The Indians are the trade deadline’s biggest story, and it’s about time

The Indians have a long history of being a very, very active deadline team. There was the time they traded CC Sabathia for a prospect package that included Michael Brantley. There was the time they traded Cliff Lee for Carlos Carrasco, among others. Then there was the time they traded Jake Westbrook for Corey Kluber, and that was two years after they traded Casey Blake for Carlos Santana. The Indians can be quite active, indeed.

Don’t forget the Austin Kearns/Zach McAllister deal, now.

The catch, of course, is that those trades involved the Indians selling a key player for prospects, not the other way around. Since 2000, here are their biggest deadline acquisitions in the seasons where the team was contending instead of rebuilding or reloading:

While the Jimenez deal was an absolute blockbuster, it was the only major trade a contending Indians team had made in the last decade before this weekend. It’s not like they haven’t been good, either — just quiet.

Now the Indians have their super reliever. They used their organizational riches to nab the most coveted player of the deadline, Andrew Miller. They’ve been death by pitching this season. And now there’s more pitching. More death. Considering they were willing to trade even more prospects for Jonathan Lucroy, they might not be done. Even if they are, it’s clear that this is not your typical Indians mindset. They’re going for it with a ferocity that’s rare for any team at the deadline, but it’s an especially rare strategy for this franchise.

Think of the Indians as a team caught between the magnetic poles of two truths. The first truth is that they need to be pragmatic. They hold onto their young players because they don’t cost much, and when the old young players get raises and the team stumbles, those players are traded for new young players. It’s all very safe and predictable, the zen of a small-market team.

The second truth is that they haven’t won a damned thing for 68 years, so there should be JUST A TOUCH OF URGENCY. Especially considering the entire city has the taste of championship in its mouth now. That stuff is habit-forming.

That’s the Indians right now, caught between the pragmatic desire to build something sustainable and the rational irrationality that comes with capital-G Going For It. They’ve usually erred on the side of pragmatism, but someone sat on the caps lock this week, and the Indians are officially the most interesting buyer at the deadline.

The best part of this Indians team is that they’re perfect examples of both truths. They remind us of a paradox, in which baseball teams should a) always think about the future and b) worry about nothing but the short-term because that future might not exist.

The push and the pull of the Indians has to be exhausting. The two sides:

In 2013, the Indians were unexpected contenders. They were an abominable 94-loss team the season before, but they somehow made it into the Wild Card Game this time. At the deadline, they were 10 games over .500 and 2½ games back in the AL Central. During the month of July, they made exactly one addition, getting left-handed specialist Marc Rzepczynski.

Here’s something I didn’t write back then ...

Indians, man. You haven’t won a World Series since before The Catch. Generations have come and gone.

This is the year. You stumbled into the miracle of Scott Kazmir. You have your unquestioned ace, Ubaldo, who is good again for some reason.

This is the year you go for it. Break the curse. Give the finger to the drought.

Trade for Matt Garza.

The rotation is young and talented, but Garza would make it better. And you’d have to think the Cubs would take a deal headlined by Danny Salazar. Maybe throw Carlos Carrasco in, and you have yourself a ticker-tape parade for the first time, Cleveland. Probably. No guarantees. You should totally do it, though.

But I could have! It’s not like I wouldn’t have agreed with that mindset. The longer the championship drought, the more unreasonable we should expect teams to act at the trade deadline.

Instead, avoiding those trades then is why they’re here now. They never considered trading Francisco Lindor, of course, but they also held on to their young pitching, even though they had five average-or-better starters under the age of 30 make at least 24 starts in 2013. It might have looked like they were loaded with the oxymoron known as predictable young pitching.

Now the Indians are one of the very best teams in baseball because of that pragmatism. And that allowed them the confidence to spend prospect capital and get a shiny new addition this year, right when they needed it the most.

This is a new one. Specifically, it applies only to 2011 and this year. Andrew Miller will probably pitch 20 or 30 innings for the rest of the season. He might pitch an inning in the postseason before the team is eliminated, or he might pitch low-pressure ninth innings with five-run leads because his team is doing so well. The Giants didn’t use their closer in a single high-pressure situation in the 2014 World Series. Two brief appearances, both tune-ups in losses.

A team that relies on the pragmatism above can’t start dealing top prospects for relievers.

There’s a reference to a Bob Wickman deal up there, and that’s when the Indians traded Richie Sexson, future 40-homer All-Star, to get a closer. Nerds on the internet were so mad that the Indians dealt one of their best trade chips for a reliever. All the smart people back then knew a team should never give up its best young talent for relievers.

As you can tell, baseball analysis has progressed tremendously.

When Sexson was bombing 450-foot shots two years later, the Indians were bad again. Wickman was fine as a closer during his time in Cleveland, but he wasn’t an especially memorable closer. If the Indians leaned on Paul Shuey more instead of trading for a pricey closer, I’m pretty sure no one would have known the difference.

The lesson: Closers are the pyrite. Prospects are the gold that ... uh ... your friend says he’s coming right back with this gold ... because he knows a guy who will pay top dollar ... and, uh, okay, fine, you might not ever see your friend again, but it could be gold if he comes back!

This isn’t just a closer, though. This isn’t the reincarnation of Bob Wickman. This is a slider that’s good for two innings in a Game 7. This is the best reliever in the game, an automatic power arm that’s going to be around next year, too, and the year after that.

The lesson: Some closers are really, really, really, really good, and a team concerned with winning a championship should get those dudes. Especially if you already have a closer, and you can just move the new guy around from inning to inning, solving the messes as they come up.

It came at a cost, with power arms and a top-25 outfield prospect going the other way, but you can’t blame the Indians for making a deal like this. The urgency is still there. The desire to break the small-market ceiling and the legacy of turmoil. How can a team be so bad they inspire Major League, yet not have the baseball gods smile upon them just once in the next 25 years? Shameful.

The reason they were confident in this deal is because they were pragmatic years ago. The reason they were pragmatic years ago is because they wanted to build a team that was one Andrew Miller away from lighting the league on fire.

It might not work. These deals never come with a prospect-back guarantee. But the Indians saw their rivals trade their way into unexpected glory last year. They saw the Giants ditch prospects for Jake Peavy and have it work out, albeit indirectly, just like they saw the Red Sox do the same thing the year before. Every World Series team seems to have something between a sensible deal and a blockbuster in July. Imagine if they all held their prospects tight, dreaming of a homegrown tomorrow.

The Indians are at the point where they have to try. They traded two of their top pitching prospects for Ubaldo Jimenez, and it didn’t work. It’s been a few years, and it was time to try again. It was a bold move that might not make sense on paper — the chance of an All-Star outfielder for a sprinkling of relief innings, come on — but it was what the team needed right now.

It’s been too long since the Indians did what they needed, future be damned. It might fail, and you might see the flames of failure from space. But even then, can you blame them? It sure seems like it’s the right time to pounce, after all those years. It sure seems like it’s the right time.