I’ve been watching the Indians play a lot more frequently now that basketball season is over and August is approaching, the slowest month of the year in Hollywood. As I’ve already alluded to, I’ve largely enjoyed watching the games, even though baseball has its problems. It is an ideal sport to put on TV in the background when you’re doing something else.
You probably already know that the Indians have been playing the Yankees since Monday. On Tuesday night, while watching just called up Josh Tomlin throw 7 innings of no walk, no home run baseball, I was stricken by the gigantic discrepancy between the star power on the Yankees and that of the Indians.
Tomlin versus CC Sabathia. Alex Rodriguez versus Jhonny Peralta. Derek Jeter versus Asdrubal Cabrera. Curtis Granderson versus Trevor Crowe…
I could go on, but I won’t. At least in terms of the national perception - and really the historic background of the players themselves - it was almost like the Yankees were an All-Star team, and the Indians were a bunch of minor leaguers.
Which actually isn’t that far from the truth.
At any rate, however, I was also taken by how much more fun it was to root for the Indians precisely because of this fact. That they ended up beating the Yankees 4-1 made for an even better experience.
Like neuroscience / culture writer Jonah Lehrer talked about here, there is a lot to be said about rooting for the underdog. Although it happens naturally with any team, even those that are not our favorites, it’s even better when your favorite team is the underdog - and, of course, when they win.
I started to realize then, that there is a flip side to all the negative things you’ve heard and we’ve written about the NBA’s move towards super teams. When LeBron, Bosh, and Wade decided to join together in Miami, they also indirectly created a whole new set of underdogs. Watching good but not great teams like the Milwaukee Bucks, or up and coming teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder compete against the Heat will be ten times more enjoyable now. And although I will certainly miss watching James and Wade try to beat each other’s brains in on the floor, the Cavs-Heat game will take on an entirely different, but still quite substantive, competitive character now that Cleveland is resoundingly an underdog team.
This realization on my part, I thought, was a positive sign about life as a sports fan in Cleveland. Rooting for the underdog may not be the same as winning a championship, but it is something pretty great, and something to be cherished.
And if and when the underdog wins the title, that might just be the best thing ever.
Something we’ve probably all been wondering about - openly or not - is whether the Cavaliers will still be fun to watch in 2010-11, even if they end up not being competitive.
I think I have an answer to this question because I’ve been watching the Indians when I have free time …
The answer is yes.
Unless every single game is a total blowout, watching young players fight to win and make a name for themselves - so long as they do so in the best interest of the team - can actually be really fun. Part of it may be hallucinatory - us getting our hopes u thinking, Yeah, maybe Christian Eyenga really will become the next LeBron - but even that can be fun.
In fact, there is a certain part of me that actually enjoys watching teams that are going nowhere more than teams that are vying for the championship. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit relieved to be able to sit down and watch the NBA Finals without having a horse in the race. Without anxiety - which I have enough of already - looming over me.
This isn’t to say that I don’t deeply love watching sports when there’s a lot on the line not only for the players but for the fans I’ve aligned myself with. However, I have tried to detach myself from winning and losing as time has gone on. I remember feeling absolutely horrible for days after the Indians lost to the Red Sox in game 7 of the ALCS in 2007. After that, I decided that I never wanted to feel that way again - not when it came to things I couldn’t control.
So even when our favorite teams may not be in contention for a title, they can still be a pleasure to follow and watch, just as long as they’re not getting blown out. Plus, it’s always fun to root against other teams. And thankfully the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Heat, and now maybe the Magic or the Knicks (shout to CP3) aren’t going to be contracted any time soon.
If all else fails, there’s Carlos Santana, who has a great “I love to win” personality (watch his actions after he catches a third strike) and who also seems to be an equally great talent (it’s early, but he has a .978 OPS).
Enjoy the weekend, homies. Just say no to the Chris Paul and LeBron James version of doing what’s best for you and your family.
This is my least favorite part of the year from a sporting standpoint.
