So, you may have heard, they just finished playing the last game ever at Yankee Stadium — once the home to the greatest organization in sports, a symbol of American excellence.  Back then, there was nothing preening about calling it The House That Ruth Built, because baseball was the sport that Ruth built into national obsession, and Ruth was a True Yankee back when that phrase might have really meant something — back when it didn't induce nausea, back when it wasn't coming out of the mouth of some disgusting, loathsome, self-entitled pig of a pathetic excuse for a sports fan.

It's painful to acknowledge a hated enemy, but in fact, it truly was an achievement for the Indians to take just two pennants away from those Yankees in 1948 and 1954, considering the Yankees won all ten of the other AL pennants from 1947 to 1959 — even the vanquished 1948 and 1954 Yankees went 103-51 and 94-60, respectively.  As the sixties wore on, the Yankees continued their dominance while the Indians descended into the beginnings of an epic 35-year slump, and in the decades since, the Yankees have become something awful:  the most corrupt, cowardly, and even un-American force in sports.  They are now, in fact, the antithesis of legitimate, competitive sports.

Free agency changed the game, and by the end of 1976, George Steinbrenner had bought his first superstar, Reggie Jackson, and his first pennant, the first of three straight.  The owner's monomania, his confusion of himself for a Baseball Man, doomed the team to mediocrity for a dozen years after that, but once he was banished for a few years, pros like Gene Michael and Buck Showalter stepped in and laid the foundation again for a great club, developing a core of gifted players like Rivera, Jeter and Williams, and surrounding them with gritty supporting cast of veterans.

But it wasn't enough for their braying pig of an owner, a man who knew almost as little about baseball as the average seven-year-old, and cared quite a bit less about the integrity of the game.  In 1998, when one of the all-time great clubs won 111 games and eventually a World Series, the Yankees had the largest payroll at $67 million, but that was only ten percent higher than the next club on the list, the Indians.  In the aftermath of that historic season, the Yankees pushed payroll up 30 percent to $86 million.  Then $92 million, then $112 million, then $126 million, then $152 million, then $184 million, then $208 million.

In just seven years, the Yankees took the highest payroll in the sport and tripled it, shattering any illusions of a level playing field and turning the sport into a competitive joke.  Once a hated but worthy adversary, the Yankees were transformed from a symbol of American excellence to a symbol of American arrogance, of wretched excess, of unfair advantage, of winning by cheating rather than competing, of performance enhancing drugs and cosmetic surgery, of buying it rather than competing to win.  On the field, they were a club that started every inning on third base, and in the stands, their fans thought they'd hit a triple.  They attracted fewer fans who were in love with the sport, and more freakishly obsessive front-runners who oozed entitlement like a toxic pus.  The overspending Yankees begot the overspending Red Sox, and the putrid Yankees fans begot the incomprehensibly obnoxious Red Sox Nation.  You could spend the rest of your life smacking these people, really hard, and it wouldn't be nearly enough.

The House That Ruth Built became The Cesspool Of Entitlement, and it doesn't really matter that they're tearing it down.  Soon the building will be gone, but the awful stench is just moving across the street.

And now, the highlight reel — which starts with the end of an All-Star Game, and ends with the start of one.

July 11, 1939 — Bob Feller was just 20 years old when he was named to the AL squad in 1939 for the first All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium, but he was already 14-3 on the year, and he had led the league in strikeouts the year before.  The AL led 3-1 when pitcher Tommy Bridges allowed the NL to load the bases with one out in the top of the sixth.  Feller was brought in to face Arky Vaughn — a guy who, although almost totally unknown to today's fans, is probably one of the best 30 or so guys ever to play the game — and Feller got him to ground into an inning-ending double-play.  Feller stayed in to pitch the game's final three frames, allowing just one walk and one single, striking out Johnny Mize and Stan Hack to close out one of the all-time great All-Star performances.

April 30, 1946 — Feller missed all of the 1942, 1943 and 1944 seasons after enlisting in the Navy, and he didn't return until late August, 1945.  Even after one-hitting the Tigers to end the 1945 season, many still speculated that Feller's fastball didn't have the same zip that it had before the war.  In Yankee Stadium, however, Feller silences any doubts by tossing his second career no-hitter — the first one ever against the Yankees, and in his own estimation, his best.  He went on that season to set career highs in strikeouts (348), innings (371), starts (42), complete games (36) and shutouts (10) — leading the league in each, of course.

(Okay, I don't have all night to write this, so I'm going to skip ahead 50 years ... feel free to fill in your own highlights.)

August 10, 1995 — In the first game of a twin bill, the Yankees lead the Indians 9-5 going into the 9th inning.  Manny and Sorrento kick off the inning with line drive singles, at which point the Yankees pull setup man Bob Wickman in favor of closer John Wetteland.  Alomar doubles in Manny, Lofton triples in Sorrento and Alomar — the score is now 9-8, and Vizquel pops up for the first out.  Baerga singles in Lofton to tie the score, Belle doubles to move Baerga up to third, prompting a free pass for Eddie Murray.  Thome sends a deep liner to RF to sacrifice in Baerga for the go-ahead run.  Mesa strikes out Bernie Williams to start the 9th and gets Mattingly to ground into a double-play to end it — Indians win, 10-9.  In the night game, the Indians peck away to turn a 2-1 Yankee lead into a 5-2 victory — Winfield doubles, Herb Perry doubles in Winfield, Tony Peña singles in Perry — this was just not the Yankees' day.  Mesa strikes out Wiliams (again) and Wade Boggs to end the game and notch his 31st consecutive save of the season.  At the end of the day, the Indians are 65-30.

October 2, 1997 — ALDS Game Two.  Staked to a three-run lead in the first inning, Andy "Big Game" Pettitte coughs up seven runs to the Tribe in the fifth and sixth.  Justice, Alomar and Thome get things going with consecutive RBI singles for the first three runs, then Tony Fernandez punches a two-run double.  An inning later, Matt Williams finishes Pettitte off with a two-run homer.  The Indians win Game Two to even the series and (of course) go on to win it in Cleveland in five.

September 15, 2000 — There's nothing really historic about this game except that I was there with my brothers and father.  Burba pitched eight shutout innings while the Indians offense brutalized David Cone and two long relievers for 15 hits and 11 runs, capped off by a grand slam by David Segui off Jason Grimsley.  At that point, we heard Bob Shepherd utter these words over the PA — "Number 56, Ted, Lilly.  Lilly." — words which in my mind will always be synonymous with, "The Yankees are losing by eleven runs."

August 31, 2004 — In front of a sellout Yankees Stadium crowd, the Indians serve up the worst defeat in the history of the Yankees franchise, led by Vizquel's six hits, tying an AL record, and home runs from new guys Victor, Coco and Jody.  In the bottom half, the Yankees manage only five baserunners, three singles and two doubles, against their former farmhand Jake Westbrook, and they go meekly in the final two frames, getting only a walk off Jeremy Guthrie in his second big-league appearance.  Note the totally gratuitous running up of the score in the 9th — and by "gratuitous," I really mean "awesome and totally appropriate."  Perhaps not coincidentally, the Yankees went on to commit the worst choke-job in the history of sports just seven weeks later.

