Cubs, Wait 'Til Next Year

It's the most satisfying World Series match-up I can remember.

I loved the Angels-Giants of '02, a pair of franchises that had not won a championship in their cities.  White Sox-Astros of '05 thrilled because Houston had never seen a dogpile and the South Siders had last stood atop the baseball world in 1917.

Of course, the ending of the curse in Boston in '04 was special, mostly because of the ALCS comeback against the hated Yankees. But that World Series was something of an anti-climax.

Last year's Royals-Mets Series gave us a pair of distinct styles, not to mention long-suffering fan bases. That my team prevailed was extra special.

With the Cubs and Indians, what's exciting is not just that one fan base or the other will revel in the first World Championship of its lifetime. It also feels like the two best teams are competing for the title. The Cubs won eight more games than everyone else despite cruising home the last third of the season.

In the AL, the three division champs  won roughly the same number of games, but the metrics suggested the Rangers were something of a fluke. Boston and Cleveland were the contenders for best AL squad, and despite a pitching staff depleted by unfortunate injuries, the Tribe dominated the division series between them before dispatching Toronto with relative ease.

In the Words of Tom Hanks, Go Tribe!
And now, despite the 108-year wait for the Cubs, I hope Cleveland takes the title. Why? Because the Cubs, with their immense youth, talent and deep pockets, really can wait 'til next year. Their team stays intact, Kyle Schwarber returns and they can always add a free agent -- if they can find a weakness. How much worse will it be for North Side fans if their nine breaks a 109- or 110-year old curse?

The Indians, on the other hand, have caught lightning in a bottle. Their future is much more murky.  Youngsters Francisco Lindor, Tyler Naquin and Jose Ramirez have shocked us with their play, but can they keep it up? What if their two injured starters aren't the same after this year?They can't get by on a rotation of Cory Kluber and a Bunch of Goobers. It just feels like a shakier foundation there.

Cleveland should be formidable next year, regardless, but there is so much more uncertainty with them. So I'd like to see them win the World Series in a dramatic seventh game, and then watch the Cubs return next season to take the title.

At least that's how it would happen if I were writing the screenplay.

Why Some Folks Love the Indians

Stop me if you've heard this before: the Cleveland Native Americans' bandwagon is loading up fast. The teepee is full and Chief Wahoo's entourage is growing. With the Tigers down, the Twins falling back to earth, the White Sox in need of darning even before the season starts and apprehension about the Royals' staying power, many a quipster, seamhead and hot-taker is hot-taking the Indians to win the Central.

The Land of Cleve finished 81-80 with a late surge last season, a punchless stars-and-scrubs lineup bolstered by good pitching and defense. Their top slugger (Carlos Santana) bopped 19 homers and the best player (rookie Francisco Lindor, pictured here)) got into just 99 games.

That would seem like a good baseline for improvement the following year, especially as several of the better everyday players still live on the south side of 30.

What They Got and What They Ain't Got
What's so alluring about the Indians is that last year's carryover -- power arms in the rotation, a solid bullpen, young studs dotted throughout the lineup and rotation, and good defense around the horn -- are scarce commodities. What they lacked last year -- any hint of a third baseman, two-thirds of an outfield, an occasional long ball -- are relatively easy to replace.

So after losing super-utility knife Ryan Rayburn to the Rockies, Cleveland brought in Mike Napoli to split 1B/DH duties with Santana; twinkle-toes Juan Uribe to bring some semblance of Major League stability to the hot corner; and outfielders Rajai Davis and Marlon Byrd to solidify the green space. Together that group should supply some added power as well.

The Indians will count on former Cy Young winner Corey Kluber to once again anchor the starting five, with flamethrowers Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar, Trevor Bauer and Josh Tomlin filling out the staff. Tribe hurlers produced the highest average velocity in the sport last year, which comes in handy especially during those cold autumn evenings of October.

Seen It Before
Okay, fine. But Murphy and his law lie in wait for this outfit. Perennial All-Star Michael Brantley, (right) the only outfielder worth keeping last year, is out for months following shoulder surgery. The pitching crew isn't exactly Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz-Avery, particularly at the back end. And the bench goes just a couple deep before injury ravages this team's chances.

The Indians are intriguing for sure. Baseball Prospectus rates them the best team in the American League, based on middling hitting, excellent pitching and the second best defense (behind Tampa Bay) in the league. And if they start the season with that kind of fire, there might be a big bat in the trading deadline mix. But lots of teams are intriguing and could win the pennant with a few positive "what ifs."

So, as always, we'll see. In baseball, at least, the long regular season matters.

Get Real: Cleveland and Pittsburgh

Cleveland and Detroit are locking up for a pair of early-season first-place duels this week. Even if swept (Max Scherzer shut them down in game one), the Tribe will remain atop the AL Central leaderboard. Riding a heavy-hitting lineup and a reconstituted rotation, first-year manager Terry Francona's squad is seeking to dispatch a couple of years of history when Cleveland burst out of the blocks and faded down the backstretch.

