Almost Perfect

In my earlier days as a baseball fan, I was really interested in no-hitters, and outside of the Indians winning the World Series, my most fervent desire as a fan was to witness one even if only on the radio. Eventually this faded, due to some combination of growing jaded about the extent to which baseball fans sometimes elevate trivial events above game outcomes, the pernicious influence of Voros McCracken on how I thought about the hits column for pitchers, and after fifteen years of intense baseball-watching finally witnessing one (I'm now up to five).

Perfect games retain a bit more of their mystique for me, due to being much more rare (someone who has watched as many games over the years as I have is bound to have seen a no-hitter, but one can't really expect to see a perfect game) and not relying on any arbitrary distinction between hits and errors (which of course doesn't affect all no-hitters). The three closest games I have taken in to being perfect games prior to last night were Mike Mussina against the Indians in 1997 and Armando Galarraga's should-have been perfect game against the Indians in 2010. The latter game is case in point of what I meant about fans sometimes being more interested in trivial events than game outcomes - there was more outcry in favor of replay as a result of that game then there was cumulatively from many calls that much more directly influenced which team won a given game.

Last night's effort by Carlos Rodon combined elements of both of the ninth innings of these games in the way that people who believe in hocus pocus should embrace. From Galarraga's, we took the extremely close play at first base, with Josh Naylor playing the role of Jason Donald, desperately trying to reach first after making weak contract towards first base. In this case, the play was actually much closer, but no replay was required as the call on the field was that Jose Abreu beat him to the bag by a narrow margin. 

From the Mussina game, we borrowed the man, lineup slot, and fielding position to break it up. With one out in the ninth, the Indians catcher. Sandy Alomar singled off Mussina, while Roberto Perez was only hit in the back foot with a slider, but history repeated itself in who ended it. Of course, if Rodon had to lose the perfect game, he got the better outcome than the other two, as he at least got to keep the no-hitter.

Naturally, all of the near perfect games I've seen have been pitched against the Indians. In addition to the infinitely more important distinction of now having the longest World Series drought, after Joe Musgrove's no-hitter for the Padres, the Indians now have the longest drought between no-hitters, it having been nearly forty years since Len Barker's perfect game.

I was keeping score of the Mussina game and Rodon's effort last night, but not the Galarraga game, which I listened to on the radio while I watched some other game on TV. 

April 4, 1994 pt. 2

I’ve previously written about the Indians/Mariners opening day game of April 4, 1994 that made me a baseball fan. I won’t rehash all that in detail again, but I recently was able to watch a replay of this game for the first time. I’d never actually seen any of it before, except for highlights – in real time I listened to about the seventh inning forward on the radio.

For the rewatch, I kept a scoresheet, which is reproduced at the bottom of the post. A few observations:

* Chris Berman and Buck Martinez called the game on ESPN. Berman was not as terrible as I remember him being, but most of my exposure was later. That is not to say that he was good. Martinez is a middling announcer with a terrible voice, and was in 1994 as well. It would be a real treat to be able to watch this game with the local radio call of Herb Score and Tom Hamilton that I would have enjoyed in place of the national guys.

* Randy Johnson had a no-hitter through seven, which was noteworthy for reasons beyond the obvious. As all Indians fans know, Bob Feller is the only pitcher to throw an Opening Day no-hitter, and here was a threat to no-hit the Indians in on Opening Day in their first game in their new park with Feller on hand. Plus Randy Johnson, while not yet the legend that he would be, was obviously a legitimate no-hit candidate. He’d already thrown one in 1990, and 1993 had been his breakout year, finishing second in the Cy Young voting and recording his third straight season with over 10 K/9.

So not having seen the game and filling in the details in my mind given what I knew about the Big Unit later, I assumed that he had spent the first seven innings carving Cleveland up. But that was not the case at all; it more resembled what you would have expected a Greg Hibbard no-hit bid to look like. Through seven, Johnson had walked four and fanned two on 94 pitches. His twenty-one outs were distributed as:

12 on groundouts (including 2 DPs)
5 on flyouts
2 on strikeouts
1 popout
1 caught stealing

His opposite number, Dennis Martinez, was pitching a similar game from a DIPS perspective with one big exception – the two out solo shot he yielded to Eric Anthony in the third. Otherwise, through seven Martinez had struck out four, walked four, and hit Edgar Martinez in the first inning (providing an early injury scare as Mike Blowers pinch-ran, all this after Martinez had appeared in just 42 games in 1993. He’d only appear in three more games the rest of April).

* Two future stars were languishing down in the Indians lineup – Manny Ramirez batting eighth, and Jim Thome on the bench. It would be some time before Thome was trusted to start against left-handed pitchers, and so Mark Lewis was the ninth-place hitter and third baseman. Ramirez provided a Manny being Manny moment. After Candy Maldonado walked to open the eighth and Sandy Alomar singled to break up the no-no, Manny clanged a 1-0 Johnson offering off the big wall in left for a game-tying double. With Mark Lewis looking to advance the go-ahead run to third base, Ramirez strayed two far off second and was picked off by a Dan Wilson throwback to second on the first pitch.

Ramirez and Thome were never in the game simultaneously; with the Indians down a run with one out in the tenth, Ramirez drew a walk and was replaced by pinch-runner Wayne Kirby. It was then that Thome batted for Lewis, which brought on lefty reliever King for Seattle. Thome pulled a double down the right field line to put runners at second and third, and Kirby would later score when Vizquel hit into a fielder’s choice. It would work out in the end two, as Kirby walked it off in the eleventh with a two-out, line drive single to left to score Eddie Murray with the winning run.

* Despite what I’m about to say below, this was a good game for star power as these two teams would emerge as top AL contenders of the latter half of the nineties: Hall of Famers Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Edgar Martinez, Eddie Murray, Jim Thome, future Hall of Famer Omar Vizquel, would have been Hall of Famer Manny Ramirez, should be Hall of Famer Kenny Lofton, could have been Hall of Famer Albert Belle, a former Rookie of the Year in Sandy Alomar, and other memorable names including Jay Buhner, Carlos Baerga, Tino Martinez, and Jose Mesa.

* One thing that struck me in re-watching it is what an ordinary game it was. Granted, given the circumstances (opening day and opening game of a new park) it was extremely memorable for Indians fans, but if you strip all that out and just evaluate it as a game, it wouldn’t be the most exciting of most major league team’s seasons. I have personally attended at least six Indians games in the last four seasons that were more compelling, and I’ve only been to about sixty games in that time and I’m making that list from the top of my head. I had built it up in my head as a kind of epic, and in some senses it disappointed upon rewatch.

On the other hand, that disappointment reminded me of what a great game baseball is. I have now watched twenty-six seasons of major league baseball and perhaps become jaded about just how interesting and exciting baseball inherently is. That this game wouldn’t rank in the top 10% of games I’ve attended recently speaks to what an amazing game baseball is. Since this game was sufficient to almost instantly turn me into a baseball nut, I suspect that a much less exciting contest would have done the trick. And it should have...I’m repeating myself again, and as I write this we are still two and a half weeks from even the possibility of baseball in 2020, and that too reminds me that baseball is just the best in every way.

* More generally on the franchise that I yolked myself to on April 4, 1994, I have no comment on the fact that the Indians will liekely soon be changing their name itself. I do have two strains of thought on possible future names:

1. I think “Expos” is the logical choice, which is a snarky way of saying that my suspicion is that this name will be changing again in the relatively near future as the franchise settles into its new home in Montreal, Nashville, Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, etc.

2. “Spiders” is a dreadful option. First of all, as a general philosophy, I believe that baseball team names should be non-threatening. Most baseball team names are – I would contend that the only exceptions among the sixteen teams dating to 1901 or earlier are Pirates and Tigers, depending on what you think (very carefully) about Braves and Indians. Cubs are not an animal I would wish to encounter, but the name suggests cute and cuddly teddy bears rather than miniature grizzlies. Among expansion team names, the only one that I would classify as even mildly threatening is Rangers, and I would suspect the desired effect is strength and honor rather than menace.

The exception is the 1998 expansion. The Devil Rays and the Diamondbacks both sound threatening, although the former is actually generally harmless (to humans at least, and I think that’s all we should consider lest all the bird names become threatening) and was later downgraded to the double meaning “Rays” anyway. The latter is a scary animal, but is also in my opinion a contender for best expansion team name, due to the baseball tie in (my other contender for best expansion team names would be Brewers (although that was recycled), Colt .45s/Astros, and Pilots/Mariners. The latter was a case in which the city had a great name and then got a similar yet superior one eight years later).

So I would contend that Spiders is contrary to the spirit of baseball nicknames. The history of the name is also quite problematic (although quite appropriate if my misgivings about the future of the franchise are founded). The original Spiders represented Cleveland in the National League from 1887-1899, never winning a pennant. In the early 1890s they were a strong outfit, finishing second three times and even capturing a Temple Cup (which I do not in any way deem to be comparable to a regular season pennant) with names like Cy Young and Jesse Burkett, but were soon a victim of the systemic corruption of the 1890s NL, with owner Stanley Robison siphoning off talent for the St. Louis now-Cardinals in which he also had a stake. As you probably know, this culminated in the 20-134 debacle of 1899 before the team joined Detroit, Lousiville, and Washington on the chopping block, leaving Cleveland open for Ban Johnson’s play at major status for the American League two years later. I would contend that this is quite an ignominious history and nothing to be celebrated or emulated.

If Cleveland’s major league history must be the first source of inspiration, the Indians’ prior unofficial names won’t cut it: Blues is boring, Cleveland isn’t supporting a team called the Broncos, Naps would be fine with me but doesn’t sell and the headlines write themselves. The Players League outfit was referred to as the Infants. The Negro Leagues don’t provide much in the way of an option, as Cleveland’s proudest entry was the Buckeyes, a name of which THE sports team of only entity is worthy.