October 8, 2007 — ALDS Game Four.  In the final postseason game in Yankees Stadium, the Indians do all the celebrating while a packed house of Yankees fans can only watch in stunned silence.  Grady opens the game with a home run, and Yankees ace Chien-Ming Wang goes on to allow six more baserunners while retiring only two batters.  He's removed with the bases loaded and no outs in the second inning, and by the time Mussina can get out of Wang's jam, the Tribe is up 4-0.  The Yankees, meanwhile, can't seem to solve Indians non-ace Paul Byrd, who allows just one run in the first five innings on a seeing-eye grounder through the 5.5 hole.

The Yankees become first-round losers for the fourth straight year, and they end the Yankee Stadium era having lost seven of their last eight postseason series.  They subsequently fire their immensely successful and well respected manager Joe Torre, for no real reason other than that the Yankees have become an organization of douchebags, by doucehbags, and for douchebags.  Relive the magic:

• Game Thread
• Game Thread Part 2
• Part 3 and Postgame
• "... In their house. With Paul Byrd. With Joe Borowski. With Rudy Giuliani in his precious little VIP box. With Rocket pouting ..."  And then he finishes it with a gross insult that he got from mauichuck.  A special moment.
• ALDS Roundup

May 6, 2008 — It's May Baseball.  Dave Dellucci introduces Justin Chamberlain to the Blown Save by way of a three-run homer.  This is the only time Chamberlain has ever allowed more than one run in a relief appearance — his career ERA as a reliever is 4.66 against the Indians, 0.88 against every other team.

July 15, 2008 — Already a forbidding Cy Young favorite with a 12-2 record and league-leading 2.31 ERA, Cliff Lee gets the call to start the last All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium.  Lee had pitched seven scoreless innings in Yankee Stadium for his sixth win two months earlier.  On this night, he starts the game with two more scoreless frames, yielding only a single while striking out three NL starters and inducing weak grounders the two most recent MVP's.  The AL goes on to win 4-3.

The series:  Visited Texas (win, loss, win, loss) and Detroit (win, loss, loss, win), hosted Minnesota (win, loss, win) and San Diego (win, loss, win).

But first, an editorial note:  This piece and the two that will follow pick up the threads of the Week In Review series that ran here for the first nine weeks of the season.  Since the last installment on June 2, the season has changed dramatically.  I never lost interest in keeping up with Week In Review, but I had to put it on hold because of other significant demands on my time.  I love this format, but it is frankly a bit time-consuming to put these together  Going back to do piecemeal recaps at this point may seem like an odd idea, but it's something I've decided to do for all the same reasons I started doing the Week In Review — to give the season a little more clarity and structure, to put it into chapters.

At any given moment, we tend to be viewing the season mostly in two timeframes — the first being the last 48 hours, today's game and maybe yesterday's, and the whole season cumulatively from the beginning.  The most accessible stats we look at reinforce this point of view — all the main stat pages are showing season-to-date, and we check out the box score to see what happened.  In doing so, we miss a lot of the ebb and flow of the season for the team, and especially for individual players.  We patch together vague narratives later on, much of it from inaccurate memories — "Peralta was blocked by Cora," "Francisco was amazing last year" — only occasionally making note of anything in a context larger than a day or two, and missing many in-season developments entirely.

I starting writing these Reviews to see better the season that was developing for each individual player, and I'm as interested as ever in doing that.   The first nine installments focused not so much on an exact week as on two series, or six to eight days.  This installment and the next will each focus on a two-week, four-series period.  The one after that will cover three series, ending at the All-Star break, today.  I believe I will go with the three-series format for the second half of the season; in general, the format has seemed still a little too micro to really see trends well.  We'll see how it develops — and I apologize in advance if the dissection is depressing.

The big story:  The Indians' injury problems went from bad to worse, led by the startling news on June 2 that Jake Westbrook would be returning to the DL just days after making a solid return to the rotation.   By June 7, the news got much worse — Westbrook would undergo Tommy John surgery, missing not only the rest of the 2008 season but as much as half of the 2009 season as well.  Westbrook had signed a three-year contract extension in March 2007, at $33 million the largest contract ever awarded by the Indians at the time.  He ran into injury problems almost immediately but returned last July with a huge flourish, finishing with the fifth-most innings pitched and seventh-lowest ERA in the league in the second half.  Coming into 2008, we were regaled with reports of a new pitch and improved velocity, and scouts wondered aloud if the sinkerballer might take his game to a higher level at age 30.  Westbrook did pitch well in April, but his injury dashed completely all those raised expectations, and the Indians have now lost his services for solidly half of that new contract's three years.

In other news:  Asdrubal Cabrera mercifully and belatedly was demoted to Triple-A, where he probably should have started the season, and where he almost certainly would have started the season had he not gone an improbable tear after being promoted into the heat of the 2007 pennant race.  His demotion created an opportunity for Josh Barfield — our erstwhile and bored/untalented second baseman, who certainly had not been forcing the club's hand with his Triple-A performance (.255/.297/.382, 4.7% walk rate).  Barfield responded by going 0-for-6 — he put the ball in play all six times, so you could argue he was just unlucky — before breaking his finger, giving him a very well-paid trip to the big-league DL.

That same day, Victor Martinez was also put on the DL — also mercifully and also belatedly, in that he'd been hitting terribly for nearly six weeks and (let's all say it together) hadn't hit a home run all season.  Three role players emerged and not only filled the shoes of the injured players, but far exceeded the production we'd been getting from those players before they went on the DL.  Shoppach, Carroll and the newly healthy Shin-Soo Choo — essentially taking over playing time from Martinez, Cabrera/Barfield and Hafner — each posted an OPS of 1000 or better over these 14 games.  Reliever Rick Bauer, catcher Yamid Haad and infielder Jorge Velandia, previously known to Indians fans as guys they'd never heard of, joined the big-league roster to play dominoes with Marte.

We drafted some guys with really interesting names — Chisenhall and Cord,  "Jeremie Tice" and "David Roberts" — and though our first three picks were age 19, 17 and 20 on draft day, some people still screamed that the Indians were being "too safe" or "wrong" or "not adhering to Baseball America rankings" — or something or other.  Experts, experts everywhere, whatever are we to make of all of this expertise?

Back in the majors, in general, the pitching slumped and was uncharacteristically carried by the offense in these series.  So while the pitchers posted a 5.68 ERA, including a few critical late-inning blowups by the bullpen, the hitters amazingly posted the feel-good, Garko-in-a-good-year line of .294/.364/.468.  That 1,088-run pace allowed the team to tread water over a period in which the rest of the AL Central was essentially doing the same — Minnesota and KC dropped a few games but held their places in the standings, while the other three clubs each won eight.  The AL Central was still very winnable, and if you squinted enough, you could still see a bruised-but-not-beaten Indians club actually winning it.

(Who fed it and Who ate it are after the jump.)

