Raise your hand if you knew, before the 2011 season started, that on the morning of May 24, the Cleveland Indians would have the best record in baseball -- by 5-1/2 games.
Are The Cleveland Indians For Real?
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Yeah, I know. I didn't either. No one saw this coming; the Tribe entered this year coming off 93-loss and 97-loss seasons and their "big" offseason acquisitions were Austin Kearns, Jack Hannahan and Adam Everett.
And yet, the Tribe is doing this both on the offense and defense sides of the baseball equation: they’re second in the AL in runs scored, and have allowed the fewest runs.
The answer to the question posed in the headline here is complicated. The Indians' best offensive player to date this season is Asdrubal Cabrera, who is hitting .312/.371/.548; he's fourth in the AL in OPS+ (164) and tied for fourth in home runs (10), and is playing otherwordly defense, as seen in this behind-the-back flip to start a double play against the White Sox last Thursday. Now, is there anything in Cabrera's record before this year to suggest he'd become this sort of player? From 2007-2010 he hit .284/.347/.394 with a league-average 101 OPS+.
This season, he's not only hitting, he's hitting in clutch situations, as he did in last night's 3-2 Indians come-from-behind win over the Red Sox, driving in the tying and winning runs with an eighth-inning double. In 86 May plate appearances, Cabrera is hitting .380/.424/.671 with five HR and 17 RBI in 19 games.
It's not just Cabrera who has stepped up his performance. Justin Masterson, who last year was 6-13 with a 4.70 ERA and 1.50 WHIP, may wind up the AL starter in the All-Star Game if he keeps up his 1.17 WHIP and 2.50 ERA numbers that he's posted over his first 10 starts. Closer Chris Perez has 13 saves, but the rest of the bullpen that has been outstanding, too: Vinnie Pestano, Mitch Talbot and Joe Smith have been almost unhittable.
Best of all from a Cleveland standpoint, they have accomplished their outstanding record with virtually no contributions from the players expected to be the best: Fausto Carmona has a 4.76 ERA, Shin-Shoo Choo got off to an awful start and is still middling around with a .709 OPS, and Grady Sizemore was doing fine but then hurt his knee and is now on the DL. If those players come back to normal performance levels and add to what's going on now, the Indians could run away with their division.
They’re also doing things that give teams the confidence that they can win every time they take the field; for example, they’ve already won 11 games in their final at-bat, with less than a third of the season gone, including Monday night’s win over a hot Red Sox team.
But perhaps the biggest reason that you can likely start making tentative plans to see the Tribe play in October is the upside-down AL Central. The defending champion Twins are a mess of injuries and underperformance and have the worst record in baseball; the "all in" White Sox look good for a few days, then have games like Monday night's shutout at the hands of Alexei Ogando. The Royals have good young players but are a .500 team at best; the same goes for the Tigers.
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