east don’t start their seasons in the south or the west in order to avoid bad weather.

Finally, I predict that the Indians will win 89 games.