Inside the AL | After suffering through a rough start, Indians could still rebound

    2007 was a great year for the Cleveland Indians. They rode CC Sabathia, that year's Cy Young Award winner, and Fausto Carmona, who went 19-8 with a 3.06 ERA, to a major league-best 96 wins and, with some help from gnats, made it all the way to the American League Championship Series before falling in seven games to the eventual World Series winner Boston Red Sox.
    Last year, however, things fell apart. Injuries to Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner zapped their offensive potency, and Carmona regressed to a 5.44 ERA in 120.2 innings. Things got so bad they were forced to trade Sabathia at midseason in order to get something back for the pending free agent, and the team drifted to a mediocre 81-81 record and third place in the AL Central. The lone bright spot for the Tribe in 2008 was the performance of Cliff Lee, whose amazing comeback year garnered the team its second Cy Young in as many years.
    Coming into this season, Cleveland fans had reason to be optimistic. Hafner and Martinez had recovered from their respective injuries, Lee still fronted the rotation, and Carmona seemed to have figured things out this spring, compiling a 2.67 ERA. In addition, the team had finally inked a legitimate closer in Kerry Wood, while also making relatively shrewd maneuvers in trading for utility man Mark DeRosa and signing the finally healthy Carl Pavano to a one-year deal.
    But so far this season, things could not have gone much worse for the Indians. They have begun the season a miserable 1-6, including starting 0-5 for the first time in 24 years. Their current record is better only than the winless Washington Nationals and equal to the hapless Houston Astros — neither of whom came into the year with feasible playoff aspirations.
    Their problems have started with the pitching. Lee looks more like the pitcher who spent the majority of 2007 in AAA, going 0-2 with a 9.90 ERA in two starts, while Carmona gave up six runs in five innings pitched in his first start of the season last week. Through seven contests, the team has given up an average of 7.9 runs to its opponents.
    But despite this lackluster start to the year, there is still reason for the Indians to hope. Hafner and Martinez do in fact look fully recovered, hitting .240 with 3 home runs and .367 with 2 home runs [updated tonight], respectively, while the team still features arguably the best all-around player in the game in center fielder Grady Sizemore. In addition, they return Kelly Shoppach, who emerged last year to lead all American League catchers in home runs, and up-and-comer Shin-Soo Choo, whose .946 OPS in 317 at-bats last year was higher than that of Hanley Ramirez, Chase Utley and Josh Hamilton, to name a few.
    So there's no doubt that the offense can and will produce. The success of this team will come down, not surprisingly, to the pitching.
    First and foremost, Lee and Carmona have to recapture their Cy Young-caliber forms. The fact that Lee has 10 strikeouts in 10 innings pitched is encouraging and suggests that he is possibly only a few tweaks away from becoming the ace he was last year. Furthermore, it is far too early to write Carmona off, particularly considering that he is still just 25 years old.
    But unfortunately for the Tribe, even in the best-case scenario, two pitchers don't make a rotation. Carl Pavano, who had compiled all of 45.2 innings in the previous two years combined, showed signs of rust, to put it kindly, in his first outing of the year, allowing nine earned runs in a single inning before getting pulled. It goes without saying that he'll have to be more effective if he's to be the team's third starter. The Indians will also need fourth starter Anthony Reyes, a former top prospect in the St. Louis Cardinals system who fell so far as to be released last year, to remember whatever it is he figured out in Cleveland at the end of last season when he put together a 1.83 ERA in six starts.
    Luckily for the Indians, they should be effective in close games thanks to their bullpen. The Rafaels — Perez and Betancourt — could be one of the best middle reliever tandems in the league, as they were two years ago (and neither one did too poorly last year, either), while Wood went 34-for-40 in save opportunities last season and can simply dominate, as shown by his 84 strikeouts in 66 innings.
    So what if Cleveland started out the year poorly? Right now, the Toronto Blue Jays and San Diego Padres are leading their respective divisions, and it would be a major surprise if either of them finished the year higher than fourth. Yes the Indians may look bad now, but they've still got 154 games left to prove themselves.