Eric Wedge wins AL Manager of the Year award

The post-season accolades keep rolling in for the 2007 Tribe.  A day after C.C. Sabathia became the first Indian to win the Cy Young Award in 35 years, Eric Wedge was named AL Manager of the Year.  Wedge came into the season on shaky ground, after his team closed 2005 with a late-season collapse to miss the playoffs and finished with a disappointing 78-84 record in 2006.  However, operating with a young, unproven core and a paltry-by-comparison $61 million payroll, the 2007 Tribe went 96-66 and pushed the World Champion Red Sox to the limit in the ALCS.  Several factors make Wedge’s selection over Angels manager Mike Scioscia a good choice:

• As mentioned, Cleveland spent far less on payroll than did other contenders.  Detroit’s opening day payroll was $34 million more than Cleveland’s, yet the Tigers finished eight games out.
• Wedge’s team relied on a number of young and unproven contributors to support Sabathia, Grady Sizemore, Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner.  At the start of the season, who thought that Fausto Carmona, Asdrubal Cabrera, Rafael Perez, Franklin Gutierrez and Jensen Lewis would be as important as they were?  Only Carmona spent any significant time in the majors in 2006, and his season was hardly memorable.  Overall, among AL teams, only the Devil Rays were younger (using Baseball-Reference’s Team Batting Age stat).
• Although Wedge isn’t generally known as a fiery motivator, his calling out of the team on August 14 seemed to work.  After Wedge said that “[n]ow is the time when we have to toughen up. Enough’s enough. Now, we’re going to see how tough we are[,]” the team went 31-12 the rest of the way, turning a one-game deficit into an eight-game cushion.
• Finally, it’s hard to overstate the importance of Wedge’s decision to pitch Paul Byrd over Sabathia on short rest in Game 4 against the Yankees.  Byrd wasn’t overpowering (he never is), but he game the team a chance to win, and prevented sending the series to a Game 5.

Like most fans, I’ve criticized Wedge in the past.  It would be nice to see the team play with more urgency, and his bullpen management is questionable at best. But he’s only 39 years old, all of the important starters will be back in 2008, and there’s some cause for optimism.

ALDS Recap: And a Dynasty Crumbles

The dynasty crumbling seems to be the prevailing theme. Jerry Crasnick says that the Tribe “can take satisfaction in knowing they’ve rescued a large segment of the American baseball-viewing public from another dose of Armageddon fatigue.” Howard Bryant points out that “the old dynasty finally fell, and for good Monday night in the Bronx.” Thus the baseball punditocracy does what they always do, and points us to the ways the Yankees lost, not to how the Indians won. Let us now turn to the victors, who vanquished the New Yorkers 6-4 in Game 4 for a 3-1 victory in the series.

An Open Letter to Eric Wedge

Dear Wedgie:

Never doubt a Playoff Beard. As fans, you’d think we would have learned this lesson by now. Obviously, you and Carl Willis knew something we didn’t, and your insistence that Paul Byrd get the start in game 4 over CC Sabathia on short rest paid off. Maybe it was rewarding loyalty, handing the ball to a 15-game winner with underpowering stuff. Maybe it was playing the odds – starters operating on short rest in the post-season have a woeful winning percentage (witness Chien-Ming Wang’s 1+ IP), and Sabathia has only pitched on three days’ rest once in his career, and that hardly counts (5 IP three days after a 5 inning start). Maybe you saw something in Byrd or his numbers that we didn’t – fans focused on his 2-3, 5.21 ERA September, but Byrd was significantly better on extra rest (with 6+ days rest, he was 1-2 with a 3.86 ERA in 6 starts).

Be all that as it may, the fans wanted you to fly by the seat of your pants, starting CC and Ryan Garko over Byrd and Kelly Shoppach, but you didn’t and it paid off. Shoppach was 2-3 with two doubles, a HBP and a run scored. Byrd gave up hits, as a 84 MPH “pitch to contact” pitcher is wont to do, but he kept the damage to a minimum, and left the game with a 6-2 lead. And in a sense, Byrd’s outing wasn’t that much worse than Sabathia’s was last Thursday:

		IP    H   R   ER  BB  SO  HRSabathia        5.0   4   3   3   6   5    2

Byrd            5.0   8   2   2   2   2    1

And you stuck with Borowski, too, even though Cleveland sports bars were full of fans yelling for you to leave Betancourt in for another inning. Joe B. made it interesting, like he always does, but in the end your plan worked, and the next game will be in Boston, with CC starting on full rest, to be followed by a rested Carmona. You were right and we were wrong.

Sincerely,

The Fans

So now it’s on to Boston for a Sabathia-Beckett matchup. The Sabathia-Wang battle was anticlimactic.  Maybe the BoSox’s Cy Young candidate can do better.  Game 2 will be either Carmona-Dice K or Carmona-Schilling before moving to the back of the rotation. Will Carmona be lights out again? Will the Tribe keep hitting with 2 outs and RISP (one presumes they can’t keep hitting .500 in that situation)?  Will Papi and Manny do what A-Rod, Jeter and Posada could not? The answers will start to be filled in on Friday night.

For now, Cleveland fans can relish the taste of victory, and baseball fans everywhere can be happy ESPN and Fox won’t try to force-feed us more of the most Overhyped Rivalry in Sports.  Here’s a useless stat for today – the Red Sox-Yankees “rivalry” is almost entirely a creation of six-division realignment and cable sports news. From 1920-1994, the Yankees and Red Sox finished 1-2 in the standings seven times. During that same period, the Yankees and Indians finished 1-2 eight times.