I do think there is one Cleveland major league name that would work – the first, the Forest City club which represented the city in the National Association during 1871-72. This team actually participated in the NA’s first league game on May 4, 1871. Maybe you’d have to rework it to Foresters (or even Sawyers), but it’s a name I could get behind.

Best non-historical choice, although semi-violating my own suggested rule about nice namesakes: Buzzards.

Cleveland

I have a love-hate relationship with Cleveland.

I was born and raised in the exurbs. I left for college but eventually came back to the suburbs but only because I had to, not because that’s where I wanted to live. When it comes to sports, I always rooted for the Cleveland teams, but in all honesty have never been a diehard Cavs fan, that description being much more apt for how I follow the Indians and the Browns. Even in those cases it might not fully apply, since I pride myself on striving to be too rational about baseball to fall into the sheer emotion of fandom (post-childhood), and the Browns have been too bad for too long to not laugh at rather than lament the losses. My sheer sports fan emotions, assigning good v. evil to every game and opponent, living and dying with the team was transferred to my future alma mater around adolescence and will never be directed elsewhere.

Yet there's no question that my baseball team is the Indians, my football team is the Browns, and my basketball team is the Cavaliers. At times this has been embarrassing. Not due to the failure to win championships, but more due to the Cleveland fan culture. Cleveland fans have taken pride in their victimhood, with the heartbreaks (sometimes more real than imagined) a perverse source of pride. Where else does a 35 year distant divisional playoff game (i.e. two games removed from the championship) have a name that every young Browns fan learns ("Red Right 88")? Cleveland had some bad breaks, but more often than not they just had bad teams. Bad management, a little bad luck, and on the rare occasions when the teams had a chance to win it all, the dice rolls were not kind. But the only way one can reasonably expect to win championships is to put multiple championship-caliber teams on the field and let the chips fall where they may. Cleveland's three largely failed in that regard.

Of course, franchise ineptitude is largely not the fault of the fanbase, but there's an important distinction to be made between losing because you're bad and losing because fate didn't look kindly upon you on a given day. Cleveland fans too often conflated the two, resulting in a fatalistic feedback loop that took the former as evidence of the latter.

The other maddening element of the sports culture is the unique grip that the Browns have on the city. For all of the elation that the Cavs victory has brought, it will pale into comparison to the day the Browns win or even make a Super Bowl. The Browns still rule the landscape, and benefit from a remarkable double standard. The Indians, a franchise that has achieved more in any one of nine seasons in the last twenty-five than the Browns have in any, are struggling with attendance. There is an overwhelming cynicism towards the Indians, rooted in a lack of understanding of the economics and nature of baseball. Every trade of a free agent to be furthers the downward spiral of the relationship between the city and the team, even as those trades bring back the future objects of lament (e.g. as Bartolo Colon becomes Cliff Lee becomes Carlos Carrasco). This is not to absolve the Indians of their very real failures in drafting/international signings that only now appear to be reversing, but the Indians have run rings around the Browns and yet it is the former that I will be pleasantly surprised to see take the field in Cleveland rather than Montreal or Portland or San Antonio in, say, 2030.

Cleveland fans have also had the opportunity to root for a winner, but many have passed it up, and I cannot feel too sorry for them. In the last twenty years, OSU has won two national titles in football and been to three Final Fours in basketball. A college team might always belong to the students and alumni most dearly, but the surely the flagship state university is as much an available rooting interest as a private entity that can be moved to Baltimore at the owner's whim.

Sports irrationality aside, one thing I will say for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio is that there is a real pride in their hometown among people here. I'm not well-traveled enough to declare that this feeling is unique, but I can contrast it to my other hometown, Columbus. People in Columbus don't generally exhibit the same pride in their city that Clevelanders do in theirs. Columbus residents might be proud of OSU or proud of Ohio, but they aren't as proud of Columbus per se. Some of this may be due to sports teams; minus the recent (and so far unsuccessful) addition of the Blue Jackets, Columbus' sporting identity ties to OSU and thus more to the state than the city.

This is why it is so appropriate that Cleveland's title drought was ended about as single-handedly as one could be by one man, LeBron James. LeBron was a native son, and that meant something here. Everyone probably feels some sort of connection to LeBrown, however tenuous or forced. Mine is that LeBron and I are the same age. LeBron was a first-name basis celebrity by the time we were freshmen in high school. The night of the 2003 NBA Draft Lottery, I was in a cabin at a state park in Southeast Ohio on our mandatory "senior trip" watching as the Cavs came up with the #1 pick (and a parent chaperone insisted that they had to draft Carmelo Anthony).

LeBron was asked to shoulder the burden of the city himself, and unfair ask for anyone but especially for a rookie. And when he dragged a ragtag bunch to the team's first ever Finals appearance, he simultaneously hurt both his "legacy" in the ridiculous media environment when the Cavs were swept and obliterated any remaining thought of patiently building a worthy team around him. For the next three seasons the Cavs chased in vein, leaving him with the impossible choice of staying to try to drag this motley crew to the promised land, or going to chase titles with a group of stars.

Of course, the way “the Decision” went down was an extra gut punch, but while many Cleveland fans condemned LeBron, I’d like to think that I was fairly level-headed (this comment on The Book Blog is as intemperate towards LeBron as I got, and I still didn't lose sight of who the real villain in sports is):

The real villain in this whole thing, IMO, is ESPN. They cannot try to pass themselves off as a news outlet of any sort when they are willing to whore themselves out for an hour as a player’s personal press corps.

It has been apparent for years that ESPN wants to be part of the stories it reports on, but it has never been more plain to see then it was last night.

On another note, I do not support the childness of the Cleveland fans, but it is worth noting where they are coming from. Cleveland has not won a major sports title since 1964 despite fielding three teams (at least since 1970)--and that one isn’t even celebrated by anyone outside of Cleveland because of the NFL’s whitewash of its pre-Super Bowl history.

Yet here, nearly miraculously, was a local player who just so happened to be the best basketball prospect in anyone’s memory. He was not called the Chosen One for no reason. He was the one who was destined to finally break through the wall, to give Cleveland its championship. Twice the team has looked liked the NBA’s best team in the regular season, only to fold in the playoffs.

I’m not saying that those expectations and hopes were fair, that they all should have been thrown on LeBron’s shoulder. They plainly weren’t. Still, I may be a little biased, but I think that all things considered, this has to be one of the biggest kicks in the gut that an athlete leaving a team as a free agent has ever delivered. That doesn’t excuse Dan Gilbert or Cavs fans, but this is not just ARod leaving the Mariners.

The truth of the matter is that I was still a LeBron fan. The most endearing quality of LeBron in a sports sense to me was his support of OSU. He was on that bandwagon prior to the 2002 national championship (an article on his senior season of high school included an account of his enthusiastic celebration of this victory with his teammates), and he remained a friend of the program even after going to Miami, which he didn’t have to do. Sure, OSU is an important college asset of Nike, but Nike has contracts with a million other colleges, there was no need to keep up appearances.

It seemed like a crazy pipe dream in the spring of 2014, but was realistic by summer, and then remarkably came true. LeBron was coming back, to try to lead a new supporting cast, rebuilt largely through the fruits of the lottery picks that never would have come had he stayed (Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson, Dion Waters, Kevin Love via trade). For all of the fury that surrounded The Decision, had LeBron’s goal all along been to win a title in Cleveland, he couldn’t have done any better.

However, nothing is assured, and being Cleveland the natural insecurities were ratcheted up a few levels. Had the moment for LeBron passed, was he just far enough past his prime that he could not deliver? Was the supporting cast good enough (or in the case of Irving, healthy enough) to provide him support? Unexpectedly a new question emerged--would the suddenly dominant Warriors serve an insurmountable foil?

Hopefully the answers to those questions will reduce some of the irrationality of Cleveland sports observers (of course, the probability of the Cavs winning when down 3-1 was greater than the probability of a collective of sports fans becoming more rationally). Whatever small change to the city’s sports mindset might result, Cleveland’s overall inferiority complex is not going to change. On the very morning after the Cavs won the world championship, a new banner appeared on the side of a building bragging that the first traffic light was installed in Cleveland in 1914. This will certainly make the political hacks in town next month to do political hack-y things real impressed. Cleveland is a weird place.

And yet I can watch a ridiculously hokey, wildly overproduced local news commercial from 1995 and find it tugging at my inner childhood Indians partisan in a manner I can’t rationally describe. "Give me a reason for believing in Cleveland." Cleveland can surprise you.

April 4, 1994

What was the most important game in the history of the major leagues? Perhaps it was one of the games that could be argued to have been the very first major league game (the National Association’s first game on May 4, 1871 between Cleveland and Fort Wayne; the National League’s on April 22, 1876 between Boston and Philadelphia; or the American League’s on April 24, 1901, between Cleveland and Chicago). Maybe it was October 3, 1951 as Bobby Thomson hit The Shot Heard Round the World. You would get a lot of support for April 15, 1947 as Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and rightfully so. From a business standpoint, consider April 14, 1953, the Braves’ first game in Milwaukee after fifty years of franchise stability, or April 10, 1961 as the second Senators hosted the White Sox to open the expansion era.

Or maybe you’d point out that I’ve not attempted to define what makes a game important as opposed to the circumstances that led to it, and that too many factors would go into doing so to produce a coherent result. There have literally been hundreds of thousands of games in major league history, and so this exercise is inherently silly. But one question I can answer with absolute certainty is “What was the most important game to you, personally?” And that was the 1994 Opening Day game between the Mariners and the Indians, the first regular season game ever played at Jacobs Field.

By late 1993, I was pretty interested in sports, but not baseball. Baseball simply had not captured my interest the way that football and basketball had. I really can’t put my finger on why that was, as my personality even at a young age was well-suited to quiet contemplation, patient and passive spectatorship, and interest in numbers and factoids. It is obvious now that baseball is the perfect sport for me, but it was no less true long before I knew that.