Not only are the NBA playoffs long gone, but the exciting aspect of free agency is in the rear view miror, too. Regular season baseball holds no draw whatsoever for me (at least, as an Indians’ fan). Football season is still two months off.
In fact, I was in a sports bar on Saturday night and the only coverage running on TV was of the British Open and Summer League basketball. Yikes.
I bring this up because, in a way, it highlights the state of the average Cleveland fan. With LeBron gone, many seem to think, what the hell do we do now?
Now, as I’ve written recently, practically everyone is underestimating the quality of the Cavs’ roster James left behind. They’ve already been written off as, if not a lottery team, certainly a team that won’t so much as sniff the 8th seed in the East. I disagree with this, but perception is reality.
Despite a recent surge, the Indians are still an ocean away from competing in the Central division. Carlos Santana has added some small bit of intrigue, but facts are facts. The Tribe is 12.5 games behind the White Sox, with both the Twins and Tigers only 1.5 games out of first themselves. It’s not impossible the team could get back into the race, but at this point it seems unlikely.
This leaves the Browns.
Energized by Mike Holmgren’s presence, some notable (if dubious) off-season moves, and a hold-over effect from the 4-game winning streak on which they rode out the 2009 season, the Browns have become the city’s undisputed sports focal point.
That said, no one (fans or pundits) seems to believe the 2010 Browns will be better than .500, and even that may be a near-miracle.
For now, though, they are once again the great hope.
This raises a semi-interesting question about expectation.
In my opinion, the Browns have enjoyed somewhat of an irrational golden age in the court of public opinion for the past several years. You can tell me that attendance was dramatically down this past season. That’s true. You could tell me that Browns fans have had no lack of venom to spew about the team, the coaching staff, the organization as a whole. That’s true too.
But I would argue that it’s also true that while in or near season, they’ve still dominated the sports discussion in the city.
More importantly, they’ve done this despite the fact that, by any measure, they have sucked all but two years since the franchise reboot.
Since that time, the burden of being THE team in Cleveland expected to win has seldom been on them. The Indians won at least 90 games per season from 1999-2001. The Cavs lucked into LeBron James in the summer of 2003. Appropriately enough, the Browns went 9-7 and made the playoffs in 2002.
Obviously, the Cavs weren’t expected to immediately shoot into title contention after the 2003 draft. But the mere hope and excitement around having the home-town phenom on OUR team, for once, may have been enough to keep people satisfied for a time—especially when the Cavs won 18 more games in 2003-4, barely missed the playoffs the season after, and then grew into a perennial playoff team and seeming powerhouse until, oh, about two weeks ago.
During that time, Clevelanders could look to the Browns as a favored son, partially because the hope for winning could be largely satisfied by someone else. In the years immediately after the Browns’ return, it was the Indians. Since 2003, it’s largely been the Cavs.
Now, though, the spotlight has squarely turned back to Berea.
Some historical perspective comes into play here, too. Since the Cavs completed the pro triumvirate in Cleveland with their inaugural 1970 season, there have only been 5 years out of a possible 40 where multiple of the city’s franchises have been competitive at once.
The only time that all three have been simultaneously good was 1994. The ‘93-94 Cavs got into the playoffs on a 47-35 record, but lost in the opening round; the ‘94 Browns went 11-5 and were hammered by the Steelers in the Divisional round of the post-season; and the ‘94 Indians were 66-47 when the lock-out crashed the rest of the season.
Aside from that magical year, the Cavs and Browns were both playoff teams in 1989 & 1990. The Cavs and Tribe were both playoff teams in 1985 & 1998.
That’s it.
The point? Almost invariably, there has only ever been one of the three teams “worth” following, i.e. if you define value in terms of the expectation that the team can truly compete week after week.
With James gone and the Cavs likely to embark on a longer-term rebuilding process, the weight falls once again on the shoulders of Randy Lerner’s team. I suspect this has already magnified the intensity of the pressure the organization feels.