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Let's start with Travis Hafner, who is one of the few on the DL who won't have to have surgery, though it doesn't mean he's coming back soon:

Renowned surgeon Dr. James Andrews concurred with the Indians' original prognosis on Travis Hafner's injured right shoulder. Hafner's rotator cuff and shoulder muscles need strengthening, not surgery.

On the one hand, that's comforting news for the Indians in that their original assessment was backed up. Then again, it doesn't mean Pronk is any closer to playing.

The frustrating part about the recovery process is that there's no specific timetable for his return. He could be ready to go on a rehab assignment in July, or he might be out the rest of the season. It all depends on how quickly his shoulder strengthens.

Fausto Carmona's return also falls into the 'indefinite' camp, unfortunately, after his left hip flared up the day after a simulated game:

"[The MRI] shows inflammation in the affected area, albeit less than he experienced in late May," Soloff said. "It's a mild recurrence of the symptoms."

Carmona will be reexamined after the three-day shutdown period. At that point, the Indians plan to have a new timetable for his return to play.

The only real successful news on the injury front was that the surgeries on Josh Barfield's finger, and Victor Martinez's and Jake Westbrook's right elbows have gone well. And, lest we forget, Adam Miller also recently had surgery on his right middle finger; he's done for the season.

The series:  Hosted the White Sox (loss, win, loss) and visited the Royals (win, loss, loss).  Blah.  Went 2-4.  Blah.  With a 4.25 ERA.  Blah.  Scored four runs per game.  Blah.  Hit .243/.318/.435.  Blah.  Not the worst you've ever seen, just.  Blah.  Certainly not at all good either, though.  Blah.

The big story:  As outright awfulness receded into mere malaise, word finally started to leak out that the respective collapses of two of the Indians' best hitters, Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner, probably owe more to injuries than to anything else.  In retrospect, the profundity of Hafner's problems this season never really made all that much sense as a simple collapse of skills, and there is no real precedent for a hitter's version of Steve Blass Disease.  Still, perhaps because of our habitual fatalism, Indians fans never much figured Hafner was injured, so much so that when he was finally placed on the DL this past Friday, many fans speculated that the injury was phony, merely an excuse to make room on the roster for another player while Hafner was sent away to clear his head for a while.

The Indians told local media that Hafner would be available to play first base during Interleague play, and then he wasn't.  The Indians told local media nothing about Joe Borowski's triceps strain, counting on them to not even notice a substantial drop in velocity, let alone write about it.  And until this weekend, the Indians said nothing about Hafner's shoulder being a significant problem, and they never mentioned that it was probably Victor's hamstring that had hamstrung his power, again counting on them not to notice or report it.  Local media was shocked — shocked! — that the team had not been more forthcoming about those injuries, apparently forgetting that the team said nothing in 2006 about Victor playing half the season with a broken toe, or that they already knew that Jhonny Peralta had a vision problem.

Injuries happen, and players try to play through them, and sometimes teams know, and sometimes teams agree to let the player try.  Knowledge about injuries represents a competitive advantage in many sports, and since MLB is not yet dominated by gambling as some pro sports are, reporting requirements are meager.  Socker sniffed, "A credibility gap is developing between the Indians and the local media ... I find it difficult to believe that people in authority at Progressive Field think it serves their purpose to create an aura of distrust between the team and the media."  (Does he really not see this as a self-condemnation, as he implies that he has nothing to report if the team doesn't spoon-feed it to him?)

These developments bring little solace to Indians fans, as players sometimes don't heal in the course of one season, and sometimes they don't heal at all.  All it does is lend a small light of understanding on the widespread offensive collapse.  We've got young hitters struggling in their first full season (Gutierrez, Cabrera), streaky mediocrity from a few veterans (Blake, Dellucci), two of our best hitters playing hurt (Martinez, Hafner), and unsteady results from two more (Peralta, Sizemore) — oh, now I get it.  That leaves us with only one everday player totally sucking without even a halfway-decent explanation (Garko), and the slow-head-shaking resignation that all this crap apparently really can happen to one lineup in one season.

In other news:  Jake Westbrook returned to the rotation with a reasonably solid start, retiring the first 12 batters of the game before succumbing to a series of line-drive hits in the 5th.  Craig Breslow was claimed off waivers by the Twins, and Jorge Julio was designated for assignment to make room for Westbrook.  Hafner's trip to the DL was timed to make room on the roster for Shin-Soo Choo who returned from the DL to play his first big-league game in over a year.  Hafner's absence prompted Wedge to start utilizing his players in more of a rotation, sharing time fairly evenly among Gutierrez, Blake, Aubrey, Choo, Francisco and even Marte.  Adam Miller's finger gave us the finger once again, apparently for the entire season.  Oh, and I guess there was this "triple-steal" thing, supposedly.  Whatever.  We scored a run on that play, which seemed like pretty big news, but on the other hand, we didn't drive in that run, and that didn't seem like news at all.  Blah.

Post of the week:  Looking for nominations as always ...

Who fed it:  Just when we least expected it, Frankie Gutierrez had a huge week in limited playing time, hitting for average (.357), getting on base (five hits, two walks and a HBP) and flashing that enticing power/speed combination with a home run, a triple, and more than one spectacular play in the field.  Peralta had another huge week (1093) and after almost three weeks of hot hitting is on pace for more than 30 home runs.   Blake (1012) and Dellucci (953) were both highly productive in four starts each, and both were bouncing back from substantial two-week slumps (523 and 411).  Sizemore (948) had his worst two games of the year in the past week but still banged out three home runs and a triple; he's basically stayed hot for six weeks solid (947 after May 12).  Masa bounced back from some rough outings last week with two scoreless innings.  Absolute Best:  Peralta.  Relative Best:  Gutierrez.

Who fed it breakdown:  Very slim pickings for standout pitching performances this week, but I'll go with Perez; he gave up one earned run, and one unearned, in the second of his three appearances this week, but those runs were fluke crap, not at all his fault.  He faced 14 batters and induced six grounders and five strikeouts, allowing no walks and just one line drive for a single.  Borowski, meanwhile, allowed three line drives and eight fly balls — eight looooooooooooong fly balls — and, miraculously, no runs on no walks and three hits.  Just ask my shorts.

Who ate it:  Francisco cruelly fell back to earth this week (458), slugging just .208 while drawing more walks (three) in his last 19 PA than he had in his first 82 PA this season (two) — in both respects, possibly a sign that pitchers have started to pitch him more carefully.  Aubrey also struggled (322) to maintain his hot start, getting just one single in his last 11 AB en route back to Buffalo.  Garko's pathetic week (2-for-13, double, 2 BB, 498) was remarkably similar to his prior pathetic week (2-for-11, 2 BB, 490), or for that matter to his whole pathetic last six weeks (.186/.259/.299).  Paul Byrd coughed up 9 ER over 11 IP, and while he walked only one of the 50 batters he faced, he ominously struck out only one as well.  Absolute Worst:  Francisco.  Relative Worst:  Aubrey.

