Viewpoint - What Would It Take?
March 29, 2004
Written by MadAlan

(Read archived articles here)

Lets strip the Cleveland Indians and the Texas Rangers to see what it would take for them to win their division. Why do this? Just read on.

The Division
Minnesota, Chi White Sox, Kansas City, Cleveland, Detroit

The Indians have as much of a chance to win their division as anyone else. They don’t even require everyone having an enormous season either. The hard off-season work they achieved in getting young athletes and pitchers that have some idea of the plate location for a few larger than life contract holders was a success. Minnesota is picked to win the division based on history alone. Whether the Indians win or not certainly the Twins will not finish in first place. Each team in this division could win the division because they are so closely lumped together talent going up and talent going down wise. I exclude Detroit.

The Royals have the best chance and the Indians can beat them too. A look at Cleveland breaks down like this:

Indian Pitching
Cliff Lee showed some special qualities last season including less hits than innings pitched – a sign of a really good pitcher. That alone can mean he is the real deal and he can win 12-15 games this season.

Jason Stanford a very smart pitcher at a very young age. He has sound control and an understanding of how to set-up a batter. He can win a dozen or so games. C.C. Sabathia is only 23 and has already proven to be a top of the rotation pitcher. Last season he won 13 games so to see that expand to 18 is no big shake for him and for the Tribe to really win he would need to win 20 games. Also no big deal for him.

Betancourt was told by the Cleveland management and pitching coach Hershiser “don’t change anything!” His first 38 innings produced only 27 hits, 13 walks and 36 strikeouts. If he was put into the rotation he could win 10-13 games but they want to see him as the set-up guy.

Westbrook is a young Jamie Moyer clone in progress. In his 3 seasons he has improved each year and is in-line to be in the rotation as a different look than the power-pitchers.

J. Davis is the number three-starter within the rotation and won 8 games last year. A jump to 12 wins could be had no doubt.
Riske is the new closer and he has shown the others on the pitching staff how to get hitters out. Nobody hits his pitches and he strikes out a bunch of hitters. He alone can be the difference whether a starting pitcher gets the win or not and that could mean more confidence with the staffs starters. The 5 starters above can get the Indians 70 wins alone, the set-up guy is un-hittable and so is the closer.

Special Weapon – Scott Stewart was a steal for the Tribe. He is a solid no-nonsense reliever that can get them to Betancourt about 65 times. This may be the key to the season.

Indian Hitting
Jody Gerut led the team in home runs with 22 last season. This year expect about the same.
Casey Blake hit 17 home runs and is capable of hitting 25 as he continues to mature.
Ben Broussard is the type hitter, give him 500 at-bats and reap 30-35 home runs.
Milton Bradley gets on base and scores the runs the Bashers knock-in. A “natural hitter,” possibly a .300 hitter for the next 10 years.
Alex Escobar is a natural hitter, quick stroke with quick wrists. Could hit over .300 plus 15 homers and 25 stolen bases given 450 at-bats.
Matt Lawton is a leadoff hitter with 15 homers potential each year.
Travis Hafner is the type hitter, give him 500 at-bats and reap 30-35 home runs.
Ryan Ludwick is the type hitter, give him 500 at-bats and reap 30-35 home runs.
Coco Crisp is a crash and run exciting player that disrupts opponent pitchers and steals bases. Crisp would hit .280 and score 85-100 runs dependent upon his location in the batting order.
That’s a lot of hitting. Unfortunately most of these players overlap on the field with the positions they play. Outside of Blake, the rest either are outfielders or play first base. The DH position helps some and they all know the disabled list.

The Division
Angels, Athletics, Mariners and Rangers

One of the big attractions to baseball is the fact every season some new players emerge, some known players improve and some surprise team will fight until the end to win. Or two surprise teams fight to the end, or more … its baseball. If this simple fact was untrue no such thing as Fantasy Baseball could exist for long. All surprises are welcome here whereupon injuries are critical to this particular division each season. In this case some really outstanding pitching could be pushed hard to the edge with better hitting. It is not impossible for Seattle or Oakland or both to drop with such limited hitting and Pat Gillick gone. Gillick is the Scotty Bowman (Hockey) of baseball GMs. He will get the required players when needed on time, to win. Injuries have not really plagued Oakland or Seattle in a long time. Why not now? And every division needs a ‘what-iff’ team or two.

That leaves the Angels as the one most often injured team in the AL each year. They make them over there; Salmon, Anderson, Eckstein and Erstad are farm-grown products built by their own system. All this talk is excluding Garret Anderson. This is one player young enough, who continues to enlarge his up side each year, to in fact have a chance to be a Hall of Fame player. Now if you look at this division once more it is not so difficult to see how the Rangers can quietly sneak in. They are not just young some of them are pretty good.

In Texas they un loaded for youth as well and they too have a bunch of talented young players. Blalock and Young may be as good as they played and that is a very good thing. Both are better than average fielders with a throwback style of play.

Ranger Pitching
Chan Ho Park was never a true ace but more of an ace by attrition. His best year was 2000 when he won 18 games. He is an innings eater when he is going well. It’s been so long it is bound to reoccur. He is a 15 game winner though.

R.A. Dickey by seasons end was no longer giving up 10, 12 14 hits each game and that was his biggest negative. The change was realizing you could tease and work the corners and not attempt to over power everybody. Don’t be surprised when he becomes the staff ace this year.
K. Rogers always wins in double digits and goes deep in games.
C. Lewis will pull it all together this season. He has worked with some of the best pitching coaches around already.
Ricardo Rodriguez
G. Rusch besides helping the kids on how to win, the inside stuff, he will go down fighting. To be honest his arm looks very good this spring.
Callaway, Drese or … one of these two will win 8 games.

Ranger Hitters
Just picture Soriano hitting in the hot air of Texas!
Kevin Mench is known everywhere as a guy with 30 homer-potential and a good attitude. It’s the good attitude that the intense no-nonsense manager Showalter hates, he expresses it by not playing Mench. Playing in Texas, he will be an instant star and he hustles to enrich the fans.
David Dellucci creates fans and plays too hard, he gets injured-by-effort. A healthy Dellucci generates a couple-dozen stolen bases and scores runs seemingly everyday.
Brian Jordan is a fastball hitter deluxe and any inside pitch may be a home run in the Texas air. He could hit 25 home runs this year.
Lance Nix playing everyday is a potential 30-30 player.
Hank Blalock … what if he duplicates last year?
Mark Teixeira is one of the very-best future home run champions in Baseball.
Michael Young played in 160 games and came to the plate 666 times. He also hit .306 including 72 R.B.I.s and 106 runs scored. Enuff said?
Alfonso Soriano in Texas sounds like a big year for Alfonso. What would a big year include? Last year he hit 38 homers and stole 36 bases. His numbers were outstanding and the year before he was better.
Granted, Texas is a larger jump than the Indians but stranger things have happened in this sport. Frankly, Texas has some good horses to work with and some promising young outfielders. Here it is all about arms.

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Coming next the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.