Did Cleveland Throw in the Towel too Early?

Heading into 2008, the Indians were coming off a season where they won 96 games and took a 3-1 in the ALCS 1 game from going to the World Series when their two Cy Young candidates unraveled and they bowed to Boston in 7. They were strong favorites to repeat in the central (apart from the few delusional people who overlooked the Tiger's massive holes), and many saw them as a World Series contender once again. And why not? They seemed to have all the pieces to the puzzle. Well injuries and a bad bullpen quickly dashed the illusions of grandeur that this team held on opening day, and on July 7th, they effectively gave up when they dealt free agent to be Cy Young winner CC Sabathia to the Brewers. On the day of the trade, they sat at 37-51, in last place in the AL Central and 14 games behind the division leading White Sox. Casey Blake and Paul Byrd, two productive players for the Tribe the past few years would soon follow CC to greener pastures.

Well, here we are 10 weeks later and the Indians sit at 75-77 in 3rd place in the division, 9.5 games behind the Sox. Was Sabathia dead weight? Hardly. All he has done since the trade is absolutely dominate the NL to the tune of 9-1 with a 1.82 ERA, a 1.03 WHIP, 6 CGs and 3 shutouts in 14 starts. Put his NL stats together with his AL stats and he has been the second best pitcher in the big leagues coincidentally behind the Indians Cliff Lee.

So let me get this straight: The Indians dealt the second best pitcher in all of baseball as well as two of their regulars, and they are 4.5 games closer to first, and 12 games closer to .500? Yep.

The Tribe has gone on an absolute tear since the trade going 38-26 one of the best records in the league during that stretch. Great second halves by Lee, Jhonny Peralta, Shin-Soo Choo, Asdrubal Cabrera, Kelly Shoppach, and continued success by the best player in the AL this year, Grady Sizemore, has led the improbable run. Shoppach and Choo have been particularly impressive, OPSing over 1.000 since the break versus in the mid .700 prior. Cabrera has also rebounded in a big way with a nice line of .308 /.389/.462 up from his dreadful first half of .184/.282/.247. The team has also gotten a boost from the returns of Fausto Carmona, Victor Martinez, and Travis Hafner though neither the return time nor the boost has been as good as expected.

What if the Tribe had held on to Sabathia, Blake and Byrd? While its unlikely that everything would have fallen into place as well as it has, lets just say that it did. Lets remove the 13 disastrous starts from Zach Jackson, Matt Ginter, and Bryan Bullington as well as two from Jeremy Sowers and replace them with CC's 14 NL starts. This is clearly not apples to apples, but bear with me.

Tribe's record in these 14 starts: 4-10. ERA in these starts: 6.67. Let's say that Sabathia would likely have won any game where 4 runs or more were scored and half of the games with 2 or 3 runs. This bumps the record to: 10-4 in those games and improves the teams record to 81-71 which would put them 1 game behind the Twins and 3.5 behind the Sox for the division. Factor in that one of the extra Sabathia wins would likely have come against the Sox puts them tied with the Twinkies at 2.5 game. Just one extra win from Byrd puts them just 1.5 back with two Cy Young candidates, just about the whole team in tow, and playing their best baseball of the year. All of this seems well within the realm of possibility.

That final series in Chicago next week would start to look pretty damn exciting especially since Lee and Sabathia would be starting the first two games, and Carlos Quentin is out.

Then again who could possibly have seen this coming. Even with Sabathia it might not have happened, and LaPorta could turn into the next great Cleveland hitter and make everyone forget about Sabathia. All the same, it would be nice to still be in the playoff picture.