Who ate it breakdown:  As has become the norm over the last few month, Victor was mediocre but not notably awful over the past week, hitting .261/.292/.348.  The real depths of his problems show up over multiple weeks, however, as his line over the past month is .222/.273/.272.  In 88 PA, he's got only four extra base hits — all doubles, of course — and only three non-intentional walks.  It's become a serious breakdown.  Although leading the majors in batting average just three weeks ago, Victor's contributions at the plate have seriously collapsed.  Deepening that black hole in the lineup has been Shoppach, who is just 3-for-31 over the past month while inconsistently filling in for Victor, with two walks and no extra-base hits.

The series:  Visited the White Sox (loss, loss, loss) and hosted the Rangers (loss, win, loss).

The big story:  We sucked.  After climbing to the top of the division in the middle of last week, the Indians went 1-8.  The pitching snapped back to reality, while the hitters produced the same 19 runs this week that they had over the previous six games, only more poorly distributed.  In response, Wedge fumed, while Francisco and Aubrey added to the idea of slump by contagion, hitting far better in Cleveland than they ever have in Buffalo, seemingly immune to the rest of the team's two-month struggle.

The Indians are the worst-hitting team in the league this season, and they have also been, by far, the worst-hitting team in the majors in the month of May, more than a full run below the major-league average, and nearly a half-run per game worse than the worst team in the National League — again, that's the league where the pitchers are batting maybe three times a game.  The offense has occasionally broken out for a big game, but that has only obscured how bad the offense really has been — the average is 3.4  runs per game, but the median is a solid 3.0.  Week-long power outages have been the most notable feature of the 2008 season:

• April 3-9, 20 runs in seven games, 2.9 average, 2-5 record
• April 24-29, 16 runs in six games, 2.7 average, 3-3 record
• May 1-8, 16 runs in six games, 2.7 average, 3-3 record
• May 12-25, 41 runs in 14 games, 2.9 average, 5-9 record

We actually have a better than expected record in those games, of course, because our starting pitching has been so outstanding over most of those weeks.  Incredibly, our Pythagorean record is actually 27-23 despite the awful hitting, but a half-dozen ninth-inning blowups have us at 23-27 instead.

The biggest tragedy here is the missed opportunities within the division, which directly impact our ability to make the playoffs and cannot be recouped.  The Indians have been 32 runs better than the Tigers but have only a two-game edge to show for it rather than six or seven — should both teams have any kind of bounce back after this point, those games will make a difference.

Worse yet, the Indians surrendered three straight games to the White Sox, who may well turn out to be the only other team who can over 85 wins in a deeply disappointing division.  Head-to-head records and BIP luck were the entire difference between these two clubs in 2005, when they ended the season with 99 and 93 wins respectively, and so far, history is repeating.

In other news:  Fausto Carmona went to the Disabled List with a hip injury and is expected to miss a full month — yet nobody panicked, as Jake Westbrook was completing a successful run of rehab starts in Akron even as Carmona's season was getting ruptured.  Westbrook was already scheduled to return on the exact day of Carmona's next would-be start, and even if he weren't, the Indians have other fine options waiting in Buffalo.

The Indians shuffled up the bullpen part of the roster pretty good, returning Joe Borowski to his old closer job late in the week and demoting Jensen Lewis, in the hopes that he can regain his old velocity in Buffalo.  The team put rarely used lefty Craig Breslow on waivers while claiming Oneli Perez, a talented but struggling young reliever, from the White Sox and sending him to Buffalo.  Scott Elarton and Ed Mujica were promoted from Buffalo to fill out the staff.

Post of the week:  AngG gets her Rick James on (or is it her Wayne Brady?) as part of a hilarious sequence of rants.  Other nominess: jhon (summing up Wedge disgust nicely),  mjschaefer (replying to zempf),  gte619n (replying to supermarioelia), drerikbrady (tremendous attention to detail), jakesinger777 (expanding on Cisco's Buckner moment).

Who fed it:  C.C. Sabathia and Ben Francisco led a very slim list of candidates for this week, both of them continuing strong runs.  Sabathia gave up three runs, all on solo-shots, over 14 innings, striking out 13 with three walks.  He has a 1.63 ERA (and RA) over his past seven starts, averaging 8 strikeouts and 1.6 walks in 7.2 innings.  Francisco pounded out five doubles and a home run while batting .320, and in playing every inning of the team's last 11 games, he's put up a stunning line of .395/.422/.721 — contributing more than 25% of the total bases and less than 8% of the outs.  Rafael Betancourt bounced back from three horrendous weeks (16.20 ERA) with three scoreless innings, all in the 8th, although he did allow an inherited run.  Absolute Best:  Francisco.  Relative Best:  Francisco.

Who fed it breakdown:  Relief pitchers are hard to evaluate based on box scores, considering the incredibly blunt instruments used to assign earned runs.  Masa Kobayashi gave up an earned run, an unearned run and an inherited run this week but actually pitched pretty well.   In the first game, he relieved Laffey with no outs and a man on first, facing the top of the Chicago lineup.  He got a strikeout and a deep flyout, with a very speedy pinch-runner advancing to second base.   He then allowed a single on the ground through the gaping Blake/Peralta hole, scoring the inherited runner, and finally his only earned run of the week on the only legit line-drive hit.  In the second game, he faced the Rangers' 2-thru-5 hitters, getting a strikeout and two groundouts, allowing just a single on the ground to Josh Hamilton — a damned fine inning.  In the third game, he faced the Rangers' 3-thru-1 hitters, and he got three groundouts including a double-play, plus a strikeout and a flyout.  He allowed only a walk, a single on the ground and one line-drive single.  Had that one line-drive not followed the walk, or had there not been two outs, or had the ball not rolled under the right fielder's legs, we're looking at another fine shutout inning.  So while it may seem like Masa had a bad week, I'm not so sure.

Who ate it:  Where to even begin?  Blake, back to playing every inning, responded by slugging .143 — over the last two weeks, he's had one great game (2-4, 6 TB), four decent games (4-14, 0 TB) and eight awful ones (0-25, 0 TB).  Dellucci continued his atrocious month, using his 14 PA to generate just 3 total bases, against three double-plays, three strikeouts, and at least three awful throws from left field — his May OPS is just 444, and even worse, it's just 482 against lefties alone.  The Platoon Of Despair®, meanwhile, crushed any hopes we might have had for them last week, combining for .156/.282/.188, and yes, that's a 470 OPS, and yes, they are slugging a combined .361 for the season — thanks for asking!  Not to be outdone, catchers Martinez and Shoppach combined for an empty 3-for-23 with a 297 OPS.  Jensen Lewis gave up three runs on three walks, three singles, two doubles and one HBP, en route to Buffalo.  Jorge Julio stepped into two budding trainwrecks (from Byrd and Carmona) and made both of them much worse (more below).  Absolute Worst:  Julio.  Relative Worst:  Considering positional OPS differences, it's just too close to call among Martinez (267), Blake (360), Dellucci (445) and Hafner (459).

