Kuzul

Miracles happen, especially in sports. 

After a decade of futility the Tampa Bay Rays stunned the baseball world by winning the AL pennant in 2008, the organization’s first ever winning season.

The following year the Mariners, a preseason footnote in the AL West, won 85 games under GM Jack Zduriencik’s inaugural season. 

This season fans hopped on the San Diego Padres’ bandwagon and watched the team battle, albeit successfully, for the NL West Division crown.

Every year, as if on cue, a team marches towards contention following a remarkably quick and unsuspected turnaround.  As baseball nears the season’s climatic end, one is left to wonder which team is prepared to go unnoticed and quietly slip on the proverbially glass slipper come next April?

The Cleveland Indians.

The Indians 2010 season was a disaster. The team struggled from the start and frustrations began to mount as the team quickly faded out of contention. 

Underperforming players struggled to right the ship, young players failed to adjust to the rigors of big league life, injuries forced role players into every day jobs and veteran players were traded to make room for promising prospects. 

However, there are reasons for hope at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, despite a dismal 69-93 record.    

Trevor Crowe was thrust into one of those aforementioned everyday roles after Grady Sizemore succumbed to injury.

Crowe, a former first round pick out of the University of Arizona, displayed grit and hustle, but provided little help.  In 479 plate appearances he hit .251/.302/.333, and cost the team 12 runs according UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating). 

Using WAR (Wins Above Replacement), Crowe essentially cost the team one win over the course of the season. 

A healthy Grady Sizemore is expected for the 2011 season, but a productive Grady Sizemore is another question.

Sizemore, the team’s regular centerfielder, was one of baseball’s eminent budding young stars prior to the 2009.  He looked like he was on the edge of superstardom after ranking among the sport’s elite from 2006 to 2008.

Then the wheels fell off.

A disappointing 2009 was plagued by injuries, and the internet release of compromising photos in the offseason seemed to set the tone for this year. 

He often looked uncomfortable, and at times lost, in the batter’s box.  After hitting .211/.271/.289 in 33 games Sizemore eventually called it a lost season. 

It’s hard to predict which Sizemore will be patrolling centerfield in 2011, but remember only two seasons ago he posted a 7.1 WAR—essentially an eight game improvement over Trevor Crowe.

Injury also wrecked the season of Carlos Santana, one baseball’s top rookies.

Santana made his debut on June 11, and instantly became a much needed force in the middle of the Indians’ lineup. The team nearly played .500 (22-25) before a nasty collision at home plate ended his season. He hit .260/.401/.467 while the rest of the Tribe catchers hit .203/.279/.309 combined.

Santana’s offense and Lou Marson’s late inning defensive ability should quietly rank among the league’s best catching tandems in 2011.   

The team’s next biggest disappointments, outside of injury, were Matt LaPorta and Luis Valbuena.

LaPorta, considered the key piece in the Sabathia deal, hit .221/.306/.362, and earned a midseason demotion to Triple-A. 

It is still too early to toss him by the wayside with the likes of Jeremy Sowers and Michael Aubrey, but the front office’s patience has to be running thin. 

The former University of Florida alum has proven he can hit minor league pitching, and it wouldn’t be hard for him to take a step forward next year—considering how low he has set the bar. 

LaPorta may not be the impact bat the team thought he was, but any player who posts a career minor league line of .296/.390/.563 will have SOME positive major league value. 

Luis Valbuena, like LaPorta, earned an in-season demotion to the minor leagues.  Valbuena often looked like a black hole in the lineup and on the field. He hit .193/.273/.258 and cost the team almost seven runs on defense, according to UZR. His WAR total of -1.5 was among baseball’s worst. 

The emergence of Cord Phelps, Jared Goedert, Josh Rodriguez and Jason Kipnis will provide plenty of options, and upgrades, for Manny Acta to use next season at second and third bases. 

There is reason to believe in Cleveland baseball, again. The young pitching staff took a step forward after the All-Star break.

Fausto Carmona had his most productive season since the team’s magical run in 2007.  Justin Masterson was lights out for the final 5-7 weeks of the year, Carlos Carrasco started to capitalize on his vast potential and the farm system has some of the best bullpen arms in all of baseball. 

Hope runs eternal during spring training. Perhaps next spring the Indians will slip on the glass slipper and run all the way towards late season contention. 

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Times are tough in Cleveland, Ohio nowadays. The local economy, seemingly on the rebound everywhere else, continues to stagnate near the bottom of the national conscience. 

It is the middle of October, and the Indians are left at home watching playoff baseball for the third straight season. The Browns, with their third string rookie quarterback, lost to the Steelers, again—only by 18 points this time.  

Still, all of this pales in comparison to the Cleveland’s iconic son embarrassing the city on national TV before turning his back and joining his cohorts in Miami. 

The pulse of the city’s faithful may be at an all-time low, and that’s before baseball’s ultimate free spending team kicks a downtrodden organization, once again. 

C.C. Sabathia is the last homegrown superstar talent the Indians organization has drafted and developed. Fans patiently waited for him to blossom from a green 20-year-old to a legitimate frontline starting pitcher. 

Stardom has a price that a handful of teams can pay—including the Indians. Unfortunately, Sabathia pitched himself in another stratosphere—a place reserved for the elite money making machines.

Former GM Mark Shapiro, in a highly unpopular, but completely reasonable move, traded the big lefty to a contending team for a plethora of promising players. 

Enter. Cliff Lee.

Lee was obtained in another highly unpopular, yet, extraordinarily rewarding trade.  In hopes of accelerating the last rebuilding effort Shapiro traded Bartolo Colon, another former ace, for Lee, Brandon Phillips, and Grady Sizemore. 