I suppose I can assign some of the blame for this to the Indians. The organization was mired in a few decades of persistent losing, and there was no excitement surrounding the team. I was (sadly) a sports talk radio listener at this point and the Browns dominated the Cleveland scene (they still do, of course, but to a lesser extent). There was no social or peer pressure to follow the Indians, and thus in a pre-internet, no cable household, baseball in general. My dad was a casual baseball fan; I remember watching some of the 1993 World Series on a Friday or Saturday night. We also went to one of the Indians final games at Municipal Stadium in September 1993, but it was on a Sunday and my most indelible memory of the whole thing was fans huddling around a gentleman watching the Browns on a mini TV.

However, the tone started to shift a little bit in the spring of 1994, as there seemed to be genuine optimism regarding the Indians and excitement for the opening of Jacobs Field. I added free agent signings Dennis Martinez and Eddie Murray to the list of Indian players whose names I knew (Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga, Kenny Lofton, Jose Mesa, maybe Sandy Alomar), but was obviously still far from engaged as any sort of fan.

Then April 3, 1994 rolled around, the first regular season game at Jacobs Field between the Indians and the Mariners. Dennis Martinez v. Randy Johnson. Even as a kid I had a decent sense of history, so I believe that I was aware and interested in this event, but sadly not solely for it just being an Opening Day baseball game. It was pretty much the last time that I wouldn’t be interested in a major league game just on the basis of it being a baseball game.

The details that follow are all courtesy of the play-by-play account, as I have very little memory of the specifics of this game. The details of most games become fuzzy over time, replaced by memories of specific moments and a general haze. This is especially true for me with the earliest games I remember, and while the (gulp) decades that have elapsed are certainly a contributing factor, I don’t think it’s the only one, or even the primary one. Rather, my memories from this time suffer from my inability at the time to process baseball in context--the lack of a real-time knowledge base from which to differentiate those events that were truly memorable from those that were more mundane. I also would cite the lack of keeping score, which could be dismissed as a crutch in lieu of actual memories, but in my opinion is an essential tool with which to place the events of the game within the context of the game itself, let alone across time. Even in a typical game with seventy-five plate appearances, I find it’s easy to lose track of the truth and replace it with one’s own narrative in absence of a trusty scoresheet.

Seattle scored in the first and third to take a 2-0 lead. Meanwhile, Randy Johnson was pitching a no-hitter, which was notable for a couple reasons beyond the obvious. One, Johnson, while not yet established as a Hall of Fame super-ace, had already pitched a no-hitter and was clearly one of the leading candidates to do so again among active pitchers. Secondly, the only Opening Day no-hitter had been thrown by Bob Feller for the Tribe, and Feller was in attendance for the opening of the new era in Indians baseball. It was sometime around the seventh inning when I got home from school and started listening to this familiar yet also newish (to me) sport of baseball on the radio. It may sound overly dramatic and absurd, but it is not untrue to say that, literally, my life would never be the same.

In the eighth, the Indians finally got something going offensively. Candy Maldonado led off with a walk (that was about the only thing he did well in 1994), the fifth surrendered by Johnson (a reminder that this was pre-super-ace Johnson). Sandy Alomar singled to break up the no-hitter, a wild pitch moved the runners up, and Manny Ramirez doubled them in to tie the game.

Johnson was relieved by Tim Davis in the ninth, and the Indians rallied with two out on an Albert Belle double and Eddie Murray infield single, but Paul Sorrento struck out. In the tenth, the Mariners scored off Jose Mesa thanks mainly to singles by Ken Griffey and Kevin Mitchell, but Bobby Ayala and Kevin King couldn’t close it--the Indians rallied again. After Alomar struck out swinging to open the inning, Ramirez walked (Wayne Kirby pinch-ran) and Jim Thome hit a pinch-hit double. That’s right--Mark Lewis started the game at third over Thome given the latter’s perceived ineptness against southpaws. Somewhat bizarrely, Kenny Lofton was intentionally walked, Omar Vizquel hit into a fielder’s choice to score Kirby, and Carlos Baerga flew out, pushing the 3-3 game to an eleventh inning.

Eric Plunk retired Seattle in order in the top of the inning. In the bottom, King got Belle to ground out before Murray doubled. Sorrento flied out and Murray took third. Seattle intentionally walked Alomar to get to Kirby, who was now batting in Ramirez’s spot. Kirby lined a single down the left field line, and the Indians won the game 4-3.

It is difficult to exaggerate how much this game changed my attitude towards baseball. It might not have been entirely immediate, but if not it was pretty close. Memories are a bit fuzzy at this point, but for whatever reason, I remember being dragged along by my parents to shop for a refrigerator on Sunday April 10. The Indians’ fifth game of the season had been rained out at Kansas City on Saturday, so Chris Nabholz was skipped in the rotation and Dennis Martinez was pitching again on the TV at the appliance store. This confused me, and my dad explained to me that the fifth starter is often skipped in such a situation. The point of this mundane story? I knew who the fifth starter was.

That spring and summer, I became obsessed with both the Indians and collecting baseball cards. I hated the White Sox as the Indians chased them in the division, I followed all the intrigue of Albert Belle’s corked bat suspension and rejoiced when he homered in his return. I penciled Kenny Rogers’ perfect game into the list in my Information Please Sports Almanac, the baseball section of which had previously not gotten much attention but now was well-worn. By the end of the year I had subscriptions to two baseball publications (Beckett Baseball Card Monthly and Baseball Digest). I was starting to apply my natural interest in figures and analysis into what would, by spring of the next year, be a nascent interest in sabermetrics and by the next year be a full-blown obsession.

And when the players went on strike? I was disappointed, to be sure, but an event that potentially could have crushed a young fan before he had a chance to be fully invested had zero impact on my newfound infatuation. The next spring I eagerly learned all the names of the Indians’ replacement players and was ready to cheer for our ace Joe Slusarski, our middle-of-the-order thumper Joe Biasucci, our Kenny Lofton replacement Eric Yelding. After April 4, 1994, none of that really mattered. I was a baseball fanatic for good.

Would I have found the game in lieu of the excitement of this game? Given the Indians’ 1994 resurgence, I assume I would have, just not as soon. But had the Indians not emerged as a competitive team at that point, it gets murkier. Had I grown much older without discovering the wonder of baseball, it would have been too late to have it as an integral part of my mid-childhood and I can’t imagine being the same level of fan that I am today. But after the Opening Day game, I’m convinced that the Indians could have lost the rest of their games and the spark would not have been extinguished. I know precisely when I became a baseball fan--twenty years ago today.

2014 Indians

Writing an Indians preview is something of an annual tradition here, and I see no reason to stop now. My interest at this point really lies in amusing myself by seeing if I can correctly predict the 25-man roster. There are a lot of places on the internet where you can find micro-analysis of teams and players; it’s not my strength as an analyst, and so for the most part any such analysis here will be perfunctory by design.

The Indians certainly surpassed my expectations in 2013, winning 92 games and earning one of the two wildcard playoff berths before being shut out by Tampa Bay in the one-game playoff, which I had the mixed pleasure of attending (pro: first playoff game, con: lousy outcome for an Indians fan). However, the offseason that follows has felt a lot like 2008--standing pat rather than bolstering the roster to take another shot. While such a decision should hardly be surprising given the track record of the Dolan-era Indians, it was a little jarring coming on the heels of the team’s aggressive attempt to contend in 2011 (most notably the Ubaldo Jimenez trade, which finally paid belated dividends and looks less of a disaster than anticipated as the prospects sent to Colorado have fallen upon hard times) and last season’s off-season spending spree that netted Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn. The only free agent signing that is a lock for the 2014 roster is David Murphy, and a second LOOGY for the pen (Josh Outman) is the only trade acquisition that figures to make an impact. Meanwhile, two starters (Jimenez and Scott Kazmir) signed multi-year deals with other clubs.

This is not to say that these were not the right moves--I tend to think that the Indians need to make significant headway in player development before they can consider themselves a perennial contender given their financial resources--but they suggest that the front office doesn’t buy its own rhetoric about the team’s competitive prospects in 2014. I don’t think I would have wanted to sign Jimenez and Kazmir to those contracts either, but it’s hard to say that the Indians roster looks better today than it did on October 2.

Starting pitching remains a big question mark for the Tribe. Justin Masterson was good again last year, but he’s yet to put together consecutive effective seasons, and his struggles with lefties and sinker/slider reliance make him a disquieting pitcher in which to place one’s trust. He also is the owner of a big arbitration raise and a potential trade deadline casualty should Cleveland fail to contend. Danny Salazar was brilliant in the minors and his ten major league starts last year, and appears to have all the necessary stuff to be a top of the rotation arm, but is building off of a base of just 149 total innings pitched. Corey Kluber was a pleasant surprise, a reliable middle of the rotation arm earning cult status in the internet baseball community (or maybe just one extremely loyal devotee; the strength of the Kluber movement is unclear).

Zach McAllister represents a fourth righty with a rotation spot essentially sewn up, but his 3.75 ERA exaggerates his effectiveness (4.54 RA, 4.88 eRA), and he does not strike me as a pitcher with significant untapped potential. There are a variety of contenders for the fifth spot, from washed up vets (Aaron Harang and Shaun Marcum) to former top prospect (Carlos Carrasco) to soon-to-be former top prospect (Trevor Bauer) to junkballing righty (Josh Tomlin). The smart money is on Carrasco; the organization has remained positive about his potential and he is out of options. If he does not win the job, expect him to get a bullpen spot. Bauer will probably be given more time to work through his mechanical issues in AAA, while Marcum is unlikely to be ready for Opening Day, and Harang appears to be emergency depth. Tomlin is the pitcher most likely to give Carrasco a run for his money for the spot.

The bullpen will take on a very different look than it did on Opening Day 2013, as the seventh, eighth, and ninth inning options are all in very different places. The bullpen shakeup started with injury and legal trouble for Chris Perez, who was utilized as the closer when available but fell out of favor with the brass, leading to an unceremonious non-tender. Vinnie Pestano, who was extremely effective in the setup role in 2011-12, struggled all season, spending much of it in Columbus. Joe Smith was solid and moved up from the seventh to eighth inning, but signed a multi-year deal with the Angels.