Meanwhile, a couple of hours east, the Pittsburgh Pirates are eight games over .500, a position they haven't occupied at season's end in a generation. They're employing the reverse formula -- superb relief pitching and a couple of good starters are carrying the rest of the team.

At the quarter pole, there's time to dream, but in these two beleaguered cities, there's also time to be skeptical. We've seen all this before; say, last year, with predictable and familiar results. The Indians, four games over .500 following the All-Star break, dropped 54 of their remaining 75 games and crashed to 65-91. The Bucs, two games above .500 with two weeks to play, lost 11 of their last 16 to finish 79-83, a 20th straight year losing more times than they won.

Wait 'til this year.

For one thing, both teams come by their records honestly. The Indians have out-slugged their opponents by 37 runs, not quite the hallmark of a 26-17 record, but indicative of quality. The Pirates have shut down enemy batters and while also out-performing their run differential, are giving up fewer runs than they score.

Moreover, both teams are paced by veteran youth and have spread the good play around. Pittsburgh's offensive roster is just six deep -- center fielder Andrew McCutchen, first baseman Gaby Sanchez, right fielder Jose Tabata, left fielder Starling Marte, first baseman/outfielder Garret Jones, and surprisingly, catcher Russell Martin -- but none of them is out of synch with career norms. If anyone else heats up, the bats could begin to contribute.

The starting pitching is strong and deep, led by A.J. Burnett's Yankee revenge and Astro exile Wandy Rodriguez. Francisco Liriano's two starts after recovering from a fractured left arm have been promising (two runs and 16 K in 11 innings) and could give the Pirates a one-two-three punch they've lacked since Doug Drabek-Randy Tomlin-Bob Walk in 1993, the last time they visited the post-season. (That team included a rookie named Tim Wakefield who knuckled his way to 8-1, 2.15.) Flame-throwing closer Jason Grilli (14+ K/9) anchors a relief corps with ERAs that look like digital code -- all ones and zeroes.

In other words, there's more upside than downside in the 2013 Pirates as long as they stay relatively healthy. Pittsburgh has played nine of 15 series against below .500 teams, but in the NL Central that's hard to avoid. they've yet to tussle with Miami, so there remain free wins on the schedule. Not only could they end the futility, they could kick off an era of contention.

Cleveland has remade itself in 2013 and so far the results portend more. The club signed Nick Swisher to a big deal, rescued Ryan Raburn from Detroit, took a flyer on Mark Reynolds and overpaid Michael Bourn. In one-fourth of a season, Bourn and Swisher are delivering as expected, Raburn has resurrected his career (OPS+ of 29 last year; 148 this year) and Reynolds is hitting .253. When Mark Reynolds hits .253, pitchers cry. At .253/.341/.548, the former Oriole hot cornerman has already bestowed upon his new employers all the value he created through the spring, summer and fall last season.

Add in young catcher Carlos Santana, one of the emerging stars in baseball, and slugging keystoner Jason Kipnis, and the result is the Majors' second most potent offense. Like the Pirates, there's not a lot of mean to regress to.

The warning signs are on the other side of the equation. After Cy Young contender Justin Masterson, the rotation is so porous that warmed-over remnants of Brett Myers and Scott Kazmir have made starts. The mercy rule is soon to take effect on the Kazmir experiment, but it's not clear who takes his place. Ubaldo Jimenez  (5.31 ERA) and Trevor Bauer (15 BB in 16 innings) offer little solace. As with the Pirates, they're facing just their fifth .500+ team this week, but playing in the AL Central means KC, CHW and MIN pop up on the schedule regularly. (And they've yet to dip into the goodie bag that is the Astros.)

With a great skipper at the helm, the Indians have delivered more than the sum of their parts and can continue in that vein. If their goal, like the Pirates', is to step this side of mediocrity, they have a solid shot. Eighty-five wins is not an unreasonable goal. If visions of pennants dance in their heads they're going to need a couple of good arms, and soon.

Off the Cliff

When Cliff Lee won the Cy Young award with a dominant 22-3 record last season, anyone paying attention had to know that he'd regress this year. So far, he's 2-6. So last year was a fluke.

Not.

In fact, surprisingly, he's pitched almost as well as he did last year. Really.

Lee has a 3.14 RA. That's ERA without regard for whether runs are "earned" or "unearned." Careful observers of the game have noticed that errors are but a small subset of defensive plays that could go either way depending on the fielder. Parsing out only those plays tilts the record in a fairly arbitrary way.

Moreover, the whole system of errors and earned runs is a swirl of capriciousness, from biased official scorers to transparently silly rules. Here's just one example: An error on a two-out play renders all succeeding runs "unearned," even those that are clearly the pitcher's responsibility. Even worse: pitchers get an ERA pass for runs created by errors they have committed.

