Some of you may have noticed the Battle for 15th Place chart that's been on the right-side column of the front page for the past five days.  It's now gone from the sidebar, but here's the final version:

(Tiebreakers awarded in order of 2007 finish: Cleveland, Arizona, Toronto, LA Dodgers, St. Louis, Houston, Florida.)

This chart reflects tonight's St. Louis victory over Arizona, Cleveland's loss, and Toronto's victory.  It doesn't reflect the Astros and Dodgers games, which are still going on, because those games have become irrelevant.  Oddly enough, the Battle for 15th Place ended when the Marlins-Nationals game was cancelled a few minutes ago.  Since that game has no postseason implications, it will not be made up.

That means that Florida cannot finish with a record worse than 82-79, while Cleveland and Arizona can't finish better than 82-80, which is a half-game worse.  The Dodgers will finish no worse than 83-79, while Houston and Toronto can't end with more than 78 losses.  So, oddly enough, this peculiar anti-race is over even with three or four games left to play.  There is just a strange little gap in the standings, right in between 15th and 16th, so that Cleveland and Arizona cannot finish higher than 16th, and the clubs currently above them can't finish lower than 15th.

For those wondering what the hell I'm talking about, the idea here is that if you can't make the playoffs, you're better off finishing in the Bottom 15 (among all 30 teams) rather than the Top 15, because of draft pick compensation for free agents.  If your team signs a Type A free agent in the offseason, then the team has to give up its first-round draft pick to the team that player is leaving.  If your team signs a second Type A free agent, then the team has to give up its second-round pick, and so on.

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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.

via www.fangraphs.com

The end was coming, but it still sucks.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, the schedule was set up for the Indians to make a lot of ground. If they had taken 6 out of 8 against divisional opponents, then split the four-game series against Tampa going into the All-Star Break, they would still have had a lot to make up, but coming back would nevertheless be plausible. Especially with Fausto Carmona due back in the rotation, and Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner now being a few weeks away from returning to the lineup.

But that stretch also meant that one bad series would end the season. Which has happened. Now it's time for Mark Shapiro to take stock of the organization, identify the most pressing needs, and field about ten thousand calls for CC Sabathia. (Other goals: get somebody to overpay for Casey Blake and Paul Byrd, and foist David Dellucci on somebody.)

The game itself was a nice microcosm of this year's team. Cliff Lee again pitched magnificently, but couldn't stick around long enough for the offense to score its second run of the game. And when the Indians did take the lead, Joe Borowski blew the lead and the game. One good thing about the end of competitiveness is that the Indians don't have to pretend to need Borowski closing or even pitching in games.

via www.fangraphs.com

To say Cliff Lee deserved better and Joe Borowski deserved less would be an understatement. Lee pitched 7.1 excellent innings and got a no-decision, and Borowski caused that no-decision but got the win. 

The Indians lead 4-0 as the eighth started. Lee allowed a one-out single to Matt Kemp, and was removed in favor of Rafael Betancourt. All three members of last year's Circle of Trust would appear in the game, and all three would be charged with a run or allow a run to score. Borowski's appearance was the most pathetic of the three; he allowed three hits and two runs and was about an inch on Adam LaRoche's bat from blowing the game. It's time for a new name for this bullpen, since the Circle of Trust has long since been applicable to this group. Perhaps Corps of Despair is a more fitting name?

The top of the tenth was almost as laughably depressing were it not for an unexpected at-bat from Jhonny Peralta. The Indians loaded the bases against Dodger closer Takashi Saito, but Franklin Gutierrez hit into a 6-2-5 double play, a variation I've never seen. Ben Francisco, who started from second, apparently thought that shortstop Angel Berroa was about to catch Gutierrez's ball and scampered back to the bag. By this time, Berroa had thrown home to force Jamey Carroll and it was now too late for Francisco to make third. Now there were two outs, and given how the Indians bullpen has performed lately, extending the game any length would have given the Dodgers even more of an advantage, to say nothing of the momentum gained in the last two at-bats. But Jhonny Peralta smacked a double to the base of the right field wall, scoring two. Kobayashi ended the game with a fairly quiet bottom of the tenth.

