The Indians' starting pitching did them in again. They have the same problem that they've had for the last few years - they don't have a legitimate Number 1 pitcher on their staff. Bartolo Colon is the closest thing they have to a staff ace, but he'd be the fifth starter if he pitched on the Braves. Jaret Wright has never developed from his fine 1997 season, and while Dave Burba and Charles Nagy are both good pitchers, they're not the guys who will win the big game when they need it. The Indians have a staff full of Number 3 starters.
We've been talking about this same thing for several years now. The Tribe has gotten to the occasional World Series with guys like Orel Hershiser or Dwight Gooden or Chad Ogea on the hill, but they haven't been able to win it. They couldn't pull the trigger on a deal for either Curt Schilling or David Wells earlier in the season, and they're paying the price now.
The Red Sox are not nearly as good a team as Cleveland, but they have the Number 1 pitcher that the Tribe doesn't. Pedro Martinez is probably the best pitcher in the game today, and he made all the difference in the Division Series.
In fact, the Red Sox played the situation perfectly. The Indians won the first two games (after Martinez was injured in Game 1), but the Red Sox feasted against the Indians' lesser pitchers in Game 3 and won 9-2. Hargrove, the Indians' manager, panicked; if the Red Sox won Game 4, Martinez would pitch Game 5 for Boston. Hargrove didn't want to let his best pitcher, Colon, face Martinez in Game 5. So Hargrove started Colon in Game 4 with one fewer day of rest, and Colon got bombed.
Now Game 5 comes along, and the Red Sox have options that the Indians don't. Jimy Williams, the Boston manager, starts Bret Saberhagen instead of Martinez! His thinking is, if Saberhagen wins, Martinez is free to pitch the first game of the championship series against the Yankees. If Saberhagen gets in trouble, he can bring Martinez out of the bullpen. The Indians have no such options; they start Charles Nagy and hope for the best. Both Nagy and Saberhagen get raked, but Williams brings Martinez in to slam the door, and the Red Sox go to the championship series against the Yankees. Fairly or not, Mike Hargrove will probably pay for the loss with his job.
Here's what the Indians should have done last spring. They could have packaged Jim Thome and a few prospects from their farm system to the Phillies for Schilling, or to Toronto for Wells. Thome is a big game player, but he strikes out way too much (171 times this year!) and the Tribe has the much cheaper Richie Sexson to replace him. They might have to make do with fewer home runs, but the acquisition of a Number 1 pitcher would have made the Indians nearly unbeatable.
If you've been reading the Cleveland papers, or the Sporting News, you've seen a lot of anonymous criticisms directed at Hargrove from "sources in the organization." The truth is that the relationship between the manager and GM John Hart has been strained for quite a while, and I fully expect Hart to use this embarrassing loss to the Red Sox as his excuse to fire Hargrove. However, no manager will win the World Series with this team until they improve their starting pitching.