So Lee's 3.14 RA, which ranks seventh in the AL this year, would have placed him third at the end of last season behind Daiske Matsusaka and...Cliff Lee. But his low 2009 RA is deceiving: he stumbled out of the gate, giving up 11 runs and 17 hits in his first two starts. Since then, he's channeled the '08 (not to mention the '05) Cliff Lee, relinquishing a stingy two runs a game.

But even RA has much to apologize for. It makes no provision for defense and is heavily influenced by the quality of relief pitching. It doesn't account for the parks a pitcher pitches in or the quality of opponents he faces.

Fortuntely, Progressive Field (nee': The Jake) is a fairly neutral park for run scoring and Lee's opponent roster, while considerably easier than Roy Halladay's -- who pitches in the brutal AL East --is nonetheless unremarkable. The Indian defense this year, according to the advanced metrics devised by the eggheads at Baseball Prospectus, has been just a tad below average. So let's dig deeper and see how he's doing.

Lee is eating 6 2/3rds innings per start and striking out 3 1/2 times as many batters as he walks. His 6.5 K per nine innings is another positive. Lee is putting way too many runners on base -- his 1.42 WHIP borders on lousy -- but he's offsetting some of that by keeping the ball in the park. Four home runs in 74 innings is excellent, and reminiscent of last year.

All this indicates that Lee is taking care of business on his end -- walks and home runs are entirely the province of the pitcher -- but being victimized by seeing-eye singles and bloop doubles. Ironically, this is the resume of a ground ball pitcher, but Lee tends towards the flyball. I don't really know what to make of that, but it appears all in all that his strong showing is the real thing.

Still, 2-6 stinks, right? Sure, but it's a team game, and the team around Lee in Cleveland gives him less support than his jock strap. In his last five outings, the Indians have plated a grand total of seven runs, en route to the worst record in the AL so far. Their power core -- Hafner, Sizemore, Peralta and Garko -- have socked 18 home runs combined, two more than the Rays' Carlos Pena.

In baseball, luck tends to even out over time. Lee withdrew a lifetime's share from the karma bank last year, so maybe he's paying it back in '09. But pitching deep into games, striking guys out and keeping the ball in the park are a great foundation for success. If he keeps it up, he'll have a great year, whether or not his won-loss record reflects it.

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No Chiefs; Too Many Indians

Over the last six years, the most disappointing team in baseball, with the possible exception of the pre-Manny Dodgers, has been the Cleveland Indians. They've managed to under-perform their expectations every year, including 2007 when they won 96 games, the AL Central and a post-season series against the Yankees before blowing a three games to one lead on the Red Sox in the championship series, losing 30-5 in the final three games.

Last year, they were the co-favorites with Detroit in the AL Central, only to face elimination by Memorial Day and trade their best player, CC Sabathia by summer.

This year, the Indians will not disappoint. Low expectations will make sure of that.

The Indians have the following shortcomings in 2009: they have no starting pitching, no relief pitching and no hitting. This may be a problem.

First, the offense. Their man-beast slugger, Travis Hafner, hurt his everything the last two years and has become a shadow of a shell of a chalk outline of his old self. The Tribe's best hitters are their centerfielder and shortstop, the terrific Grady Sizemore and phonetically-challenged Jhonny Peralta. After that, they don't have a single hitter they can count on at the offensive positions of corner infield, outfield and DH.

Unless Ryan Garko finds himself again at first, Andy Marte finally lives up to a portion of his billing at third and ousts newly-acquired Mark Derosa, the evil doctor who created Pronk recharges Hafner's bat and magna-prospect Matt LaPorta usurps leftfield, this is going to continue to be one sickle-celled lineup.

Which could make for an ugly season on the lake, because the cupboard is bare up on the hill. Cliff Lee can only start every fifth game, and even then, things can't go anywhere but down from his phenomenal '08. After that, things fall off the Cliff. Do Carl Pavano, Aaron Laffey, Fausto Carmona (and his 5.2-4.3 K/BB rate) and Jeremy Sowers strike fear in the hearts of White Sox hitters? Um, no.

And if the starting corps is suspect, the relief troop is under indictment. Though the much-needed addition of Kerry Wood will solidify the ninth inning -- as long as Wood is more oak than balsa -- innings six through eight could be trouble. Now, bullpens are notoriously fickle; who knows, Jensen Lewis, Rafael Perez and Masa Kobayashi could light it up from the pen in '09, but that's not the way to bet.

There's abit of an up-for-grabs quality to the AL Central this year because Chicago and Minnesota weren't really that good and Detroit and Cleveland weren't really that bad last season. The Indians aren't yet a lost cause. But unless someone brings hope and change to the party, their future is looking kinda Dennis Kucinich.