The Indians Are Going To The Playoffs, Right?

For the record (as a matter of fact I have a post about this), I never had the Cleveland Indians winning their division. I knew they had a pretty stacked offense and talent in the bullpen, but their starting rotation just looked so awful. Nobody expected Cliff Lee to be nearly as dominant as he was last year and their rotation behind him had Fausto Carmona, Anthony Reyes, and Carl fucking Pavano in it. This almost reminds me of another team... Oh yeah, the 2008 Detroit Tigers.

The Tigers, in recent years, have always had talent in their offense (i.e. Mags, Granderson, Polanco, Guillen) and then they added Miguel Cabrera, Gary Sheffield, and Edgar Renteria who came off off a damn good 2007 stint with the Braves. This offense looked like it would set the record for Runs Scored in a season which would propel them to at LEAST a division title. But when their newly acquired pitcher, Dontrelle Willis, did exactly what his stats predicted he would do and blew up, Justin Verlander stunk it up, Robertson, Bonderman, and Rodgers were their normal sucky selves, and when the GM did nothing to improve a bullpen with no accuracy and injury problems, people then realized that "Oh, yeah, you need SOME semblance of a pitching core to win games"

Well the 2009 Indians are eerily similar. Cliff Lee will probably have similar numbers to Detroit's best pitcher last year- Armando Galarraga and Kerry Wood will most likely bounce back from is poor start and be a solid closer just like Todd Jones was. Both teams also have talented pitchers in their bullpen that have done well in the past, but it looks now (yes I know, extremely small sample size) that Indians will end up with another shitty bullpen, like last years Tigers. Now I'm not going to make any predictions on how this Indians team will fare against the offense of the 2008 Tigers who ended up being 5th in the AL in Runs with a solid 811 (nowhere near the projected 1000+), but it's not unreasonable to assume with Grady Sizemore, Mark DeRosa, V-Mart, Jhonny Peralta and Shin-Soo Choo and even some help from Asdurbal Cabrera, Travis Hafner, and Kelly Shoppach that the Indians can get around the same amount Runs.

But clearly an above average offense is not nearly good enough when your entire pitching core is mediocre at best. You know the expression "Offense wins games but defense wins championships"... yeah well that expression needs an addendum "but you do some SOME defense to win games" If you can't stop your opponent from from scoring, what good is all the scoring you do?

No team that has ever been last team to win a game has ever made the playoffs. EVER. Right now, the Indians are in a race with the Washington Nationals to be the last team to win a game. Both teams are 0-5. The team that was last to win a game last year- The Detroit Tigers. So experts, still think the Indians are going to win the AL Central?

Maybe they should have saw this coming.