In their stead, the Indians have returned to their standard closer strategy: someone else’s reject, often with questionable stuff or command. John Axford represents the latter, and sad to say one of those 30 save seasons with a poor RA appears to be the optimum outcome. Cody Allen will serve as one of the top set up man, provided his arm doesn’t fall off--Terry Francona’s usage of Allen was bizarre last year, as even as he moved up the pecking order in trust, he was not held back from more mundane situations, leading to a largely unnecessary 77 appearances (second in the AL). He’ll be joined by Bryan Shaw, who earned Francona’s trust with a 2.84 eRA, 9.0 KG, and 3.5 WG over 75 innings.

The other two sure things for the pen are the LOOGYs. Marc Rzepczynski pitched very well after being plucked from St. Louis’ bullpen excess, and Josh Outman was picked up from Colorado in exchange for Drew Stubbs. Neither are particularly exciting in terms of potential to outgrow their roles, although both have enough starting pedigree to warrant long relief duty.

That leaves two spots open. I expect one of them to go to Pestano, who has the highest upside of any of the candidates by far. Other options include Nick Hagadone, who’d be a third lefty and could provide long-ish relief; a few righties who had cups of coffee in 2013 in CC Lee, Preston Guilmet, and Blake Wood; lefty Scott Barnes and Colt Hynes; and non-roster invitees including David Aardsma, Scott Atchison, Matt Capps, JC Ramirez, and Mike Zagurski. Capps would have been a pretty good guess given the team’s propensity to give the seventh spot to a veteran reclamantion project, but a sore shoulder will hold him back. My guess here is Wood, who had was serviceable for the Royals over 120 inning in 2010-11 but missed all of 2012 and spent 2013 working his way through the Indians farm save two September appearances in the bigs. Wood has walked too many batters throughout his career to be reliable, but his stuff and relative youth (28) will make him an attractive flier.

To talk about the composition of the roster as it relates to position players, the third base situation has to take center stage. Former first-round pick Lonnie Chisenhall has never really hit that well at any level (94 OPS+ over 682 PA in the majors, 821 career minor league OPS) which has made alternatives attractive, including moving Carlos Santana to third. Santana was not serving as the regular catcher down the stretch, as Yan Gomes superior defense and surprising offensive showing freed Santana up to DH. If Santana is passable at third, I expect him to play there, a sentiment which surprises me. When the Indians started talking about this over the winter, I sort of laughed it off, but I now am convinced of their sincerity.

Gomes will be the catcher and is a prime candidate for offensive regression. Nick Swisher is slated as a full-time first baseman, but can play right if need be and while he held his own offensively with 3 RAA, the Indians had hoped for more in the first year of his four-year deal. Second baseman Jason Kipnis was not nearly as good in the second half as he was in the first (149 OPS+ to 103), but the season as a whole was worthy of down-ballot MVP consideration. Asdrubal Cabrera had a disappointing year (just 2 RAA and a .297 OBA), but the only thing that would jeopardize his position at shortstop is a deadline selloff.

Left field goes to Michael Brantley and his shiny new contract extension; I had been a skeptic of Brantley’s value, but he provided average production even for a corner spot last year, shedding concerns that he might be an over-extended fourth outfielder. If Swisher was a minor disappointment, Michael Bourn was a major disappointment; the center fielder had an OBA of just .322, created 4 runs/game, and missed 32 games due to injury. Right field figures to be a platoon of Ryan Raburn (right) and David Murphy (left) with Drew Stubbs shipped to Colorado. Raburn made a deal with the devil last year (.272/.357/.543 in 277 PA) and Murphy had a miserable year (.214/.273/.363, -5 RAR third lowest among AL regulars); together, more moderate luck might make them a mediocre whole.

The prospect of Santana being able to cut it at third should engender more excitement than it actually does, as Cleveland lacks a good DH candidate to plug in his place. Jason Giambi provided the single most memorable Indians moment since 2007, but his overall season line of .183/.282/.371 and his current age of 43 don’t lie: he has no business getting regular playing time in the majors.

I’ll assume that Chisenhall plays third and Santana is the regular DH, which still leaves a big roster question: will the Indians carry a third catcher or just use Santana as Gomes’ caddy? Given that the options are veterans Matt Treanor and Luke Carlin or minor league non-hitter Roberto Perez (623 OPS in 2013, 685 career), I’m guessing no, leaving three bench spots. One clearly belongs to utility man Mike Aviles, who is fine in that role but got too many starts (87) in 2013. Brantley can play a passable center, which means that Raburn/Murphy is fine as fourth outfielder, which does leave room for Jason Giambi. The Indians also could consider Jeff Francoeur (just say no), Nyjer Morgan, or Matt Carson as fourth outfielders. Elliott Johnson could snag a utility man spot, while September pinch-runner Jose Ramirez will be farmed out for everyday playing time. It’s conceivable that a hot spring from Bryan LaHair could put him in the mix for DH at bats as well. Frankly, my guess on the composition of the bench is no better than drawing names out of a hat.

I don’t think this Indians team is well-positioned to repeat their success of 2013. The rotation isn’t particularly strong, the bullpen is unproven; the offense should be fine, but I see no reason to expect it will be any better than it was in 2013. The Tigers remain the class of the division; they have never been as invulnerable as mainstream thought would have them, but the Royals are lurking around and while it may be completely irrational, I always am wary of a White Sox miracle. And as far as wildcard prospects go, the only AL teams I’d write off completely play in the Central except for Houston. I see the 50th percentile scenario for the Tribe as 80-82, third place.

1. 8 Michael Bourn
2. 3 Nick Swisher
3. 4 Jason Kipnis
4. D Carlos Santana
5. 7 Michael Brantley
6. 9 David Murphy
7. 6 Asdrubal Cabrera
8. 2 Yan Gomes
9. 5 Lonnie Chisenhall

Bench: IF Mike Aviles, IF Elliot Johnson, OF Ryan Raburn, DH Jason Giambi

1. Justin Masterson (R)
2. Danny Salazar (R)
3. Corey Kluber (R)
4. Zach McAllister (R)
5. Carlos Carrasco (R)

RP: Blake Wood (R)
RP: Vinnie Pestano (R)
LOOGY: Josh Outman (L)
LOOGY: Mark Rzepczynski (L)
SU: Bryan Shaw (R)
SU: Cody Allen (R)
CL: John Axford (R)

A Big Push for Second Place

The Indians enter 2013 with an organizational philosophy that from a surface-level, outsider’s perspective appears very different than it did at this time two years ago. The 2011 Indians appeared to be conservative almost to a fault, allowing young players ample chances to develop, avoiding spending money on the free agent market, and backing the manager as steadfastly as the front office itself--after all, this is a team that had announced Eric Wedge’s firing before the end of the 2009 season and allowed him to manage out the last series of the year anyway.

The Indians enter 2013 acting like a different organization. They went on a free agent spending spree the likes of which the organization has not undertaken since the mid-90s, bringing in Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn on four-year deals, plus Brett Myers and Mark Reynolds on non-negligible one-year deals. They have a new manager in Terry Francona as Manny Acta was unceremoniously dumped, treated as a scapegoat in a manner that Wedge never was, despite presiding over much several campaigns much more disappointing than 2012 (you see there was 2006, and then there was 2008, and 2009…) And the team has finally cut ties with its mid-aughts contenders, as Grady Sizemore, Travis Hafner, and the former Fausto Carmona are all gone.

Of course, as an outsider it’s impossible to say how much of this was a change in philosophy versus a change in tactics given changes in the environment. Perhaps Acta had a fatal flaw as a manager that those of us on the outside are clueless too. Perhaps the new CBA, or the sale of Sports Time Ohio to Fox Sports, changed the organization’s computations regarding the value of a win purchased on the market. Perhaps ownership decided that the poisonous atmosphere around the city on sports radio and in the pages of the local rags was too toxic, and that money needed to be spent to change the conversation. I will never know what led to the changes, but it certainly feels different to me.

Carlos Santana will be the catcher and entering his age 27 season, it may be time to celebrate him for what he is rather than as the superstar some once thought he might be. A TTO catcher with a career .384 secondary average is nothing to sneeze at regardless of his batting average, and .247 is plenty high enough to support a strong OBA. If Santana could raise his average while preserving his power and eye, he could yet be a star, but as is he’s one of the top catchers in the AL.

First base appears to be the likely destination for the big free agent catch, Nick Swisher. It remains possible that he could slide to right on a full-time basis if dictated by injury or a lack of performance from Drew Stubbs, but for now it appears that first base is the plan. It is difficult for me to evaluate Swisher objectively, and so I’ll refrain from saying anything more.

Jason Kipnis starts his second full season at second base. His 2012 featured a strong first half (.277/.345/.419) and a powerless second half (.233/.322/.328). On the bright side, Kipnis’ walk rate ticked up as he struggled to hit. His overall season was a strong offensive showing for a 25 year old second baseman, and I’m probably a little more bullish on him than projection systems.

Third base will belong to Lonnie Chisenhall, whose major league career so far has not gone according to plan. He was called up in 2011 in a panic move with the Indians flailing for offense as their ill-advised attempt to win now fell to pieces. Chisenhall’s walk rate, never a strength in the minors, has been abysmal in the bigs, and various injuries have kept him from regular playing time. Chisenhall is young enough to retain promise, but should not be counted on as a major contributor in 2013.

At shortstop, Asdrubal Cabrera is back despite trade rumors that enveloped him all winter. At this point Cabrera is something of a known quality, as he was able to sustain some of the growth in his power to remain a valuable offensive player. In the field, he makes more than his share of spectacular plays, but metrics of all stripes consider him suspect. He’ll remain a prime trade candidate if the Indians fail to contend or in the offseason.

