Tribe Has as Much To Prove as Yankees
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Nine years ago, when the Yankees met the Cleveland Indians in October, the teams met as equals. The Yankees had won 114 games and a championship two years before, but they had also only won their division twice in the last four years. The Indians only won 89 games in 1998, but they won their fourth consecutive divisiontitle, a streak that looked to be in no danger from anyone in baseball’s weakest division. Their lineup, built around Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome, was so strong that Brian Giles and Richie Sexson couldn’t crack it, and their rotation was anchored by aces-in-waiting Bartolo Colon and Jaret Wright, neither older than 25. If you’d been asked in 1998 which team was more likely to win eight straight division titles, you probably would have said the Indians, winners of two of the last four pennants.
That year, Cleveland gave the Yankees their only serious test when they took a 2–1 lead in the ALCS. Orlando Hernandez, not yet a legendary playoff pitcher, took the mound in Cleveland and evened the series with seven shutout innings. The Yankees were never in danger again, and have won five pennants and three World Series since that game. The Indians haven’t yet been as close to a World Series.
What’s really strange about that is that the Indians haven’t even played in October since 2001. Routinely cited as a model franchise, lauded for everything from the depth of their front office talent to their use of information analysis to their commitment to personal character in their athletes, the Indians have been preseason favorites in their division for each of the last four years. They finished a game under .500 in 2004, came close in 2005 before booting away a half-game wild card lead by losing six of seven down the stretch, and won only 78 last despite ending the year with the ourth-best expected wins to all in the league.
They may have won their division, but until they do something more, the Indians will carry a reputation for underachieving. That’s mainly because this is just such a talented team. Ace C.C. Sabathia, the probable Cy Young award winner, has won 100 games through age 26. Victor Martinez has been the best hitting catcher in the game over the last four years. Designated hitter Travis Hafner, despite an injuryplagued down year, still rates alongside David Ortiz as one of the league’s two best left-handed hitters. And 24-year-old center fielder Grady Sizemore stands up to straight-on comparison with the Mets’ David Wright.
With this kind of young talent — Hafner, 30, is the oldest of the team’s core players — the Indians still have a chance to go on the kind of run their 1990s predecessors did, the kind they could right now be in the middle of if not for some bad breaks, especially as the difference between this year and past years is that even more young talent matured. The two keys are 23-year-old starter Fausto Carmona, something of a Chien-Ming Wang type who went 19–8, 3.06 ERA in 215 innings, and Rafael Perez, a 25-year-old left-handed setup man who’s allowed opponents a .299 slugging average in 73 career innings.
If there is a lot on the line for the Yankees in this series — pride, vindication for Alex Rodriguez, the possibility of a deserved happy end for Joe Torre — there’s as much on the line for the Indians. For one thing, playing in perhaps baseball’s toughest division, they may not have as good a shot as this again. Young pitchers will break your heart, and Carmona could prove to be another Jaret Wright. For another, this is a team designed and built to sustain a long run in which they expect to make the playoffs every year. An early exit against a terrific Yankees team wouldn’t ruin that dream, but after years of disappointment, the Indians would surely like even more than the next playoff team to really do something to live up to their reputation.
This Indians team doesn’t look much like Manny Ramirez’s old team, but it does look a lot like the Oakland Athletics that rose around the time that old Indians team fell. That A’s team’s management was considered state-of-theart at the time, as the Indians’ is now. It was a young team with far more superstars than you’d think possible for a relatively poor team. It also never managed to break through in the playoffs, marking four straight first-round losses before going to the ALCS last year with a mostly new crew.
Expectations, mistakes, and bad luck can do a lot to a young team with a bright reputation and a lot of promise, as those A’s teams show. It can also (think of the Yankees) do a lot for them. These Indians aren’t a better bet than the 1998 Yankees were to go on a fiveyear tear, but they’re closer to being capable of one than they get credit for. A loss in this series won’t define them; a win, though, would be the beginnings of something that could.
tmarchman@nysun.com