Who ate it breakdown:  Unlike Masa, Jorge Julio's bad week was even worse than it appeared — and with an 18.00 ERA, it appeared pretty bad.  In the first game, Julio relieved Byrd with men on first and second and one out.  The run expectancy here is 0.97, but Julio was facing the bottom third of Chicago's lineup and had the platoon edge on two of the three.  He gave up a deep flyball double to the righty Crede, scoring one inherited runner and advancing the other to third base with only one out.  He walked the lefty Swisher intentionally, then gave up a long sac-fly to righty Alexei Ramirez, who just-by-the-way is terrible, scoring that other inherited run, then got the leadoff hitter Cabrera to ground out to end the inning.  He started the next inning with strikeouts to Chicago's 2-3 hitters, then the home run to Jermaine Dye — Julio's first earned run allowed in five weeks — at which point he was pulled.  So against five right-handers in that game, he got a strikeout and a groundout but also three very hard-hit deep flies, each of which drove in one run.

Of course, that game was just a warmup for the major gas-can emptying he would do two nights later.  Relieving a struggling and injured Carmona in the 3rd, with men on first and third and no outs — but again, he's facing the bottom of the lineup, so he really should get out of this with minimal damage.  The sequence:  walk, walk, grand slam, line-drive double, line-drive double — so already, that's six runs, two inherited and four earned, and there's still no outs.  Julio finally gets a groundball, but it goes for an infield single, then a strikeout.  The inning ends with two more deep flies that get caught — but the adventure wasn't over!  Julio starts the next inning by allowing two more scorching line drives, but it's just his good fortune that the second one is hit straight at Peralta, who catches it and then doubles off the first guy — so that's two outs, bases empty, despite not one batter really beaten by Julio.  Next it's a walk, and then a double on a groundball to right, and at that point, he gets pulled with men on second and third, two outs.

So even though his ERA for the week was 18.00, it doesn't begin to describe how bad he really was.  Outside of those earned runs, he allowed all four inherited runners to score, while the two runners he left behind did not score.  And while he did get some legit outs, he also pitched into some very good luck, and he totally failed to keep the ball in the infield, even with the platoon edge against the other team's worst hitters.  He was, all things considered, about as bad as a pitcher can possibly be while getting nine outs — charged with just 6 ER, he pitched badly enough to allow 12.

It is time to bring back everyone's favorite bit of cathartic therapy. Two years ago, the Indians were so disappointing that a lot of us wanted to just blow up the whole thing and start over. Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense, but it made us feel better.

Well, the time has come to dig up this irrational concept again. And where better to direct the wrecking ball first to than the rotation?

(For contract details, see Cot's Contracts' Indians page )

C.C. Sabathia

2008 Salary: $9.0M

Signed Through: 2008

Controlled Through: 2008

PRO: Most of the contenders' General Managers would be willing to crawl over two miles of broken glass while having Barney the Dinosaur piped directly into their temporal lobes just to have Mark Shapiro listen to their proposal for Sabathia. For those with deep pockets, they'd have 4-5 months to try to get Sabathia to sign an extension, and for any team, they'd add one of the best pitchers in baseball to their rotation. So no prospect would be off-limits to the Indians, and even players normally not even talked about would at least come into the conversation.

PRO: The Indians aren't going to keep Sabathia past this season, and the major reason didn't trade him was because they thought they would contend again. So if we remove that little impediment, why wouldn't you trade the best pending free agent in baseball?

PRO: Even if a tiny part of you thinks that Sabathia would re-sign with the Indians, and if the Indians found room on their payroll, wouldn't a Santana-like deal be too much a risk to take for team that's already sunk a lot of coin into extensions for Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook?

CON: There's still a chance albeit a tiny one, to keep CC around, and most fans wouldn't look too kindly on the Indians punting on Sabathia this soon.

CON: As bad as the Indians have played, they're only 4.5 games back in the division race.

Cliff Lee

2008 Salary: $3.75M

Signed Through: 2009

Controlled Through: 2010 (Team Option)

PRO: Perceived value probably won't get any higher after a magical run to start the season.

PRO: Has a ridiculously team-friendly contract, so any team not named the Marlins would be in the running for him, driving up the asking price.

PRO: Recent history has been mediocre to terrible, so now may be the time to sell high.

CON: Has a very reasonable contract, and the Indians are probably losing two of their starters to free agency after the season.

CON: Why trade him now just when he's finally figured things out? He's had no history of arm problems, and has always had pretty good stuff.

Fausto Carmona

2008 Salary: $500K

Signed Through: 2011

Controlled Through: 2014 (Team Options)

PRO: Did I say Cliff Lee's contract was ridiculously team-friendly? Whoever trades for Carmona could have another six dominant seasons without having to negotiate a thing with Carmona's agent. And while a team willing to give up value enough to for that pitcher/contract combination may not exist, it only takes one GM and one moment of insanity to give the Indians an entire farm system.

CON: OK, back to reality. Carmona's got the best sinker in baseball, a great attitude, and he's just 24 years old. And did I mention the contract?

CON: There is no package of players out there that could get the Indians full value for Carmona and his contract.

Jake Westbrook

2008 Salary: $10M

Signed Through: 2010

Controlled Through: 2010

PRO: It may sound like a broken record, but even at a quasi-market salary, Westbrook's contract is very friendly. The remaining length of the contract is just about perfect for a trading club; there's only two years left, so the risk isn't that great, but you'd still have two years until he could become a free agent. 

PRO: Westbrook's now been on the DL for two straight seasons, and he's probably at his peak right now. Those two years left on his contract may be for at best a slowly declining and injury-prone pitcher with a low strikeout rate to begin with.

CON: Westbrook has been a very reliable innings-eater for five seasons now, and he just signed an extension that was a bit below market-value. And he likes it in Cleveland, something that hasn't been a commonplace happening in recent years.

CON: Other teams may not think Westbrook is that good, and those are the GMs you want to be talking to.

Paul Byrd

2008 Salary: $7.5M

Signed Through: 2008

Controlled Through: 2008

PRO: Even if the Indians get back into the race, they'd have to think of Byrd as a nice trading chip. Even if they don't bring back Sabathia, the Indians probably aren't going to make a huge fuss of re-signing Byrd, at least not at what the free market will dictate.

PRO: At this stage in his career, Byrd is living off preparation and pinpoint control. There's not a whole lot separating Byrd from a starting spot and being out of baseball. And the longer time frame the Indians begin to think in, the more risk keeping Byrd around brings.

PRO: With Byrd being linked to the PED scandal, keeping him would be a bad example to the children of America. And no amount of plush hot dog giveaways would overcome the stain of devastation the children of Northeast Ohio would have burned upon their minds if the Indians would even think about bringing Byrd back.

CON: He's one of the best 5th starters in baseball.

CON: Now that Carmona is on the DL, the Indians still need him in the rotation.

Aaron Laffey

2008 Salary: $393K

Signed Through: 2008

Controlled Through: 2013 (assuming he stays in the majors from now on)

PRO: Young left-handed ground-ball machine that's had some success but still with less than a year of service time? This time even the Marlins are interested. He may not be worth Garret Atkins, but then again, who is?

PRO: As with any young player, will he survive the first wave of adjustments teams will make to him? Perhaps once hitters stop trying to pull his sinkers, he'll quickly become a lot less effective.