The outfield should be good defensively, featuring three players capable of handling center, but is a less-than-stellar offensive group. Michael Brantley will be in left; he made strides offensively in 2012, but that brought him only to an average level for a corner outfielder. Late surprise signee Michael Bourn will man center and leadoff, giving the Indians their first full-time leadoff hitter that fits the traditional profile since Kenny Lofton (Coco Crisp was never Cleveland’s primary leadoff hitter). Whether Bourn’s value will hold up over the four-year contract term is up for debate, but his addition improves the team’s 2013 outlook. In right, Drew Stubbs will be given the opportunity, at least initially, to revive his offensive game, but his poor hitting against righties could force him into a platoon with Swisher.

Mark Reynolds will serve as the DH and could get significant time at first if Swisher plays right. Reynolds gives the Tribe right-handed power that they have been sorely lacking in recent years, but that power comes at the price of low batting averages (and, most terrifyingly to the traditionally-minded, copious strikeouts). Mediocrity should be the expectation for production out of his spot.

Two sports on the bench are obvious. Lou Marson will be the backup catcher. Marson is a replacement-level offensive player, but in 2012 his usually strong throwing results took a nosedive as he threw out just 14% of runners on 78 attempts. Still, it would be a major surprise if Marson lost his job to Yan Gomes, who would also be an infield corner option. The other bench lock is Mike Aviles, utility man and potential stopgap replacement should Asdrubal Cabrera be dealt in the next two seasons.

Francona appears to be set on putting what’s left of Jason Giambi on the roster, which leads me to believe that Ryan Raburn has an excellent shot at claiming the final bench spot. Since Giambi will not play the field, Raburn’s ability to just about anywhere but shortstop will be more attractive. The other top option is Ezequiel Carrrera, who is out of options but whose center field ability is not as important given that three potential center fielders will man Cleveland’s regular outfield.

On the mound, the Indians desperately need to improve their starting pitching to turn their fortunes around. In 2012, Cleveland ranked third-to-last in MLB in both innings per start and starters’ eRA. While the performance was so bad that regression should be an ally and the Indians made an attempt to address the rotation, it seems doubtful that the situation will improve enough for the team to contend.

As of this writing, the first four spots in the rotation have been made official by Terry Francona with nary a surprise. For the second consecutive season, Justin Masterson has the opening day assignment. Masterson appeared to have turned a corner in 2011, holding lefties to a league-average batting line, but in 2012 lefties once again had their way with him (296/376/450 and a career line of 292/367/432). The question of whether there is the potential for Masterson to get back to respectability against lefties is better left to the PitchF/x type of analysts, but his 2012 performance was good for just 3 RAR.

Next up is Ubaldo Jimenez, who fell deeper into the abyss in 2012, with a strikeout rate of 6.8 versus a walk rate of 4.5 and a whopping 6.07 eRA. While it’s impossible to write off a talent like Jimenez, it’s equally impossible to predict that he will be an effective major league starting pitcher. While I am usually able to set aside emotion when watching the Indians, it’s tough to manage when Jimenez is on the mound given the combination of extraordinarily frustrating pitching and the huge price it took to acquire him.

Brett Myers will slot in as the #3 starter, Cleveland’s attempt to stabilize the rotation with a veteran innings eater (the 2012 version, Derek Lowe, started hot but imploded in a big way). Myers has been below average in terms of run prevention in three of his last four seasons as a starter, and the year spent in relief is not an encouraging sign. He may eat innings, but he shouldn’t be counted on for an effective performance.

The number four spot went to Zach McAllister, who pitched effectively at times for Cleveland in 2012, but for the season was below replacement level with a 5.81 RRA. McAllister has the potential to develop into something more, but counting on that would be a mistake.

The fifth starter job remains open, with the candidates appearing to be Scott Kazmir, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer, and Corey Kluber. Kazmir appears to be the favorite: he has pitched well so far in the spring, would be the team’s only left-handed starter, and at least has a history of effectively pitching in the majors. Matsuzaka has suffered an injury setback that will likely knock him from contention. Carrasco is still recovering from Tommy John surgery and will be stashed in AAA, waiting to vulture one of the other starter’s jobs. The Indians obviously are high on Bauer, making him the centerpiece of the Choo trade, but may be inclined to patience and allowing him to break into the organization at AAA. Kluber is a generic replacement-level type arm who will remain an emergency option.

Cleveland’s bullpen is perceived very differently depending on who you talk to. Indians fans and announcers seem to think it is very good, but a baseball writer who’ll remain nameless cited it last year as the #1 reason why the team wouldn’t contend (which was bizarre given that the rotation looked shaky at the time, even before it was exposed to be an abject disaster). Over the last three seasons it has ranked seventh, seventh, and twelfth in the AL in eRA, which means that what had been average was bad in 2012. The heavy workload didn’t help, and the Tribe had a decent trio at the end of games, but struggled to find middle relief. It comes as no surprise then that the team’s primary offseason bullpen tinkerings were to add middle relief depth. The Choo trade netted Matt Albers and Bryan Shaw while Matt Capps was brought in as a NRI.

The key three pitchers at the end of the game are Joe Smith, Vinnie Pestano, and Chris Perez. Perez may be sidelined at the beginning of the year with shoulder discomfort, but for now I’ll assume he’ll be ready to go. Perez is a fairly average reliever who can be incredibly frustrating when his command deserts him and he pumps straight, hittable fastballs. He’s the type of player that I wouldn’t have expected the Indians to shell out $7.3MM for in the past. Paired with Pestano, he continues the recent Indians tradition of the setup man being the top reliever, best exemplified by Joe Borowski and Rafael Betancourt.

Smith’s sidearm delivery makes him an ideal ROOGY, working 70+ times in each of the last two seasons with just a shade under an inning/game. His LOOGY counterparts, will be new in 2013. For each of the past X seasons, Rafael Perez and Tony Sipp have served as the Indians lefties, although both briefly transcended LOOGY-dom. The pair combined for 100 appearances in 2009, 140 in 2010, 140 in 2011, and 71 last year as Perez was slowed by injury. The duo has been broken up as Sipp was dealt to Arizona in the Choo trade and Perez allowed to sign with Minnesota.

In their place, Rich Hill has been added to the 40-man and thus essentially assured a roster spot. I suppose it was too much to ask the Cleveland bring in an OSU star without sullying the team with a UM product. Nick Hagadone seems likely to join the pen as well, apparently forgiven for the incident in which he broke his hand punching a wall. Hagadone has exciting stuff for a lefty, but has yet been able to harness it (or perhaps stay healthy enough to do so). Scott Barnes and David Huff are other lefty options.

Matt Albers is a pretty good bet to take a generic righty job, which leaves one spot for Cody Allen, Matt Capps, or Bryan Shaw. Capps may be the best bet due to his veteran status and lack of options, while Allen is the more exciting young arm and Shaw falls somewhere in between.

Terry Francona is the new manager; while I was agitated by the firing of Manny Acta, I certainly have no qualms with the choice of Francona. While his time with a non-contender in Philadelphia was not particularly encouraging, that tenure ended thirteen years ago. Francona was successful in Boston and seems to be a relatively saber-friendly skipper, something that was likely sought by both
organizations.

As for the front office, though, the Jimenez trade marked the beginning of my disenchantment and the phony contention attempt of 2012 with corresponding bluster that was used to justify the Acta filing marked my complete disillusionment. The open wallet in the offseason has been attributed by many observers to the new CBA rules, and the opportunity for teams with protected picks to swoop in on the middle tier of free agents. There’s surely some truth to this, but in the case of the Indians, this observer feels that the most likely explanation is that management realized that fan sentiment had grown toxic and that something had to be done to restore people’s interest in the team.

Most analysts feel that the Swisher and Bourn deals are reasonable, maybe even good values. How they’ll look at the tail end is another story, but the real problem is that Cleveland is still several pieces short from being a true contender. Those several pieces all happen to be starting pitchers. The Indians starters were so dreadful last year that regression is their friend, but they can’t regress to the level of adequacy necessary to put this team in the playoffs. That would take real improvement, and while 2010 Jimenez + 2011 Masterson + rookie of the year Bauer might fit the bill, the odds of that happening are remote. Detroit looks better on paper this preseason than they did last year (at least to me), Chicago almost always finds a way to win in the 80s, and Kansas City preceded the Tribe into this offseason’s contention derby. Even if Detroit falters, the Indians have plenty of competition. Given the weakness of the rotation, it’s hard to pick this team to achieve much. As a baseline guess, I’m going with 76-86, third place.

Predicted lineup (generic):

1. 8 Michael Bourn
2. 6 Asdrubal Cabrera
3. 4 Jason Kipnis
4. 3 Nick Swisher
5. 2 Carlos Santana
6. 7 Michael Brantley
7. D Mark Reynolds
8. 9 Drew Stubbs
9. 5 Lonnie Chisenhall

Bench: C Lou Marson, IF Mike Aviles, UT Ryan Raburn, DH Jason Giambi

Rotation:

1. Justin Masterson (R)
2. Ubaldo Jimenez (R)
3. Brett Myers (R)
4. Zach McAllister (R)
5. Scott Kazmir (L)

Bullpen: Matt Albers (R), Matt Capps (R), Nick Hagadone (L), Rich Hill (L), Chris Perez (R), Vinnie Pestano (R), Joe Smith (R)

Omar y Amigos

Back in the mid-90s, the Indians radio network carried a pregame feature before Sunday afternoon games called "Kenny's Kids". It was your standard bolierplate schlock--little kids given tickets to the game through the Indians charities or Kenny Lofton's foundation or something of the sort would get to listen to Kenny talk to another Indian, or get to ask him questions ("Mr. Wofton, Mr. Wofton, how do I get to be a baseball player?")

Then Kenny got traded prior to the 1997 season, and this grave duty fell to Omar Vizquel. The segment was renamed "Omar y Amigos". When Lofton came back the next year, Kenny's Kids did not return; Omar y Amigos continued. So if you ever thought there wasn't an upside to getting traded, then returning to your former club as a free agent...you were wrong.