It was a big win, since it got the Indians back to 7.5 games behind Chicago, keeping whatever faint hope of relevance the Indians had alive for another day.

via www.fangraphs.com

Paul Byrd being able to outpitch Justin Verlander appears to break several laws of physics. But the guy who sits in the mid-80s and goes down from there was better than the guy who sits in the mid-90s and more or less stays there tonight. He got through 7 innings without really being in much trouble; the two runs he gave up were both on solo home runs. Normally Byrd is allowing a couple hits an inning, relying on high-pressure pitches to get him out of jams, but tonight the innings were stress-free.

Ryan Garko had his moment of the season in the eighth inning. After getting back on track in Texas with mainly opposite-field hits, Garko reacted on a pitch down and in, and jerked it out of the park, giving the Indians an important insurance run. The home run came after Garko fouled off several pitches that were on or just off the outside corner; that plate coverage kept him at the plate, and he didn't miss the mistake inside. The hours of frustrating batting practice suddenly became worth it.

Joe Borowski has also recovered his 2007 form. His fastball is back to sitting in the high 80s, and while he didn't have good control of his slider tonight, his velocity is now good enough to get by most nights.

The Indians are still in survival mode, with not a whole lot separating them from irrelevancy, but at least some players are finally turning things around. Hopefully the bottom has already happened.

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.

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:  Hosted the Red Sox (loss, loss) and Tigers (loss, win) and visited the Twins (win, loss, loss).

The big story:  We got six quality starts out of seven, but our offense got exactly one win out of those six quality starts.  These weren't borderline quality starts, either – in each of the six, the starter either made it into the 7th inning or gave up less than 2 runs, and in three out of six, he did both.  Five regulars put up averages under .170 while only one hit better than .250 – but they maddeningly continued to draw walks, drawing the fifth-most this week in the AL despite apparently not being able to hit.  The Indians were only outscored by five runs on the week but managed to distribute their runs badly, winning two games by 14 runs and losing five games by 19 runs.  The net result is that the Indians missed an opportunity to get a little distance in the standings from the Tigers, joining them in the cellar instead, and fans are forced to start wondering just how inevitable a crash is for first-place Chicago.

In other news:  Sabathia and Borowski, nominally our #1 starter and reliever respectively, further bombed out.  Already the worst starter in baseball entering the week, Sabathia gave up his second nine-spot in a week's time, one of just two pitchers to give up more than six runs in a game, twice, in 2008 – and his co-honoree Tom Gorzellany has an ERA more than four runs lower.  Borowski, meanwhile, failed in such spectacular and obvious fashion – struggling to throw a  fastball over 80 mph – that many felt relieved to see such his agonizing career as Indians closer end swiftly (at least for the moment) by a trip to the DL for "noodle-like symptoms."  It turned out that Borowski's giddyup deficit was well known to the staff, which raised questions as to why he was allowed to attempt to close four games.  Sabathia and Borowski's struggles led directly to five of our 12 losses this season, and we survived Sabathia's Opening Day blowout and nearly overcame another on April 11.  So it's not wishful thinking to believe that even with all the team's other problems, we'd probably be 11-8 right now had these two pitchers not failed so profoundly.

Lee continued his improbable run as the game's most effective pitcher, leading the majors in RA, ERA and FIP.   Byrd made a more or less unheralded return to form this week with two very fine starts, while Carmona quieted fears following last week's  nine-walk adventure.  Hafner hit a game-winning home run but otherwise struggled to keep his OPS over 700, as Indians fans start to wonder if we haven't even seen him hit rock-bottom yet.   Perez bounced back from a shellacking the previous weekend to pitch effectively in four games, but he was finally touched for a run on his 11th batter of the game yesterday, his first game facing more than 9 batters since moving out of long relief last June.  Despite being tagged with a loss yesterday, he actually made great strides toward re-asserting himself as an 8th-inning ace.

Post of the week:  Now taking nominations.

Who fed it:  Byrd pitched far better than your typical #5 starter, giving up just one run over 13 IP in two starts.  Lee put up eight innings of two-hit, shutout ball and fans looked on in disbelief.  Victor surged back with a 12-for-27 week, but his searing .444 average was a little empty, accompanied by just one walk and one extra-base hit, a double.  Carroll continued to perform well in a supporting role, supplementing his .200 average with a beefy .500 secondary average and his usual fine defensive play.  Perez was unlucky on base hits but overall very effective over four games and 4.2 IP, allowing just one walk and no extra-base hits to go with 6 K's – 11 groundballs, 3 flyballs and just one line drive.  Absolute Best:  Lee.  Relative Best:  Byrd. 