CON: Even if the Indians would undergo a 2002-style rebuild, he's the type of player the Indians would be trying to stockpile.

In General: The Indians are facing the loss of both Byrd and Sabathia, so those two would definitely be on the table if the Indians fall out of the race. If the Indians get some semblance of an offense and if they aren't down 10 games by the All-Star Break, they'll hold on to Sabathia, though there could a couple scenarios where they'd deal Byrd,.

And because Sabathia and Byrd probably won't be here next year, the other four guys mentioned above won't likely be traded. The Indians don't like to use free agency to fill holes, and especially don't like filling a rotation hole with a free agent.

Placed RHP Fausto Carmona on the 15-day Disabled List (hip)

Although Carmona is expected to miss four weeks, his injury is not considered serious in a long-term sense and may ultimately be a blessing in disguise, keeping his workload down in 2008 after a big jump in innings in 2007.   It also basically fits his hypothetical mechanical struggles, either as cause or effect, which fit both his oddly inflated walk totals and Will Carroll's pre-season prediction:

Carmona has never had to come back from a 200-inning workload before, and there's almost always a price to pay for that. I'd expect Carmona to have something happen like did with Westbrook last year at midseason—a minor injury that causes him to miss a month, but that he comes back from strong and actually winds up getting saved from another big jump in IP by the time off.

For any other team, having a starter of Carmona's caliber go down would be seen as catastrophic, but at least on this site, Indians fans hardly registered any alarm at all — perhaps in part because of a learned confidence in the team's ability to heal young pitchers and keep them healthy over the long haul.

But the real confidence is in the Indians' incomparable rotation depth.  Jake Westbrook is scheduled to come off the Disabled List just in time to make Carmona's next would-be start, and even if he weren't, the Indians have at least two other starters ready to step in and already on the 40-man roster in Jeremy Sowers and Adam Miller.  (It's an odd twist considering that last May, Westbrook went on the DL just in time for Cliff Lee to return, which allowed Carmona to stay and further establish himself in the big-league rotation.)

Its main effect on the team might be to spare everyone the agony of sending a highly effective Aaron Laffey to the minors to make room for Westbrook, a topic which had already started to sprout hourly calls for Paul Byrd to be traded.

Depth is good, and another point this drives home is that it's easier for a team to leverage its depth in the event of injury, rather than in the event of poor performances.  With struggling players (e.g., most of the lineup), we have the depth to replace the poorly performing parts but nowhere on any roster to stash them — we're not going to just cut Hafner or Blake, even though we have the depth to replace them.  With an injury, you just put the guy on the DL and leverage your depth right away.  It's just easier.

Designated LHP Craig Breslow for Assignment

Claimed RHP Oneli Perez from Chicago White Sox and Assigned him to Buffalo (AAA)

Six transactions over two days involving just six spots on the active roster, i.e., the bullpen — there should be no doubt, the Indians are as concerned about the bullpen as the fans are about the offense.  And in this sense they're right:  The offense should fix itself, and if it doesn't, there isn't much you could do with one or two moves, and major moves rarely happen overnight.  The bullpen, on the other hand, seems to be more like ending up with the right hand, and if you can reshuffle the deck every other day to get a new hand, why not keep making moves until you're satisfied?

It also points up the essential hairiness of acquiring, deploying and discarding relievers, an area in which the sample sizes are so scarce that it's worth asking whether any statistics are worth looking at, even over a whole season, let alone the murderer's row of dumb stats we always use for pitchers:  "wins," "losses," ERA, holds, saves, blown saves — not a useful stat among them when it comes to relievers.  And unlike position players, you can't just throw a guy in there for a while and see what happens, because the results are too costly.  A hitter can have a miserable set of three or four games and ultimately not cost the team even one win; offense is a collective effort, and even your best hitters will fail 60 percent of the time anyway.  A struggling reliever, however, can torch multiple games in a row, so even if it is a case of bad luck, small sample or an easily recovered-from dry spell, a team just can't take that chance for anyone but the most established performers.

So the team faces a dilemma with a guy like Breslow, who presents plenty to like but an uncertain projection, on a team that feels it doesn't have the margin for error to let him try to develop some consistency.   A guy like Rick Bauer is doing exactly that in the minors, but Breslow can't be sent to the minors.  Ultimately, the team decided it couldn't be tantalized by his raw ability and favorable contract status.  Breslow was passed over by 28 teams on waivers back in March, so we may get to keep him.  Bottom line, though, a team like the Indians needs a guy like Breslow to work it out in the minors, and the fact that they might lose him in the process doesn't change that.  More than assets, we need options, and Breslow doesn't have any.

Oneli Perez, on the other hand, does have options.  He's given up the same 18 runs and five home runs in 2008 that he did in 2007, the difference being the innings:  93 last year, 17 this year.  I don't know what went wrong with him in Triple-A this season, all I do know is that he spent more than a full season at Double-A and racked up a 1.84 ERA, while striking out 109 guys in 93 innings — seriously, where do I sign up?  He'll turn 25 tomorrow, and he has one option year remaining in addition to the current season. That gives the Indians all of this season and next to turn him around and into a big-league reliever, but given his Double-A numbers, don't be surprised if he ends up contributing in Cleveland this year.

Reinstated RHP Joe Borowski from the 15-day Disabled List (ability)

Funny thing about Borowski is that we all seemed to have blocked him out of our minds, as though his cataclysmic last appearance and subsequent trip to the DL meant that we weren't going to have to suffer him any longer.  Like, you know, our long national nightmare is over.  Since it isn't, might as well try to look at the bright side, like, no more mind-numbing "closer controversy," as we're spared the otherwise inevitable and inevitably dumb columns about the evils of closer-by-committee.

Borowski does have a small upside, at least compared to the disasters we're all intuitively expecting.  He was effective overall last season, and while his ERA reflected real mediocrity, it also reflected a little genuinely bad luck on balls in play, .335 BABIP for a guy whose career mark is .296. Some days — too many days — he just doesn't have it, but he never seems to choke, and he never gives it away.   When he's getting beat, it's only because he simply isn't all that good, and if he's a bum, at least he's a bum that Cleveland can get behind.

Optioned RHP Jensen Lewis to Buffalo (AAA)

Recalled RHP Ed Mujica from Buffalo (AAA)

Purchased the Contract of RHP Scott Elarton and Recalled him from Buffalo (AAA)

Confused?  Don't be.  These moves actually make sense.  With Lewis, the Indians reached essentially the same conclusion that they did with Breslow, i.e., that he's not going to work himself into the pitcher the Indians want him to be while in the majors, so down he goes.  It makes sense to see this as a win-later move, as the Indians send down a reasonably effective reliever for a few weeks in the hopes of having him make the kind of big impact late in 2008 that he had late in 2007.  This is Lewis' first optional assignment, so if there's a price to be paid in terms of the option clock, it won't be until 2011 at the earliest.