Title exposition aside, I'd like to discuss Omar Vizquel's place in history. This is a standard boring article written at a low level of sabermetric literacy, one you can safely skip if you're not interested in comparing players' careers across the years (or if you value peak over career). The goal is not to pinpoint a ranking and say that "Omar Vizquel is the fourteenth best shortstop of all-time" or anything like that, just to get a general sense of how he compares to other great shortstops.

One of the most common comparisons for Vizquel, particularly among mainstream thinkers, is Ozzie Smith. The comparison generally assumes that the two provided similar value in the field, and thus can be compared on the basis of their offensive production:



It is easy to see why many traditional, context-free glances at the stats result in considering Vizquel to be Smith's equal. He hit for a higher average, hit fifty more homers, and both drove in and scored over 150 more runs than Ozzie. He hit for a better slugging average while getting on base at the same rate. Smith does have an advantage in basestealing, swiping 176 more bases than Vizquel while getting caught 19 fewer times.

Of course, as a sabermetrically-informed reader you know that context is king. It makes a huge difference; Vizquel played in parks with a composite PF of 1.01, while Smith played in parks with a park factor of .98. Much more significantly, Vizquel played in leagues in which the average team scored 4.81 runs per game; teams in Smith's leagues averaged 4.15 runs per game. Combining the two, Vizquel played in a context in which 19% more runs were scored.

Any serious analytical approach is going to take that into account, and rather than emerging as the superior hitter, Vizquel will assuredly come out as inferior to Smith. Compared to a league average hitter (comparable to Palmer's Batting Wins, except counting stolen bases), I have Smith at +2 wins for his career and Vizquel at -23, with Smith’s RC/out relative to the league average bettering Vizquel’s 102 to 86. Not all methods think the gap is that large (see Technical Note below), but the other commonly used sabermetric methods concur that Smith was a better offensive player: he leads in TAv (.250 to .243), wRC+ (90 to 84), and OPS+ (87 to 82).

Even if one accepts that Smith and Vizquel were similar fielders, they are not particularly close in offensive value. Unless one wants to make the claim that Vizquel was a much better fielder than Smith, Ozzie is the more valuable player--easily.

Engaging in a little bit of unhealthy stereotyping (on both baseball and ethnic levels) one can find decent comparables for Vizquel in three players: Luis Aparicio, Bert Campaneris, and Dave Concepcion. I don't mean to suggest that these three are the most comparable players to Vizquel, but they are obvious comparisons as they are all shortstops, all Latin, all from the expansion era, and all are known for their glovework. One could of course compare Vizquel to players from other positions, or shortstops who arguably were roughly as valuable but with a different offense/defense split than Vizquel (like Jim Fregosi, Tony Fernandez, Junior Stephens, Edgar Renteria, or Miguel Tejada), but comparisons to the aforementioned trio are irresistible:



Once again, it is easy to see why Vizquel is highly regarded in the mainstream when looking at the raw statistics. Most people, presented with that data alone, would choose Vizquel. When park factors and league averages are considered, though, it is clear that Vizquel played in a much more offense-friendly time and place:



The final column is Vizquel's run environment (N*PF, where N is the league average runs/game) as a ratio to the others. Runs were 18% more common in Vizquel's games than Aparicio's, 25% versus Campaneris', and 17% versus Concepcion's. The result is that while Vizquel has -23 hitting WAA, Concepcion has -2, Campaneris -3, and Aparicio -10. (See technical note for an explanation of why the differences are greater than some other methods show).

Let’s suppose you refuse to consider sabermetric measures, and want to limit your offensive evaluation only to what you protest are “actual” runs--runs scored and RBI. For the sake of argument, I’ll play along, as long as you allow me to consider league context and outs made. (See this post for the full details on how these are figured, but essentially R+ is runs scored per out relative to league average, RBI+ is the same for RBI, ANY is the average of R+ and RBI+, and ANYA is the average of runs scored above league average and runs batted in above league average).

When you do, it becomes clear that Vizquel’s runs scored and batted in totals are not as impressive as those in this peer group:



Vizquel scored fewer runs per out than his league average; only Concepcion joined him, but Concepcion had the best RBI rate of the five. In terms of the average, Vizquel is well behind the others at just 83% of league average R and RBI per out.

I'm sure that any Vizquel partisan who is still reading is screaming "What about fielding?" I don't have any particular insight to lend on that question; all I can do is regurgitate the figures that others have published. Bill James, in Win Shares assigns fielders letter grades based on their Defensive Win Shares per inning rates. Vizquel (through 2001) is evaluated as a B- shortstop, with Aparicio and Campaneris earning Bs and Concepcion an A+. As you know, Win Shares fielding ratings are based on a top-down team evaluation without the benefit of play-by-play data.

Chone Smith's TotalZone method uses Retrosheet batted ball locations to estimate runs saved compared to an average fielder. Smith's RAA results for the four almost flip James' rankings on their head, with Aparicio estimated to have saved 149 runs (adding in the double play component) above an average shortstop, Vizquel 144, Campaneris 62, and Concepcion 50.

TotalZone certainly deems Vizquel to have been an outstanding fielder, but not to such an extent that it elevates him significantly above this pack. And thus, in Chone's WAR figures, Vizquel ranks comfortably head of Concepcion but behind Aparicio and Campaneris. Even with a more generous evaluation of Vizquel's prowess in the field, it's difficult to argue that he was clearly superior to the other members of this group.

In Baseball Prospectus’ FRAA, Vizquel ranks as the lowest of the four with just 14 (Campaneris 31, Concepcion 56, Aparicio 109). This contributes to Vizquel ranking 20 WARP behind Campaneris, 17 behind Aparicio, and 6 behind Concepcion.

That leaves the matter of his reputation as a fielder, which is considerable, and often in mainstream discussions is assumed to be nearly on par with Ozzie Smith. You can decide for yourself how much weight to place on non-statistical evaluation of fielding. The only strong suggestion I'd make is not to place too much emphasis on the evaluation of any one particular individual--including my own take on Vizquel which follows, which I offer not because I think it's particularly insightful but because it's my blog.

I watched Omar Vizquel play shortstop more than any other shortstop--I find it hard to imagine that I'll ever watch anyone more in the future. Most of this occurred during my formative years as a baseball fan, so it is quite possible that it has forever tinged my perception of shortstop fielding--that I am unable to fairly evaluate other shortstops I watch because my expectations for a major league shortstop have been set largely by watching Omar Vizquel.

In any event, I don't have much of a pre-Vizquel frame of reference to offer. I can't say that I was never impressed by Omar Vizquel because he didn't look as good to me as Ozzie did, or as Campaneris did. What I can tell you is that, in watching other shortstops after watching Vizquel, I have never felt that I was watching pale imitations of the master.

Vizquel certainly stands among the best shortstops I've seen myself, possibly even the best. But he does not tower over them. I do think that Vizquel did things with as much flair as anyone I've watched--the barehand grab-and-throws, the back turned to the plate catches of outfield pops. But when you rely on observation, flair can be misleading. It's flair that gets you on SportsCenter, not workman-like consistency. It's the flashy play that gets burned in most people's memories, not the routine play or even the tough play made in the hole with a strong plant-and-throw.

None of this is to say that Omar Vizquel was not an outstanding fielder and a fine all-around player. He was, but so were Aparicio, Campaneris, Concepcion, and others who don't form as natural of a comparison group. His reputation seems to place him in a higher class, at least at this time. These assessments seem to be based on a very rosy assessment of his fielding prowess, a lack of recognition of the high-offense era in which he played, or a combination thereof.

TECHNICAL NOTE

I did not make any allowance for players in DH leagues, which is part of the reason you'll see discrepancies between the WAA/WAR figures for players listed here and those from Pete Palmer, Chone, and other sabermetricians. Vizquel spent the majority of his career in DH leagues, but Campaneris is the only other player discussed who spent a significant amount of his career in them.

Swapping out pitchers for DHs has the effect of raising the league averages, which are used to set baselines for average and replacement level performance, and this is something that you want to be aware of. However, the increase in scoring which drives runs per win up is a real factor that should not just be adjusted out of existence.

And while Vizquel would benefit from a DH correction, I've implicitly assumed that the position adjustment for shortstops have remained stable from Aparicio's day to Vizquel's. However, shortstop offense reached its all-time low in the 60s and 70s. The matter of positional adjustments is thornier than simply comparing mean positional offense, but there is a distinct possibility that treating the positional adjustment as a constant is hurting the pre-Vizquel members of the group, canceling out much of the DH hit that Omar takes.

Also, I realize that some people are aware of the offensive environment in which Vizquel played, but ignore it because they chalk it up to steroids. Since Vizquel is not suspected of using steroids, we're supposed to believe that he could have transferred his raw offensive performance into a different era and been more valuable relative to the league. That's a nice story.

Cleveland Manager Rant

I have considered myself a baseball fan first and a fan of any particular team for over a decade. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment at which this happened, but it’s been a while. I never regret this; college sports offer me plenty of opportunity for simple good v. evil, one team only fanaticism. I consider professional baseball too entertaining of a sport, one too amenable to rational analysis, to tie up much of my interest in a partisan stupor.

Still, I am a fan of the Indians, and I assume I will be until they move to Albuquerque in 2037. And so on Thursday evening, as I learned about Manny Acta’s firing, I vented a little bit on Twitter. The last time I had such a visceral reaction to a piece of Indians news, it was upon learning about the Ubaldo Jimenez trade.

The problem with being a fan first is that it makes one prone to that sort of off-the-cuff emotional reaction, whereas I’d much prefer to think for a while and then react. This is the more refined (albeit still tinted by the irrationality of fandom, poorly written and disjointed) version of that initial screed.

