The Indians are trying something really interesting. Starting off the season, Cleveland relied a great deal on veteran position players to shepherd the youngsters into line. Now, with Orlando Cabrera traded and Jack Hannahan only playing against left-handed starters with the occasional late-game defensive change, the Tribe is now asking the young to finish it with the only help coming from the SUPER-young; the replacements for the vets.
Can the Indians make the playoffs, let alone contend for a World Series Title? The smart money is on "no."
But it's ALWAYS on "no." That's life for everyone not named the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees. The Indians traded almost anyone of worth in the minor league system for Ubaldo Jimenez, the kind of move that the educated sports fan likes to condemn. "What about the FUTURE!?!?!"
What future? There is no long-term model for winning consistently when you have zero advantages. Many point to the Minnesota Twins. The Twins are often good, never good enough to get out of the first round of the playoffs. That, to me, is not markedly better than what Cleveland is attempting to do with the Ubaldo trade. They are betting on the next two or three years. Cleveland's best prospects aren't just recently drafted or in Double-A ball, they're currently starting for the Indians as rookies. Cleveland is betting that by 2013, a rotation of 28 year-old Justin Masterson, 29 year-old Ubaldo Jimenez, 26 year-old Carlos Carrasco and whatever else they have left (whether it's Fausto Carmona, Josh Tomlin, David Huff, Jeanmar Gomez or some mystery pitcher) is good enough to maybe compete with maybe winning a World Series...maybe.
And that's really as good as it gets for baseball in Cleveland...at least for now.
Oh yeah...back to "now."
It's not quite over yet. As I write this, the Indians are four games back of the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central. The only thing that's at all devastating about that number is how many games the Indians WERE up on Detroit. That is one of the two mental traps into which these young bucks need to avoid falling in.
A lot of times when something like blowing a big lead happens, the team can start to believe that they no longer really even deserve to win. Instead of, "we lost," it becomes, "we're losers." People who teach Psychology classes (hey, I went to those!!!) call that a "self-fulfilling prophecy." Originally you just lost because you lost but the losing might continue due to the players believing they were born to lose. This is why when people who don't play sports hear coaches saying stuff like, "Just keep grindin'," or, "just keep knockin' on the door, fellas," they say shit like, "OMGzzz, it's so easy to be a coach. They just say the same stuff over and over." In sports and life, the mind tends to wander and it can often betray you. Keeping it simple is often the more beneficial and sometimes more difficult path. This is why girls should never talk when sports are on television unless they have something positive to say. No offense.
The second trap is the perceived passage of time. When you're nervous, speed at which time seems to move seems to jump around a bit. Rookies, at the end of NBA games, often shoot too soon or too late. They think about the implications of the fact that it's the end of the game or they think about the words, "Five seconds left." They haven't yet learned how to understand the simplicity of how long five seconds is and what needs to done in those seconds. The young Indians need to do this also. They have two months to make up four games on the Tigers. The more likely outcome is that they will look back at their schedule of the last two months and notice that they THOUGHT after losing a game, "NOW it's over," about ten separate times, of course meaning that after at least nine of those losses, it WASN'T over. Could they have made the playoffs if they weren't worried about whether or not it was "over?" You hate to think about that.
Point being: If they don't know these lessons or learn them quickly enough to make the playoffs this year, the hope is that they learn them over the next two months combined with the off season to be a mentally better team in the years to come.
Onto the pitching staff:
The picture on the pitching staff looks a lot more concrete post trade than it once did.
Are we counting on Carlos Carrasco to be a top of the rotation pitcher? Are we sure that Alex White is as good as he seemed when he first was called up and is he going to have finger problems for the rest of his career? Who out of David Huff, Jeanmar Gomez and Mitch Talbot is going to finally be mediocre to good enough to play? Where is Pomeranz going to fit in?
Now, most of these questions are irrelevant. We have the one-two punch of Ubaldo and Masterson for the next few years. That's a real thing. It's a legitimate thing to which Indians fans can cling. Whether you believe Drew Pomeranz and Alex White were going to be stars in the league or not, it was only a leap of faith that lead you to believe such a thing. Justin Masterson and Ubaldo Jimenez are great pitchers. That first step to winning the World Series is built and you can stand on it.
The other guys are uncertain but cannot be called a disaster. Let's flesh out the starting rotation.
The known commodity is Josh Tomlin. Tomlin has very limited talent but that's not necessarily going to kill him. The stat that everyone keeps hearing about Josh Tomlin is that he's gone at least five innings every single time he's pitched in the Major Leagues. He's not dominant but he's been solid, even against the Yankees and Red Sox, a place where some low talent/high character pitchers' effectiveness tends to break down. If Josh Tomlin is the Indians' fifth starter of the future, that's fantastic.
Fausto Carmona, I believe, is a known commodity until further notice. Fausto can be dominant at times and can be a virtuoso losing machine at times. He's the highest paid pitcher on the team and was Cleveland's opening day starter for two years in a row. He will never be the opening day starter for anyone ever again. He seems to have terrible mechanics which only get worse when guys get on base. This roller coaster belongs in the fourth spot in the rotation with occasional trips to the "DL," and I'm fine with that.
Carlos Carrasco is the swing man. Carrasco has the talent to be a top three spot in the rotation pitcher and we're counting on him to be that guy who is the, "I have one more good pitcher than you do" guy for the Indians. With that advantage, the Indians don't even have to be better than the other teams, really. It's the importance of starting pitching.
But can he do it? He looks like the token angry young guy. In his past ten starts, he's shut out the Yankees, and lost 12-0 to the Royals while getting thrown out and suspended for throwing at a guy's head. Maybe being cemented as the third guy (and not the second) will do him some good. The pressure will be on Ubaldo Jimenez, no doubt (perhaps NOT good for him). If everyone forgets about Carrasco for awhile, there's a chance that by the middle of next season he could be the guy pitching third with numbers good enough to be in the top two.
One thing you can be sure of is that if and when "everyone" forgets about Carrasco, I won't. With Ubaldo here for at least the next two seasons, Carlos Carrasco is now the key to whether or not the Indians are seriously considering breaking the Cleveland Curse.