Mujica has been Buffalo's most dominant reliever for the last month-plus, and yes, I'm including Bauer.  Mujica has only allowed two runs in his last 13 games, spanning 17+ innings, but he had a rough first half of April and gave up seven runs in one appearance on April 6, permanently crapping up his overall numbers.  Mujica first emerged as a star prospect back in 2005, in Kinston and Akron at age 21, and in 2006, he went more than three months and nearly 50 innings before giving up a single run in Akron, Buffalo and Cleveland, eventually allowing one in his fourth big-league game on July 14.  He struggled with injuries and control in 2007, doing little with the big-league club other than making blowouts into bigger blowouts.

Bauer, for those who must compare, has a track record that is almost shocking in its lack of anything impressive over a 12-year pro career.  He had two pretty good seasons in the high minors, at ages 24 and 27, and two solid but unspectacular seasons in the majors, at ages 25 and 29, a lot of mediocre and horrible seasons, even at advanced ages in the minors, and a lot of injuries.  He's put up tremendous numbers in Buffalo this year at age 31, but the Indians would be right to suspect that this is just the luckiest run of a long and undistinguished career, right to let him put in more steady work, and right to want to see a lot more before giving him a bigger shot.

Elarton had earned his shot over the past two months in Buffalo, and he brings with him a strong reputation as a positive influence in the clubhouse, which may have factored into this move, given the team's persistent struggles.  Fans focused on Elarton's past mediocrity might be interested to note his career numbers as a reliever, which include a 2.54 ERA, 553 OPS-against, 1.01 WHIP and 9.64 K/9.  Granted, this was ten years ago, and Elarton doesn't have that kind of velocity anymore, but at least he's done it before, and relieving is just plain easier than starting.  It will be interesting to see what kinds of situations Elarton is put into.

There are plenty of candidates to get removed from the 25-man on Wednesday when Westbrook returns, but it's a safe bet that it won't be Elarton, and it's likely the Indians will go back to a six-man bullpen as long as there's no blowout in the next few days.  Mujica is now the only active reliever who can be sent to the minors, but there's a decent chance the Indians will opt to DFA Jorge Julio instead.  He spent three weeks creeping up to the Circle of Trust, but he just didn't do so well once he got there.

The series:  Visited the Royals (win, win, win) and hosted the Yankees (win, win, loss, loss).

The big story:  There were several, and perhaps the biggest was simply that we had a strong week, winning five of seven to move into second place.   But the most significant development for the 2008 season going forward was C.C. Sabathia's total U-turn from trainwreck to dominant starter.  Sabathia gave up just one run over 14 innings, striking out 11 hapless Royals in the first game and tossing an 8-inning gem in which only five Yankees reached base in the second.  This pair of consecutive starts was one of the best of Sabathia's career, surpassed in 2007 only by his back-to-back shutouts in June.  At the same time, his first four starts were so horrendous (13.50 ERA) that even after the extreme two-start bounce-back, his ERA is still the worst in the majors at 7.88 – even worse than Barry Zito's.  Sabathia's excellence ended up being of no real immediate consequence, as the Indians turned the first one into a 15-1 rout, then handed Sabathia a tough 1-0 loss in the second.

In other news:  Jake Westbrook unexpectedly went on the Disabled List with a lower-back muscle strain.  Initially expected to miss only a few starts, he's now expected to be out for a full month after his symptoms persisted for a full week.  His injury, combined with a rain-delay-induced double-header, resulted in a flurry of call-ups and send-downs as the Indians played with an extra outfielder for a few days (Ben Francisco), swapped out for a spot starter (Jeremy Sowers) on Saturday, swapped out for another extra outfielder (Brad Snyder) on Sunday, and finally on Monday swapped out for Aaron Laffey, who will join the rotation at least for the following week.  Both starters made fine 2008 debuts against the Yankees, with Laffey looking significantly stronger than Sowers even though the box scores will claim the opposite.

Lee deepened his improbable run as the game's most effective pitcher with a complete game shutout, as the national media joined Indians fans in collectively dropping their jaws.  The lineup blew up for 24 runs in the first two games but then fizzled with just 14 runs in the next five, a trend led by Casey Blake, who posted a 2125 OPS in two games against the Royals but just a 350 OPS starting all four games against the Yankees.  The post-Borowski bullpen started to come together as Kobayashi asserted himself with a few strong setup performances while Betancourt breezed through his first two Save opportunities, making the closer's job look suspiciously un-different from his old setup-man gig.

Adam Miller finally made his official 2008 debut in Buffalo, following a few weeks rehabbing a blister and a few weeks in extended spring training.  Miller pitched nine scoreless innings in two starts while continuing to build up his pitch count, and his velocity was intact even if his peripherals weren't.  Miller's return, coupled with Brian Slocum's solid start, suggests that the Indians remain an absurd eight-deep in big-league-ready starting pitchers, even after putting Westbrook on the DL and shipping Sean Smith off to Colorado.  At the same time, David Huff, 39th overall draft pick in 2006, overcame a rocky first two starts to pitch his third straight gem for the Akron Aeros, allowing just one run (on a solo shot) and 13 baserunners against 19 strikeouts over the three games, and he picked off a couple guys, too.  If Huff continues to emerge, that may further tempt the Indians to move Miller into the big-league bullpen.

Post of the week:  Now taking nominations.

Who fed it: Sabathia dominated in two starts while Lee was near-spotless in his one.  Julio excelled in two low-leverage outings, while Kobayashi and Betancourt settled into their new roles; the three relievers faced 32 batters and got 29 outs, including two erased on double-plays, and allowed no one past first base.  Blake had the best all-around numbers of any hitter on the week but was abysmal against the Yankees.  Victor batted .375, achieving a 902 OPS on the week with (once again) no home runs.  Dellucci and Peralta each combined a solid average with a pair of home runs.  Seemingly competing for at bats, Michaels and Gutierrez both accounted for a major chunk of our otherwise anemic offense against the Yankees, the former batting .400 while the latter slugged .600, and they looked damned good in the field, too.  Special mention must be given to Aaron Laffey, who no-hit the Yankees for five innings and, through sheer horrendous luck alone, gave up four runs in the 6th when he deserved to give up, at most, one. Absolute Best:  Sabathia.  Relative Best:  Lee.

Who ate it:  It's hard to say what the worst part of Ryan Garko's week was, the .042 average, the .115 OBP or the .083 slugging.  I'm going with the .042 average, because he was just one walk short of decent walk rate, and hey, his isolated power is almost 2.0!  Unfortunately, even those minimal contributions were mostly confined to last Tuesday's game, and Garko's line for the last five games was .000/.048/.000.  Aside from Garko, the rest of the Indians put up a more-than-respectable .302/.360/.451 line for the week.  Hafner continued his harrowing march to the bottom, with week-by-week OPS totals of 824, 761, 592 and (this week) 512 — or, if you prefer, he has a 559 OPS over his last 17 games.  Absolute Worst:  Garko.  Relative Worst:  Garko.  Twenty Other Kinds Of Worst:  Garko.  And Yet The Guy Who Really Makes Me Suicidal Is Still:  Hafner.