I always liked Manny Acta as the Indians manager. I supported his hiring, and I generally thought that he did a good job as manager from what I could tell. Of course, some of the most important duties of the manager are the things that, as an outsider, I cannot quantify and really can’t even get a good feel for--how he relates to players, how well he works with the front office and how he interacts with them on roster decisions, and the like. It’s certainly possible that Manny Acta is bad at these aspects of the job.

However, I reject the notion pushed by a contingent of Cleveland fans that Acta is a poor tactical manager from a sabermetric tactic. Again, this is an area that’s next to impossible to quantify--it's easy to pick some key categories on which managers have influence (like intentional walks, sacrifice hits, stolen base attempts, pitching changes, lineup construction) and mentally assign the manager a score based on rudimentary criteria (“intentional walks = bad”, “games led off by sub-.330 OBA hitters = bad”, etc.), but it’s difficult to develop a comprehensive evaluation even on these limited criteria. This is all complicated by the fact that some of our sabermetric tools have a margin of error comparable to the theoretical payoffs of alternative strategies, and that the manager always is working with more information than we have regarding the factors that could cause players’ abilities to deviate from our estimate of their true talent.

However, based on my general notion of baseball strategy and ability to process my observations, I have no overarching issues with the tactics employed by Manny Acta. Quite the opposite, in fact--I had less moments of confusion when watching Acta manage than I did with Mike Hargrove, Charlie Manuel, or Eric Wedge. Acta spoke intelligently about strategy in his media appearances and stayed true to his word as much as can be reasonably hoped for from a manager.

Of course, any manager is going to make isolated decisions that are puzzling. If cherry-picking just a few of these instances is enough to call for the skipper’s head, then I can guarantee you that it won’t take much more than a week into his replacement’s regime for a similar emotion to emerge. If you have to point to one specific choice in reliever usage, or one marginal young player that didn’t play enough for your taste, then I humbly suggest you don’t have much of a case. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either that Acta chose to use Vinny Rottino as a leadoff hitter (in one game!), but how many managers would have used Shin-Soo Choo as their leadoff hitters in over half of the team’s games? I’d suggest the latter is a much bigger deviation from the normal practice of managers, and one more amenable to sabermetric orthodoxy than the other is a departure.

In any event, Acta is gone now, making the more important question for Indians fans the matter of what this tells us about the people who run the organization. I don’t think it’s pretty. First, a quote from owner Larry Dolan:

“I fully support Chris' decision to make this change and am confident that he will lead a tireless search to find the right individual to lead the club to our ultimate goal of winning the World Series.”

Of course, this is typical owner-speak and reading into it is pointless. Still, the quote strongly implies that Dolan believes the single individual most responsible for winning the World Series is the manager. If the Indians could just find the right manager, they’d be fine.

Team president (and former GM, for the majority of Dolan’s ownership) Mark Shapiro tweeted:

“One of only levers u can pull w potential for broader change is the manager. Not easy but decision should indicate our desire to improve”

Left unsaid is what those levers are. And those levels have never been pulled. Since Dolan bought the team, the Indians have hired and fired three full-time managers: Charlie Manuel, Eric Wedge, and Manny Acta. They have fired zero general managers: Shapiro was promoted to president and his lieutenant Chris Antonetti took over after the 2010 season.

Manuel’s firing was a little different than those of Wedge and Acta--it came mid-season in the Indians first transition year between perennial contender and rebuilding. Manuel was not seen as a fit for the new paradigm, and so his attempt to force the issue by requesting an extension led to his dismissal.

Shapiro displayed a tremendous amount of loyalty to Wedge. It would have been easy to fire him after the failed attempt at contention in 2006, or the letdown on 2008 on the heels of 2007’s near pennant. But Shapiro stood by Wedge until after 2009, when a team that fancied itself a contender crashed and burned to 65-97.

The Indians’ fundamental problems, however, remain the same in 2012 when Acta was canned as they were in 2009 when Wedge was canned. The Indians possess a number of solid hitters at tough positions (Carlos Santana at catcher, Jason Kipnis at second, Asdrubal Cabrera at short), but gaping holes at the easiest positions (only Shin-Soo Choo was a good producer in the corners, and Travis Hafner’s perennial injuries have also held back the DHs). This is not a temporary problem--the Indians’ farm system has not produced a major league caliber 1B/LF since--Luke Scott? Sean Casey?

The Indians of 2009 and 2012 were also both woefully short on starting pitching. In 2009, the team had just traded CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee, so it was somewhat understandable. In 2012, though, those departures could not be blamed. The Indians ventured into 2012 with a rotation consisting of one pitcher who’d both pitched well and had good peripherals in the prior season (Justin Masterson). They had an enigmatic pitcher acquired at the cost of the organization’s top two pitching prospects (Ubaldo Jimenez); a veteran coming off a lousy season in the NL (Derek Lowe); a finesse righty who was below average in 2011 despite a league-leading 1.1 W/9 (Josh Tomlin); and a sinkerballer with an unremarkable minor league track record (Jeanmar Gomez).

The 2011 Indians started the season 30-15, which was a lot of fun at the time, even for those of us who suspected it was but a mirage. But those 45 games have ultimately proved to be a disaster for the franchise. They transformed what was supposed to be a rebuilding season into an increasingly desperate attempt to cling to the lead in the AL Central. They goaded the front office into trading its two best pitching prospects for Ubaldo Jimenez. And even after the team stumbled to 80-82, those 45 games influenced the team’s expectations heading into 2012: they were contenders.

Regardless of intention, the Indians were either unwilling or unable to acquire additional talent to fill out the roster, and insisted that there was sufficient talent to contend, leaving Acta as the fall guy if the purported contender failed to contend.

The Shapiro regime has controlled the Indians for eleven seasons, and in that time they have managed to make the playoffs just once while playing in one of MLB’s weaker divisions. Assuming that they should have a 20% chance of winning and seasons are independent, there’s a 26% chance that could happen by chance, so it’s not inherently damning.

When I tweeted something to that effect (minus the binomial probability), I got a reply that simply said “Process != Results”. I was unfamiliar with the tweeter, so I’m not sure if it was serious or facetious. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter, as it sounds very much like the kind of sentiment that is often offered by what could be called the Cameron school of sabermetrics.

There is of course a great deal of truth in the statement; a process can be valid and yet produce poor results through decisions made on the basis of incomplete information, unforeseen events, chance, and other factors. But that doesn’t mean that actual results can be ignored, particularly as the sample becomes larger.

Of course, it’s easier to rationalize poor results when the process is in line with one’s ideological leanings (this is true for me as well, of course). It wasn’t long ago that Chris Antonetti was the darling of the organizational rankings crowd.
Some people believe that they possess enough insight about front offices to make ordinal rankings of their quality. I am not one of them--all I can do is lay out the facts as I see them:

* The Indians can generally be classified in the upper tier of publically open to sabermetrics organizations, which is certainly a plus from where I sit

* Shapiro’s Indians have drafted poorly. The most recent Indians first rounder to establish a solid major league career is Jeremy Guthrie (2002). The most recent to have one with the Indians is CC Sabathia (1998). The jury is still out on several recent picks, although if Alex White or Drew Pomeranz is productive, it will be with another organization.

* The Indians have done a great job of trading for players either in the minors or very early in their major league careers. Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore, Asdrubal Cabrera, Travis Hafner, Carlos Santana, Shin-Soo Choo, Michael Brantley, Chris Perez, Coco Crisp, and Justin Masterson are examples. But it’s much harder to find contributors drafted or signed by the Indians--Jhonny Peralta, Fausto Carmona, Jason Kipnis, Rafael Betancourt, Rafael Perez, Vinny Pestano? (Neither of these lists is comprehensive by any means, but I think thye are representative of the whole).

I don’t think that questioning the efficacy of the current organization at developing talent based on an eleven year fallow is excessively “results-oriented”.

With respect to the next managerial hire, I tend to think it won’t matter much. The organization will not win until it can develop more players, regardless of who is managing them. I’m hoping that Terry Francona’s interest is real and not simply a courtesy to Shapiro, but I doubt that is the case. While I don’t think Francona would be a silver bullet, his tenure in Boston doesn’t raise any obvious red flags. But Francona figures to be the default #1 candidate for any openings, and it’s difficult for me to believe that he would choose Cleveland over other options.

Sandy Alomar appears to have the inside track otherwise, and there’s very little evidence as to what type of manager he would be. There is plenty of evidence that Indians fans will welcome him as 90s nostalgia grows more powerful, and while that may be a plus from a PR perspective, it can be obnoxious for someone who was never a particular fan of Alomar the player. And heaven forbid the fans start talking about Omar Vizquel.

Ubaldo and Tulo

In the first inning of today’s Cleveland/Colorado game, Ubaldo Jimenez hit Troy Tulowitzki with his first pitch. The two have had some sort of silly squabble in the press this spring, which you can read about elsewhere.

Jimenez claims that hitting Tulo was an accident. Should we believe him? We can’t know for sure, but this is a fun application of some simple Bayesian estimates. We are interested in estimating the probability that Jimenez was intentionally throwing at Tulo given that he hit him; I’ll call this P(I|HB).

Based on Bayes theorem, we can write:

P(I|HB) = P(HB|I)*P(I)/(P(HB|I)*P(I) + P(HB|NI)*P(NI))

So there are four unknowns we need to estimate:
* P(HB|I) -- the probability of a hit batter given that Jimenez was intentionally throwing at Tulo. I’ll estimate this as 50%; my intuition is that it’s higher, but Ubaldo’s control this spring has been terrible and the lower this is set, the better the end probability will look for him.
* P(I) -- the probability that Jimenez was intentionally throwing at Tulowitzki. Obviously, we can’t know this. Let’s be very generous and assume that it was only 1%.
* P(HB|NI) --the probability that Jimenez would hit Tulo given that he was not intentionally throwing at him. In his ML career, Jimenez has hit 44 batters and thrown 15,218 pitches, which is about .3%. Some of those may have been intentional, and his control is not a constant, but I’ll use .003 as the estimate here.
* P(NI) -- the probability that Jimenez was not throwing at Tulo. This is unknowable, but it is just the complement of P(I), so we’ll start it out at 99%.