In another universe, perhaps, a more favorable place for underdogs and small market baseball teams, the pairing of Sabathia and Lee would have rewarded an organization bereft of a World Series title.

Welcome to Cleveland, the unforgiving cosmos.

During the magical, if unsustainable, playoff run in 2007 Lee looked less like a major league hurler and more like a smile on Albert Belle’s face. Something just didn’t seem right. The formerly consistent league average pitcher morphed into a present day version of Steve Blass. 

Lee struggled through injuries and ailments including a right abdominal strain and a bad case of gopheritis. He was eventually replaced by Fausto Carmona—another burgeoning ace—and left off the postseason roster all together. 

Then, by some magical touch Lee started pitching and he continued to pitch. Past stardom, past superstardom. Now he has settled somewhere in between Sabathia and Sandy Koufax. Somewhere past the allowable limits of Paul Dolan’s purse strings. 

Enter the New York Yankees. 

The New York Yankees threw gobs of money towards Sabathia, and he accepted without hesitation. This offseason following another year, including continued dominance in the postseason, the Yankees will pursue, and more likely than not, sign Lee. 

The combined contracts of both lefties will settle in $40-45 million range—approximately 70 percent of Cleveland’s 2010 payroll. 

Next season’s Yankees will once again challenge for a World Series title, only this time 40 percent of their rotation will consist of former Cy Young Award winning Indians—and 100 percent of the Cleveland fans’ lost hope.

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The Indians, in a trade involving two former promising prospects, acquired shortstop turned second basemen turned outfielder Preston Mattingly from the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for outfielder Roman Pena. 

The Evansville High School standout, and the son of former Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly, was a surprise selection by the Dodgers in the 2006 draft.  Chosen with the 31st overall selection, the younger Mattingly was tabbed by Baseball America as the 10th overall prospect in a deep Los Angeles farm system prior to the 2007 season. 

Mattingly began his professional career by hitting .290/.322/.403 is 199 plate appearances and stole 12 bases in 15 tries for the Gulf Coast League Dodgers.  He showed promising power for a middle infielder by hitting 12 doubles, three triples, and 1 home run, but struggled mightily with the glove.  In the 30 game GCL cameo, Mattingly committed 10 errors in 99 chances.

Despite the early success Mattingly has often looked overmatched at the plate and in the field since his debut. 

The team promoted the position-less and quickly fading prospect to high-A prior to the ‘09 season despite him hitting .210/.251/.297 and .224/.263/.337 in back-to-back seasons in A-ball.  To no one’s surprise the newly christened left fielder continued to swing a paper thin bat mustering a .238/.296/.350 line. 

This season the Dodgers, running thin on patience, demoted the former first rounder back to rookie ball where he continued to struggle. 

The Los Angeles organization envisioned him as a raw, and a potential middle-of-the-order run producer, but Mattingly has failed to improve his pitch recognition.  The change of scenery away from his father’s organization might allow him to become a useful career minor leaguer or even a fourth big league outfielder.

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After toiling away in anonymity his first two seasons in professional baseball, Chun-Hsiu Chen, 21, has posted numbers guaranteed to vault his status among the game’s top catching prospects. 

The Indians signed the Taiwanese backstop in September 2007 for $300,000 after he  grabbed headlines the previous season during the World Junior Championships. 

Chen, a dominant force in the batter’s box and on the mound, hit .417, slugged .500, and his fastball clocked as high as 92 mph. 

The team sent the young backstop to the Gulf Coast League, where he had a modest showing as a hitter, .261/.336/.409, and as a defender.  In 31 games behind the plate, Chen threw out 30  percent of base runners and committed four errors. 

Chen was promoted to low-A Mahoning Valley the following season and promptly struggled in most facets of the game. 

He often looked overmatched at the plate and the lack of experience on defense became apparent.  In 231 plate appearances, Chen hit a miserable .215/.328/.308 and committed seven errors and allowed nine passed balls.

The highlight of an otherwise lost season was his ability to rely on one aspect of his God-given talent: his arm.  The former high school ace threw out an incredible 42 percent (22 of 53) base runners during the season. 

Team decision makers, in one of the most underrated moves of the 2009-10 offseason, astutely promoted him to Lake County for the following season despite his obvious struggles. 

Chen did not disappoint.

In 240 plate appearances, he battered and abused A-ball pitchers on his way to hitting .312/.368/.518.  Power, his most attractive tool in high school, began to develop. 

Scouts, as a precursor to home runs, look for doubles in young hitters, and Chen morphed into an extra base machine. He hit 21 doubles, 3 triples, and 6 homers for an isolate power (ISO.) of .206. 

He continued to hit after a promotion and finished with a line of .320/.442/.523 in high-A Kinston. 

Below are Chen’s stats for the 2010 season.

Tm	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	TB
Lake County	240	218	27	68	21	3	6	39	1	17	38	0.312	0.368	0.518	0.887	113
Kinston	217	172	31	55	17	0	6	30	4	38	36	0.32	0.442	0.523	0.966	90
Combined	457	390	58	123	38	3	12	69	5	55	74	0.315	0.404	0.521	0.924	203

The Indians already have their catcher of future in Carlos Santana but, Chen’s continued development could create a problem team officials would love: two middle of the order, power-hitting catchers. 

Prior to the season, Chun-Hsiu Chen did not even make Baseball America’s top 30 Indians prospects but, expect that change.  Chen will vault up the team’s list and could crack the top 5, or possibly top 3, prospects. 

Sunnier days are coming for Cleveland fans, and Chun-Hsiu Chen is just another reason for optimism. 

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