The other guys:  We made Wang look like Bob Gibson.  The rest of it, pretty fuzzy, maybe I'll fill it in later, does anybody really care about this section?

False alarms:

• Cliff Lee, greatest pitcher in the universe.
  
• Chien-Ming Wang, second greatest.
• C.C. Sabathia, third greatest (he's actually about tenth).
• Ben Francisco in a Cleveland uniform.
  
• Ryan Garko, worst hitter ever.
• Jhonny Peralta on web gems last night.
• J-Mike, serviceable big-league hitter.

Open questions:

• How long will Jake be out, and once he returns, will he be totally awesome, or merely awesome?
• How long can Chicago stay at the top of the standings?
  
• Since any blogger writing in his/her parents' basement in his/her underwear can notice when a reliever's velocity is down 3-5 mph, and might actually write about it without the team's permission, what exactly do we need newspaper columnists for?
• Too soon to start panicking about losing Cliff Lee after 2010?
• When the hell is Slider's birthday, anyway?
  
• Can Kobayashi confuse hitters with his deathballs all season like Okajima did?
• Can Julio be useful?
• How long will we keep marching Stomp Lewis out there with reduced velocity?
• Just how bad will the game have to be going before we see Mastny or Breslow again, and how bad will they be after a 15-day layoff?
• Has anyone noticed that Eddie Mujica is in his last option year?  Does anyone care?
• How much better can Laffey be than he was last year?  Is his ceiling is higher than we think?
• Can Steel Rafi get settled and find some semblance of his 2007 consistency?
• How many relievers would have to be failing completely for Adam Miller to get the call to the big-league bullpen?  Do we even want to see him there?
• Could Sowers be on the block soon?
• Is it really possible for Marte to spend 120 more days on the roster than Ben Francisco this season, and yet still get fewer at bats?
  
• Is Wedge basically just testing Marte to see how long it takes him to get an obviously bad attitude, at which point they ship him out?
• Will Shapiro fall for this kind of nonsense again?

The Game

Unlike most sites, we were "lucky" in that the game we'd have been Game Threading was delayed by rain.

The game has been rescheduled for today, 6:10 p.m., with Carmona still scheduled to start.  Today's originally scheduled 8:10 p.m. game has been pushed back to 9:40 p.m., with Lee still scheduled to start.

The Rotation

Jeremy Sowers will make the spot-start on Saturday, filling in for Jake Westbrook.  This is a mild surprise, as Aaron Laffey has slightly better numbers so far this season for Buffalo.  Wedge has said that Francisco is likely to be sent down to make room for Sowers ("I told Benny it's more than likely just a couple days.")

An unfortunate side-effect of the postponement of last night's game is that, if two games are actually played tonight, the Indians will need not just one spot starter on Saturday, but also a second spot starter on Monday.  With no rest day until May 5, the Indians would have to start Carmona on short rest on Monday in order to keep the five-man rotation in order, even with Sowers added.

Instead, the Indians will need another spot-starter on Monday, and that game's starter will also be lined up to take the mound the next time he's needed, on Saturday, May 3.  In other words, if both games are played tonight, then Sowers likely will be sent down to after this Saturday's game, to be replaced by another pitcher who can start on Monday and the following Saturday.

One would think that would be Laffey, but Laffey is scheduled to start for Buffalo tonight, which would put him on short rest for a Monday start.  Tantalizingly, Monday will be Adam Miller's turn in the rotation in Buffalo.  Miller emerged from March's rehab and April's extended spring training to make his official 2008 debut last night, pitching five innings and giving up three runs, though none earned, throwing 84 pitches and looking "completely healthy."  He has never pitched in the majors.

After May 3, the fifth starter could be skipped until May 12, but if Sowers is demoted this Sunday, he will not be eligible to return until May 17.  Given the Indians' fondness for playing with a 27-man roster, with four reasonably good spot-starter options in Buffalo and on the 40-man roster – these three plus Brian Slocum – we may well see three different spot starters over the next month if Westbrook remains out that long.

Westbrook is eligible to return from the DL as early as May 6.

The Site

As you probably noticed, the site was down last night, along with the entire SBN 2.0 network.  There was a massive but intermittent failure following a significant server upgrade performed the night before, and the network couldn't be brought back online without making significant changes and diagnostic tests.  The problem turned out to be bad RAM, but as those with an IT background can attest, it's very rare to have bad RAM cause intermittent problems rather than immediate failure, which made it hard to track down.

Naturally the SBN folks are deeply disappointed and frustrated to have had these problems, and naturally we all were annoyed by it — and naturally, this whole experience has the technical team already planning out deeper redundancies and "more paranoid" upgrade processes (their words).  On the other hand, I believe there's been less than ten hours of downtime on SBN over the past 30 months since I got involved, and the technical ambition of the 2.0 network speaks for itself.

Things may be a bit spotty for the next day or two, but we're told that the major failures should be over.  For future reference, we'll post updates on the LGT Facebook group forum in the event of a significant outage.

With Jake headed to the DL, the Indians will need to call up a starter from Triple-A to take his spot in the rotation.  Only two starts need to be covered if Jake's stay lasts only the minimum 15 days, which is likely.

To avoid starting anyone on short rest, the Indians will need a spot start by Saturday the 26th at the latest.  Westbrook's turn comes up on Friday the 25th, but Byrd could start a day early, Friday rather than Saturday, and still be on the usual four days of rest.

Fortunately, the Indians have four Triple-A starters who could be used without disrupting their normal routines too much.

Aaron Laffey looks like the odds-on favorite, and he could start Friday, in Westbrook's usual spot, with just one extra day of rest.  He's got a 3.13 ERA in four starts and is coming off five scoreless innings with 5 K and 2 BB.

Jeremy Sowers is a close second choice, with overall numbers that are very similar to Laffey's but are just slightly lesser.  His K:BB are 16:8 rather than 18:6, and his BIP aren't quite as grounded.  He could start Saturday on regular rest, with Byrd moving up his start to Friday.

Sean Smith makes an intriguing option and could start on regular rest Friday or with one extra day on Saturday.  He got roughed up two starts ago but is carrying a heavy 10 K/9, something neither Laffey or Sowers is every likely to do.  Smith is not on the 40-man roster, however, so another player would have to be released, traded for a minor leaguer, or moved to the 60-day DL in order to add him.  Further, with four other Triple-A starters already on the 40-man, there's no reason to think adding Smith now would turn out to be useful later in the season.

Atom Miller makes for the most interesting choice of all, however unlikely.  Miller finished rehabbing weeks ago and has been in extended Spring Training ever since, preparing to start his season tomorrow night in Buffalo.  The Indians certainly could have Miller throw a bullpen session tomorrow rather than making his scheduled start, which would have him set up to start a game on Friday or Saturday.  I don't think they'd do that considering how (justifiably) careful they've been with Miller ... but you never know.

Scott Elarton and Brian Slocum will not be considered, in Slocum's case because he pitched tonight and so could not step into the Indians rotation on regular rest, and in Elarton's case because he's been used out of the bullpen all season and hasn't faced more than 14 batters in any game – in the majors, minors or Spring Training – since last June.