The Bad
There are a lot of ways to look at the Indians loss in game seven of the World Series Wednesday night, but since the most common feeling among Indians fans is likely anger, we’ll go out of order and start there.
The chances of getting to the World Series even if you have an incredible team are extremely small. The Red Sox had a great team this year as did the Blue Jays and neither made it. The Indians only made it twice despite having the best offenses in franchise history from 1995 through 2001 and the three Hall of Famer rotation that pitched during the early 1950’s made it just once. With such limited chances, whenever you don’t win, it’s a lost opportunity that may never appear again.
The Royals were lucky enough to win the World Series in 2015 after winning the AL Pennant in 2014, but despite returning many of their core players including two major ones who were expected to leave during free agency, they finished just third in the Central this year. The Indians teams from 2005 through 2008 under Eric Wedge were expected to make multiple runs at a title, yet they made the post-season just once and never made it as far as the World Series. That this team had the chance and not only that, had their best hitters up in the bottom of the ninth when a single run would have won the game, is extremely disappointing.
The old addage, “there’s always next year” is much more comforting when a team gets knocked out of the play-off race in July or August, not when they need to win just one of their last three games of the season to win the World Series. Even after that, the Indians needed just one more run (or to prevent one more run) in game seven at any point in the first nine to win the series, or one more in the tenth to tie it.
The Good
It was no fluke that the Indians got to the World Series this year. They won the division by a fair margin, then absolutely dominated the Red Sox in a three game sweep and the Blue Jays by winning four of five. Ryan Merritt, the Indians eighth best starting pitcher with everyone healthy, simply dominated one of the best offenses in baseball. This team is extremely talented and more importantly, they aren’t going anywhere.
We’ll look deeper into the Indians contractual situations in a few days, but for now, only Rajai Davis, Mike Napoli and Coco Crisp are likely to be free agents heading into the off-season with most players under contract through 2020. The entire rotation will be around at least that long as will pivotal players like Francisco Lindor and Jason Kipnis. Only Carlos Santana, Bryan Shaw and Lonnie Chisenhall are scheduled to be free agents after the 2017 season so there is no reason this team shouldn’t at least be Central champions for years to come.
The Tigers and Royals are on their way down, saturated by contracts too large to work around and the Twins and White Sox could have been contenders, but they went all in too early and are also saddled with some unwieldy deals. The division is ripe for the Indians to take and with this squad, they should have it locked up for most of the next decade like they did in the 1990’s.
Looking forward to 2017 in particular, Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar will be back. Michael Brantley and Yan Gomes will be back and healthy. There is little reason to believe that that team won’t be significantly greater than the team that just lost the World Series. An infield of Santana, Kipnis, Lindor and Jose Ramirez ranks among any out there offensively and defensively while the outfield will have a ton of options with Brandon Guyer, Lonnie Chisenhall, Tyler Naquin and Michael Brantley all returning with Bradley Zimmer, Yandy Diaz and Greg Allen all looking to potentially make their Major League debuts. Yes, this Indians team is good, deep and has already proven they can win at the highest level.
The Disappointing
The worst part of this whole situation is the “could have beens.” How different would the World Series have been if Carrasco and Salazar had made starts. Would it have even went six games? What if the Indians had a hitter the caliber of Brantley in there instead of Naquin? What if Gomes had been able to come back when originally expected before he was hit by a pitch? It seemed that every single variable went against the Indians and they still took the series to extra innings in game seven. If Trevor Bauer didn’t split his finger open, would his command have been better in game two? All these questions of what could have been if certain circumstances had not happened could torture Indians fans for decades to come.
If for some reason this Indians team is unable to return to the greatest stage in Major League Baseball, will we look back at this series under a microscope like we do now with the series from 1997? Will Terry Francona be remembered more for sticking with Corey Kluber, Andrew Miller and Bryan Shaw too long than his brilliant use of the same three pitchers in every other game in the post-season? What could have been if things had been just the slightest bit different, even to the point of Ben Zobrist‘s tenth inning double being just a few feet closer to Jose Ramirez, turning a game winning RBI into an out.
When it was all said and done, the Indians had exactly who they wanted playing in game seven, from Kluber to Miller to Allen and each player had simply been pushed beyond their limits. While the Cubs had also been pushed, particularly Aroldis Chapman, who took a blown save along with his win, things just didn’t work out the way we would have liked in the end and now have to wait a year or a decade or 108 more seasons until there will be another chance for that elusive goal.
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