Right on schedule
John Donovan, SI.com
John Donovan
SI.com
All Mark Shapiro can do at this point is sit and watch. Maybe, if the urge strikes him -- and it almost certainly will -- he'll do a little fingernail chewing or a bit of lip biting. That's become his routine in these waning days of September, watching games in his Jacobs Field suite or, when the Indians are on the road, in front of the TV in his suburban Cleveland home.
Sit. Watch. Madly text message his friends and colleagues. Fret over close losses, sweat over tight wins. Then wait for the next game.
"That," says Shapiro, "is the hardest thing in the world for a GM."
It's been almost four years since Shapiro, the general manager of the Indians, took control of one of the most successful franchises of the late '90s and began to clean it like some fattened Northeast Ohio walleye. Back when he first started gutting the franchise -- notably after the trade of All-Star second baseman Roberto Alomar to the Mets in December 2001, barely a month after rising from the role of assistant to take over as GM -- Shapiro brashly announced that the Indians would rise again, that they would contend by the 2005 season.
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That's exactly what has happened. The Indians are back in contention, a half-game behind the Yankees in the American League wild card race. They've won three in a row. They're 31-20 since the All-Star break. Sixteen of their final 23 games are at home. The Indians matter again.
Now, if they can just win a few more games than the Yankees and the other AL wild-card contenders in these next couple of tension-filled weeks ...
"I want it for us," Shapiro said from his office in Cleveland, "not as any validation for me."
The 2005 Indians are a phenomenon, coming from where they've been. Few teams have torn down and rebuilt this quickly. Few front-office types have accomplished the feat as boldly as Shapiro has. But if there's one thing the '05 Indians are not, it's the Indians of the late '90s. The '05 Indians are not a group of overpaid, aging veterans. They're not the high-scoring, slug-happy team of yesterday.
These Indians can score -- they're fifth in the league in runs -- but they are more balanced than the old Indians and probably the most hole-free team among the AL contenders. The Indians are stacked with young talent; switch-hitting catcher Victor Martinez (26), shortstop Jhonny Peralta (23), and center fielder Grady Sizemore (23), to name a few. They have a good mix of starters, including C.C. Sabathia (25), Cliff Lee (27), Jake Westbrook (27) and veterans Kevin Millwood (30) and Scott Elarton (29). They have an OK defense and the best bullpen in the league, with 36-year-old stopper Bob Wickman at the end.
And, of course, they're cheap. The 2001 Indians, who lost a heartbreaking five-game playoff series to Seattle, had a payroll of more than $93 million, fifth-highest in the majors. The '05 Indians started the season with a payroll around $41.5 million, fifth from the bottom, which makes Cleveland the lowest-rent franchise among the high-flying contenders.
After Shapiro's initial teardown of the team (made necessary by the aging roster and the bloated payroll) and the two rebuilding years in '02 and '03, the Indians finally began to show improvement last season when they went 80-82, a 12-game uptick from '03. They are now in position to have their first winning season and their first trip to the postseason since 2001.
If, that is, they can get past the $200 million Yankees.
"I was having dinner with [former Tribe pitcher and current baseball operations assistant] Charles Nagy the other day, and he said 'Enjoying this?,'" Shapiro said. "And I told him, the one thing I'm enjoying is not looking at so many blank stares."
The Indians, as far as they've come, still have at least one more major step to take. They undoubtedly will get their winning season and, if things fall right, that trip to the postseason. They are built to be in contention for the next few years, too.
But Cleveland fans, who opened Jacobs Field with a string of 455 sellouts that ended in April 2001, have yet to buy back into this team. In overall attendance this season, the Indians are better only than the Devil Rays and Royals. The Indians average a paltry 23,986 fans a game.
Ever since Shapiro began to hack up the powerhouse of the late '90s, the Indians have been a hard sell. And still-skeptical Clevelanders, the thinking goes, never got a chance to warm up to the '05 Indians because the White Sox jumped out to a big lead in the AL Central.
This team is not what Cleveland fans are used to seeing, either. This is not Alomar and Juan Gonzalez and Jim Thome punching across 100 runs apiece, as they did in '01. This is Peralta suddenly emerging as one of the best shortstops in the league. It's Sizemore just starting to scratch the surface. It's Martinez, who is now beginning to show his real potential, hitting .380 since the All-Star break.
This is what the fans of Cleveland have now. These are the new Indians. But is it enough? Can they reawaken the fans of Cleveland?
At this point, Shapiro's done all he can do. Now the rest of us will just have to sit and watch, too.
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