They can no longer be the puppy that everyone loves, despite that it keeps whizzing on the carpet. For the first time in a long time, they are going to be expected to produce for the city.
Starting in about two months, we’ll all find out whether they’ve righted the ship just in time to shoulder the load. If not, it could be a long year for any Cleveland fan who isn’t willing to take the long view.
In my opinion, Major League Baseball is in danger of becoming irrelevant. Not only is the pace of the sport very 20th century - a pretty significant problem since we are living in the 21st century - but the league also refuses to use technology that 5-year-olds are capable of operating, presumably because doing so would take away from the “purity” of the game. Well, as the great General Eric Shinseki (?) has said, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
According to CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell, the Cleveland Indians were averaging 15,530 fans per game as of June 8th. Progressive Field holds 43,345 seats. League wide in 2009, stadiums sat at an average of 30,297 fans (68.3% of capacity). This year, through about 40 games, both the team with the highest attendance (the Yankees) and the lowest (the Indians) had lower per game averages than the teams that ranked #1 and #30 last season. Although the economy has gotten better, attendance has gone down (this, of course, could change by the end of the year).
Additionally, the economics of professional sports have been altered. Cities may be wising up and realizing that it doesn’t make sense for them to pay egregious amounts of money to build new arenas and stadiums just so owners can gobble up higher concession prices and more cash for brand new private suite purchases. The Maloof Brothers have basically stopped asking for the city of Sacramento to build the Kings a new arena. That is partially because the state of California is on the verge of bankruptcy. It is also because, guess what, companies aren’t buying private suites anymore - which is why we could’ve bought tickets to a suite at the Q during the NBA Finals had the Cavs made it there - and why we could lock up seats in a loge at Progressive Field right now. Therefore, new stadiums mean a lot less to owners than they did only a few short years ago.
At the same time, pro sports - like every other form of entertainment - now have to compete with a multitude of other options when it comes to men, women, teenagers, and children choosing what to do in their free time. Digital technology and the internet have made content so easy to create and distribute that we are overwhelmed with options. In the past, I didn’t have the option of streaming a movie from Netflix on my iPad instead of going to or watching an Indians game - now I do.
Again, as far as I’m concerned, of the three major sports, baseball is the most at risk because, by and large, it is anachronistic. It also suffers from an amazingly long season of 162 games, making it seem as if there’s barely any reason to watch until September, players that often look out of shape, and now, apparently, a de-emphasis on hitting thanks to the crackdown on performance enhancing drugs.
In other words, baseball is on its way to becoming a niche sport - and it needs to start acting like it.
I would recommend that Major League Baseball start thinking a lot more like Minor League Baseball. Contract the number of teams, first of all. Make the league more competitive, and more fun to watch, by packing maximum talent into fewer places. Force the teams to play faster. If this takes preventing pitchers from stepping off the mound and batters from leaving the batter’s box, do it. Either abolish the DH in the American League or give the DH to the National League. Make the rules uniform. Institute a salary cap. I know baseball has had more parity - in terms of championship winners - than basketball or football recently, but inefficiencies in the market are being exposed. The Yankees and the Red Sox got smart; Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s can’t use stats to outsmart the big spenders anymore. Lack of parity is coming.
Stop building new stadiums. Or if you new stadiums are built, make them smaller. Give fans a more intimate viewing experience, akin to what they get at minor league games. Do crazy promotions. Bring back nickel beer night. The Indians are already veering towards this, with all you can eat seats and Dollar Dog nights. From what I’ve heard, they’re also ripping off the entire Cavaliers game operations scheme, with funny skits in between innings and PhotoShopped pictures of the players on the scoreboard. They even use the sound of Mario powering up in-game, like the Cavs use the sound of him nabbing a coin after successfully made back-to-back free throws. Toss in a cornhole tournament, and the Indians are only a few thousand lost fans away from being the Lake Erie Crushers.
