Looking ahead at the Indians four power arms

[elcheato]

 
They were still in the chase for the post-season, and drew 9,950 and 11,739 on consecutive—ok, school—nights with the Tigers in town. We all get that. We know the Indians have drawn the second fewest fans in baseball this season, and that now Lebron James is back in town, and so is former Padres draftee Johnny Manziel.
 
So they cannot trade for David Price or retain a Justin Verlander or even think about resigning Max Scherzer, or replacing him by signing Jon Lester. Like the Tigers. Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff have to do it another way, hiring a potential HOF manager (Terry Francona), allowing him to build a creative, workaholic coaching staff and stitching together an organization built on partnership and respect.
 
Are the Indians going to make it back into a play-in game again this season? Likely not, especially after Thursday night’s finale against the Tigers. But as Francona., his coaches and special aides de camp like Jason Giambi have built a unique culture, so, too, they have put together what looking forward is arguably the biggest power rotation in the American League. When Danny Salazar shut out the Tigers Wednesday night, averaging more than 96.7, hitting 99.4, running his scoreless streak to 17 innings, it culminated a 22 game skein in which the Cleveland starters threw 131 1/3 innings, allowed 107 hits, posted a 2.12 earned run average, walked 36 and struck out 141.  Right. 22 games: 131.1 107 32 31 36 141. Trevor Bauer’s Thursday four run, 17 out performance was hardly his best; throwing first pitch strikes to 13 of 28 Tiger hitters was a relapse from three months’ progress.
 
No one in The Big Four is over 28 years old. The only free agent signing was Salazar, as an undrafted high school free agent in 2006. Corey Kluber, 28, was waffling through the Padres system in 2010 when the Indians scouts recommended him, Shapiro, Antonetti and Chernoff listened and he was the Cleveland piece in a three-way deal that sent Jake Westbrook to the Cardinals and Ryan Ludwick to the Padres. Carlos Carrasco, 27, was in the 2009 trade deadline deal for Cliff Lee. Bauer, 23, came in the December, 2012 deal from Arizona that sent Shin-Soo Choo to Cincinnati and Didi Gregorius to the Diamondbacks. Together, they make less than $3M.
 
And when next March rolls around, if this foursome is healthy, they will be one of those teams people will believe can make the playoffs, and maybe then get fortunate and do what the John Hart Construction accomplished (6th and 7th game of the ’95 and ’97 World Series) and what Shapiro’s reconstruction did under far more stringent fiscal conditions, get to within one win of the 2007 World Series. “They’re really good,” says Brad Ausmus. “That pitching is legitimately scary,” says Buck Showalter. In a division that over the winter will likely lose Scherzer and James Shields. “There are a lot of people involved in this building process,” says pitching coach Mickey Callaway. “It starts with Tito (Francona). He, Kevin Cashand I try to take all the work that the organization does and try to finish off what we can. It’s possible because of a manager who listens to and respects every voice. What is done here is a collaborative effort.”
 
“What is rewarding is the work that’s been put into the development of these pitchers,” says Antonetti. “It’s really a testament to how well Tito manages a staff. Mickey is right, this is a collaborative effort. That’s what we have to do. We can’t sit around discussing attendance or negatives, we deal with reality.”
 
Kluber developed his mix of fastball command, cutters and creativity through the minor leagues. Salazar seemed headed towards front end stardom last season, then got off to such a bad start that he ended back in Columbus. “Danny had gotten into a habit of just easing into a season,” says Callaway. “So he really wasn’t ready to go all out in spring training, or when the season started. He learned from all this. But I also think we bear responsibility. Now we know.”
 
Bauer, who has definite ideas on how he wants to pitch, has made tremendous strides in morphing some of his ideas to those the manager and staff believe necessary. In his case, the collaboration began with Antonetti and Francona making it clear to Bauer that they respected his ideas, and with Callaway and Cash and the cooperation of Bauer’s agent Joel Wolfe, have moved way past the rocky start Bauer endured in Arizona after being the third pick in the 2012 draft. Watch Bauer’s starts and see how seldom he shakes off catchers Yan Gomes and Roberto Perez.
 
Carrasco is a fascinating case. Stuff was never the issue, but the ride from the 2009 trade with the Phillies was a bumpy shuttle from Cleveland to triple-A, starting to the bullpen and back. Before being put in the pen this spring, Carrasco was 9-19 as a starter with the Indians over parts of six seasons. “Carlos had a tendency to start games and think too much about getting to the sixth or seventh inning,” says Callaway. “When he went to the pen, he finally got the concept of simply going pitch-to-pitch, and if he ran out of gas, the bullpen would pick him up.”
 
In 26 relief appearances, Carrasco threw 43 innings with a 2.30 earned run average and a 39-9 strikeout-walk ratio. In his five starts since going back into the rotation, he has thrown his 97-99 from the outset, and the result has been 33 IP with 21 hits, 3 earned runs and an eye-popping 34-4 strikeout-walk ratio. Best of all, when he struggled against Detroit Tuesday, five times he faced situations where he had runners on third and less than two outs.
 
Five batters, five strikeouts. “That defined Carlos’ growth,” says Antonetti.
 
A year after a September run to the play-in game, 2014 was a return to development.Michael Brantley emerged as an all-star. Gomes became one of the best catchers in the game, and leads American League catchers in OPS. Lonnie Chisenhall has an .811 OPS.Carlos Santana has grown from adversity. Next spring they will watch wizard shortstopFrancisco Lindor, center fielder James Ramsey (acquired in the Justin Masterson trade) and 22-year old third baseman Giovanny Urshela, who between Akron and Columbus hit 18 homers, posted a .280/.334/.491 line and is a defensive marvel.
 
Will this result in a rebirth of the 1990’s, after The Jake opened. Unlikely. When John Hart’s Indians were busting down fences in the Nineties, there was no NFL team, the Cavaliers weren’t relevant, and it had been twenty years since the Barons ended up merging with the North Stars. Remember, even in 1954, when the Tribe went 108-46, they still drew but 1.3M; from 1951-91, they never drew 1.5M to that huge stadium called “The Mistake by the Lake.”
 
Understand the struggles of what is a very good city in terms of its demographics. In 1950, the census bureau listed the population of Cleveland as 914,808. In successive decades from 1960 to 2010, that population has dropped from 876,050 to 760,903 to 573,822 to 505,616 to 478,403 to 396,815. It currently is the 48th largest city in the country, smaller than Raleigh and Virginia Beach.
 
It is what it is, and while there is revenue-sharing, the access of small market teams to amateur talent is disfigured. If the Indians or Rays perform beyond their revenue expectations, they are not adequately rewarded, while big market teams in Houston and Chicago are rewarded for poor performance; did it not seem odd that the Astros, Cubs and White Sox were at the top of the draft, and Tampa Bay had to pay a penalty for exceeding international signing restrictions?
 
But come March, there will be expectations for the Indians, largely because of that collaborative effort that is developing a pitching staff whose power arms should not only keep them in the 2015 AL Central race, but if they get to the post-season should play in October. There are sparks of hope of a revival in downtown Cleveland, and maybe this team will continue to grow and become a fascination in that revival.
 
The city, and these folks that run the Indians, deserve it.

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[Thomas-Panda-Saxby]

Future looks good, but not OUTSTANDING