Given these assumptions:

P(I|HB) = .5*.01/(.5*.01 + .003*.99) = .627

So given that we observed Jimenez hitting Tulo and the other assumptions, there is a 62.7% chance that he intended to hit him.

The following chart varies P(I) and presents the associated probabilities for three P(HB|I) values--50%, 25%, and 75%. As you can see, P(I) is the dominant factor here; once you establish a reasonable probability of intent, the probability of succeeding in plunking Tulo doesn’t matter much. Of course, once you have a very high estimate of intent, you are pretty confident and the observation that Tulo was actually hit isn’t that important:



One can get carried away with this type of analysis, though. As you can see, any assumption that there may have been intent involved will result in a very high probability that intent was in fact present. I have no doubt that sometimes pitchers with grudges hit batters by accident, and wouldn’t want to presume that such innocent coincidences are beyond the realm of possibility. When it’s a direct hit on the first offering in a spring training game...I’m with Bayes.

EDIT: See this thread on Inside the Book for some additional points. MGL's language in #1 does a much better job of expressing what P(I) represents than I did.

Pessimism on the 2012 Indians

The 2011 Indians were not expected to do much; even within the organization, 2011 was likely viewed as a transitional year, with the goal of sorting out some nagging questions about the major league roster (Will Carlos Santana and Grady Sizemore be able to return from their injuries? Can Justin Masterson be an effective stating pitcher? Will Matt LaPorta ever amount to even a small fraction of his potential? Will Fausto Carmona ever come close to matching what he did in 2007?) and breaking in some younger talent as the season went along (Alex White, Lonnie Chisenhall, Jason Kipnis). Minnesota, Chicago, and Detroit all seemed to be better clubs on paper. Instead, the team started 30-15 and built a relatively sizeable lead in the American League Central, making 2011 a surprise contention season.

Of course, the team was not as good as their gaudy start, and while Chicago and Minnesota never recovered, Detroit came on strong as the summer progressed. Still, the Indians made moves that were consistent with a team that fancied itself a real contender. They promoted Lonnie Chisenhall to try to inject some life into a slumping offense, despite the fact that he wasn’t really tearing up AAA. They appeared to dabble in the trade market, being linked to names like Carlos Beltran and Josh Willingham, but given the organization’s historical reluctance to pull the trigger on a major deadline deal, even in seasons when they were real contenders, this observer discounted the rumors. But on July 30, the Tribe jumped into the trade game, sending three of the organization’s top pitching prospects to Colorado for Ubaldo Jimenez.

It didn’t do any good--Jimenez was terrible for Cleveland, and a three-game sweep at Comerica Park August 19-21 (including an excruciating 8-7 loss in the finale, a game started and seemingly lost by Jimenez before a valiant comeback effort) put the Indians 4.5 back; they’d never get closer and wound up 80-82 and fifteen games out.

The Indians were aggressive at the deadline, but mostly passive in the offseason while Detroit went out and signed Prince Fielder, a move which greatly diminished any residual optimism about Cleveland’s divisional hopes for 2012.

The Indians will once again go with the duo of Carlos Santana and Lou Marson behind the plate. Santana will also see time at first base and DH, although perhaps less than he may have initially seemed in line for as the Indians signed Casey Kotchman. It is quite possible that Santana will play first against left-handed pitchers, as Kotchman’s career platoon OPS split is 754/668. In Marson’s 199 PA against lefties, he has posted a 763 OPS, so it seems likely the Tribe will hope that even with some platoon split regression, Marson will be an asset.

At second base, Jason Kipnis will be handed the starting job after an impressive power display in his first 150 major league PA. Kipnis’ track record would indicate that his production should be tilted less towards power and more towards getting on base than it was in Cleveland, but he has the potential to be an offensive plus at the keystone.

Third base will be an open competition between Lonnie Chisenhall and Jack Hanahan. Hanahan was the opening day starter in 2011 and actually was a league average hitter (albeit fueled by a hot April) in addition to playing excellent defense. However, with the offense faltering in late June, Chisenhall was recalled and given a chance to take over the position. Poor strike zone judgment (8/49 W/K) held back his production, and Chisenhall hadn’t exactly been tearing up AAA prior to his promotion (.267/.353/.431 in 292 PA). Chisenhall will have to perform extremely well in the spring to win the job, and my money is on Hanahan.

Asdrubal Cabrera will return at shortstop after a season that included some great highlights. A surprising power surge early in the year plus several spectacular web gem plays ensured that his season would be remembered in Cleveland. While defensive metrics may dispute his fielding prowess and he’s no offensive star, there aren’t many AL shortstops I’d prefer.

The outfield consists of three question marks. In left field, it remains unclear if Michael Brantely can hit at an acceptable level to be anything more than a fourth outfielder. Playing him in left field is suboptimal, and there was even idle talk of giving him some time at first prior to the Kotchman. In center, Grady Sizemore returns on a one-year deal. Upon Sizemore’s return, there was a brief period in which he looked like the dynamic player he had been from 2006-08. Sadly, Sizemore was again bogged down by injuries and his once outstanding walk rate was nowhere to be found (18 walks in 295 PA and a .285 OBA). It will be interesting to see whether Brantley or Sizemore leads off. My guess is that Sizemore will start in the position but be on a short leash.

In right, Shin-Soo Choo seemed poised for another big year with his exemption from the Korean military secured. Instead, he got off to a slow start, was arrested for DUI, and suffered a broken thumb when hit by a pitch in San Francisco. DH Travis Hafner was productive when in the lineup, but again without the power he once showed (just 13 home runs).

Marson will be the backup catcher, but there are no locks for the rest of the bench. If Chisenhall wins the third base job, Hanahan is a good bet as a corner backup; if not, Chisenhall will go to Columbus. Russ Canzler, Shelley Duncan, and Andy LaRoche are corner backup options, with Jason Donald, Cord Phelps, and Jose Lopez as potential middle infield backups. Donald would seem to have the edge as he at least masquerades as a shortstop, and Hannahan would be the only other player on the roster (besides Cabrera, of course) remotely qualified to play short. Aaron Cunningham, Fred Lewis, Felix Pie, and Ryan Spilborghs are possible outfield reserves. Matt LaPorta will likely be ticketed to AAA with the Kotchman signing.

The Indians will try the interesting pairing of a groundball heavy rotation with infield defense which is considered less than brilliant. Justin Masterson had a terrific season, justifying Cleveland’s faith in his ability to start. Ubaldo Jimenez must pitch better than he did in 2011 to prevent the trade from going down as a disaster, and the Indians will bet that Derek Lowe’s peripherals will triumph over his advancing age and poor 2011. After that, Josh Tomlin is a good bet for the rotation (and a good bet to implode at any given moment, given his low strikeout rate and flyball tendencies. Any spike in his walk rate, which was just 1.1 per nine in 2011, will endanger his ability to pitch in the majors).

With Roberto Hernandez Heredia nee Fausto Carmona unavailable for the start of the season, the fifth starter spot will be up for grabs between Kevin Slowey, Jeanmar Gomez, Zach McAllister, and David Huff. Slowey’s experience may give him the upper hand, but the other three are all well-known by the organization and have started for the team in the past. Slowey has a decent chance to win a bullpen job if he’s shut out of the rotation. Additional depth comes from lefty Scott Barnes, but after missing a good chunk of last season with a knee injury he is likely to start in Columbus.

The Indians seem to have the foundation for a solid but unspectacular bullpen. Chris Perez is a power arm but a shaky closer, while Vinnie Pestano had a very effective rookie season as his set up man. Rafael Perez and Tony Sipp both are used in a more expansive role than simple LOOGY. Joe Smith serves the ROOGY role with his sidearm delivery. The other two bullpen spots are up for grabs, with Frank Herrmann and lefty Nick Hagadone as the 40-man roster options. Non-roster invitees Jeremy Accardo, Chris Ray, Robinson Tejada, Dan Wheeler, and Chen Lee will also be in the mix.

I would like to be optimistic about the Indians 2012 season, but I can’t force it. Detroit is the class of the division, and it would take a lot going wrong for the Tigers and right for the Indians to wipe out the gap. While many people will pick the Indians to reprise their second place finish, they don’t tower over the White Sox on paper, and both the Twins and the Royals have enough potential areas for improvement that it’s not hard to envision them jumping Cleveland. My median expectation is 77 wins and third place, with a nagging feeling that it will be worse than that.

Personally, a lot of my confidence in the organization was shaken by the Jimenez trade. While there is a case to be made that 2 1/3 years of control of Jimenez at a reasonable salary is worth the package of pitching prospects the Tribe surrendered, it wasn’t the kind of deal that the organization has made, even with better teams in more of a win-now mode. Had the trade landed a pitcher at the top of his game I might have been inclined to shrug it off, but Jimenez was not having a particularly good season for the Rockies and has just one season in his career in which he has been a top-flight starter. Jimenez *looked* horrible with the Indians, unable to command his secondary pitches and getting crushed on straight fastballs in hitters counts.

The Indians have a decent group of young position players in Santana, Kipnis, and Chisenhall (not to mention older players still under club control for multiple seasons like Cabrera and Choo), but frustratingly, the organization has been unable to produce any even league average performers at the corner positions (Choo was a trade acquisition). With production from first base and left field, one could feel pretty good about the offense.

Starting pitching has been a similar stumbling block. With Alex White and Drew Pomeranz shipped out in the Jimenez trade, there is little hope for even a mid-rotation type of homegrown starter on the horizon. The Indians have produced scores of back-end starters but have relied on trades to fill out the front end of the rotation.

Overall, I respect the front office: Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti, and of course I have a great deal of respect for the analytical arm which includes Keith Woolner and Sky Andrecheck. I consider Manny Acta to be a pretty competent manager and have been impressed by his thoughts on Twitter. I like them and I want them to be successful, but I don’t think it will happen in 2012.