Will any of this really, truly work? Probably not. Sports are still unparalleled as an entertainment experience because we have no idea what the outcome will be while the stakes are always clear - one team will win and one team will go home losers. To turn the game into, essentially, a big joke comedy experience does the sport a disservice. But when you’re a sport that’s becoming less relevant, and you’re a team within that sport that’s failing to be competitive, you need to do what you can.
I’m guessing this might be the least read post of the week. Just having “Indians” in the header might cause some people to delete the Mesa bookmark from their browser or eliminate our feed from their RSS reader. Well, if you hadn’t realized by now … we’re not here to cooperate.
Also, in case you weren’t watching - and I’m going to assume you weren’t - the Indians beat the Red Sox tonight by a score of 8-7. Yes, Kerry Wood blew a save. Remember when he struck out 20 hitters in his rookie season? One game doesn’t make a career. Neither does one season. Say word, Stephen Strasburg.
Since the newspapers and most sites publish regular box scores, concentrating on numbers like batting average, ERA, and wins and losses, I thought I’d go through the Indians player by player and measure how they were performing based on OPS+, SO/KK, and HR/9.
I’ve grouped the Indians into two categories - above average and below average.
ABOVE AVERAGE HITTERS
OPS+ (On base + slugging, adjusted for ballpark) of 100 is average
Russell Branyan: 117 Jhonny Peralta: 102 Austin Kearns: 137 Shin-Soo Choo: 139 Travis Hafner: 107 Andy Marte: 113 Shelley Duncan: 131 Anderson Hernandez: 103
BELOW AVERAGE HITTERS
Lou Marson: 49 Luis Valbuena: 54 Asdrubal Cabrera: 92 Grady Sizemore: 57 Matt LaPorta: 59 Mark Grudzielanek: 70 Trevor Crowe: 86 Jason Donald: 77 Mike Redmond: 48 Michael Brantley: 18
ABOVE AVERAGE PITCHERS IN STRIKE OUTS TO WALKS RATIO
SO/BB ratio of 1.98 is the average so far this season in the AL
Leave this field blank. That’s right. No Indians pitcher has an above average SO/BB ratio.
Justin Masterson, the Indians worst starting pitcher in the court of public opinion, actually leads the team with a 1.74 SO/BB ratio.
As we know, BB, SO, and HR are more accurate measures of a pitchers’ performance than wins and losses or runs allowed.
Pitchers lose games because of poor run support. They get no decisions because of crappy bullpens. They give up runs (ERA) because of weak defense and the random ways in which the ball often bounces.
So how do the Indians’ pitchers fare in HR/9?
ABOVE AVERAGE PITCHERS IN HOME RUNS ALLOWED PER 9 INNINGS
HR/9 of 1.0 is the average so far this season in the AL
I’ll even throw Mitch Talbot in to the mix because he was at 1.0 before tonight, and he didn’t give up any homers in 4.0 innings.
BELOW AVERAGE PITCHERS IN STRIKE OUTS TO WALKS RATIO
Justin Masterson: 1.74 Chris Perez: 1.70 Hector Ambriz: 1.63 Tony Sipp: 1.47 Jake Westbrook: 1.41 David Huff: 1.33 Fausto Carmona: 1.19 Mitch Talbot: 1.19 Kerry Wood: 1.14 Jensen Lewis: 1.09 Rafael Perez: 1.00 Jamey Wright: 1.00 Aaron Laffey: 0.85 Joe Smith: 0.83
BELOW AVERAGE PITCHERS IN HOME RUNS ALLOWED PER 9 INNINGS
Joe Smith: 2.6 Tony Sipp: 2.2 David Huff: 1.5 Chris Perez: 1.3 Jake Westbrook: 1.1 Hector Ambriz: 1.0 Kerry Wood: 1.0 (gave up a HR tonight; will be lower tomorrow morning)
What’s the takeaway from all of this? I had been getting the impression, without watching a ton of games, that the Indians hitting had been killing them while the pitching had been better than suggested.
These numbers would seem to imply that the opposite is true instead.