Who ate it:  Sabathia and Borowski were complete disasters – although in fairness, Sabathia's ERA for the week (20.25) was twice as good as Borowski's (40.50) .  While many hitters were terrible, nothing was more awful than Peralta's slugging average of .136, or more disappointing than Sizemore's overall line of .160/.300/.240, or more troubling than Hafner's overall line of .167/.259/.333.  Stomp Lewis had two miserable outings out of two, lucky to give up only two runs to Boston after allowing two doubles and two walks in the two-run loss, and allowing two walks before getting just one out a few nights later.  Absolute Worst:  Peralta.  Relative Worst:  Borowski.

The other guys:  Indians pitchers got mugged pretty good by Manny, Lugo and Pedroia for the Red Sox, as well as Renteria, Cabrera and Inge for the Tigers, but nobody inflicted as much damage as Youkilis, who collected a walk, a single, three doubles and a home run in just two games, good for a 2075 OPS.   Ortiz produced an empty 3-for-10, 600 OPS, and needed some luck even to do that well.  Pudge went 0-for-6, stranding ten, in a game where his teammates were teeing off on Indians pitchers to the tune of 11 runs.  Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez, both 22-year-olds acquired in the offseason, combined for just one single and one walk in 23 AB.  On the other side, the Indians dispatched Verlander, Lester and Liriano handily only to get manhandled by the utterly unheralded Armanda Galarraga and Nick Blackburn, plus the somewhat heralded Scott Baker.  The Indians put up a five-spot on Detroit's Zach Miner to seal their one strong offensive game, but against Boston, Papelbon and Okajima each sealed a two-run victory with a two-strikeout perfect final frame.

False alarms:

• Paul Byrd as an excellent starter.
  
• Sabathia being the worst pitcher in the game.
• Borowski being sent in to close a game.
  
• Perez looking rough.
  

Open questions:

• Can we turn it around quickly enough that we don't dig a 2006-sized hole for ourselves in the standings?
  
• Since any blogger writing in his/her parents' basement in his/her underwear can speculate on whether C.C.'s contract situation is distracting him, what exactly do we need newspaper columnists for?
• Too soon to start the Cy watch for Cliff Lee?
• How long can Byrd keep it together?
• How long can Sabathia keep it apart?
• What kind of production will the team consider acceptable from AbaCab? 
  
• Why are the Indians so strangely unwilling to play Blake in LF or RF, which would allow them to give Marte playing time in lieu of Micheals and sometimes Gutierrez?
• Is there anything more to the lack of playing time for Marte, other than his just being low-man on the totem pole to start the season?
  
• How much playing time will Carroll siphon from Peralta and especially AbaCab, and will his performance hold up given more exposure?
  
• Will Borowski ever return to the active roster, and if so, in what role?
• Kobayashi, Breslow, Julio – seriously, can these guys pitch?
  

 Joe Borowski WPA: -.742

This Manny Ramirez quote pretty much says all you need to know about how Joe Borowski pitched last night:

"[It was] like a fastball," Ramirez said. "It was something like 80 [mph]. Or a changeup. It was right there."

 If what Joe Borowski threw to Ramirez was a fastball, then there's something wrong with him physically. If that's the case, at least there's reason to hope that Joe can regain those mphs that he's lost. If he's healthy, then he can't be the closer any longer.

"The ball just wasn't coming out of his hand like you typically see with him," manager Eric Wedge said, "and he didn't have the location he normally has."

Such concerns reek of potential arm or shoulder trouble, and Borowski did not deny that a postgame MRI exam was a possibility.

All of which points Joe not entering the game the next time a save situation presents itself. It stinks that it had to come down to this, for Borowski's velocity has been down all season - it wasn't like he was throwing faster in his first few appearances. And what if Casey Blake had been playing his normal position to start the ninth? Would all this soul-searching have occurred even if Joe had gotten the save? I would hope so.

Of course, the reason Borowski entered the game in the first place shouldn't be forgotten. Jake Westbrook, after a high-stress first, pitched very well again, getting the Indians into the seventh inning. And the offense, while still not firing on all cylinders, showed some resemblence to the patient, pitcher-devouring approach employed last year. The only problem is that they were one hit from putting the game away in the fifth; Ryan Garko and Franklin Gutierrez struck out with the bases loaded against Julian Tavarez, who to be fair had great stuff. But the opportunity was there, and they couldn't take advantage of it.