August 21, 2008
Unusual Combination
Cliff Lee
Photo: Icon SMI
Cleveland's two best players came through today in a 10-3 win over the Royals. Cliff Lee won game number 18. He gave up two earned runs in seven innings. He allowed eight base runners, but induced four double plays to remove half of them. Lee is now sixteen games over .500. If the rest of the played .500, Cleveland's record would be 71-55, in contention in the AL Central.
On the batting side, Grady Sizemore posted a four for five day. He missed the cycle by a double, driving in seven runs. His triple and homer drove in three runs each. This all from the leadoff spot. Sizemore now has 79 RBI and 78 runs scored on the season.
Cliff Lee sits atop the AL Cy Young race. He combines the best record with the best ERA, and his three pure pitching stats, strikeouts, home runs and walks are all great. At this point, there's no reason not to award him the trophy. Grady Sizemore makes a legitimate claim on the MVP award. Sizemore came into the day third in runs created. Win Shares ranks him fifth. Right now, he would not get the prize, but a good finish could put him on the top of both categories. There's no reason to think he won't get support in the top five.

Grady Sizemore
Photo: Icon SMI
Thinks about that. A team well under .500 could produce both the Cy Young award winner and the MVP. Nothing like that ever happened before. Eighteen times a batter and pitcher won the two awards from the same team (I'm not counting season when the pitcher wins both). The only time the team didn't make the playoffs was in 1962. Maury Wills won the MVP and Don Drysdale the Cy Young for the Dodgers. Los Angeles won 102 games but finished one behind the Giants. A team with a great hitter and a great pitcher is usually a great team.
That's the big failure of the Cleveland franchise this season. They failed to surround these starts with players capable of playing decent ball around them. Part of it was poor timing. Victor Martinez, Travis Hafner and Fausto Carmona all going down at the same time hurt. Hafner showed signs of decline in 2007, and the Indians didn't prepare for more of the same. Carmona's innings made him a candidate for an injury, and the Indians didn't really find a way to replace him. Cleveland tried to move Victor Martinez to first in the past; that might have saved the catcher from the decline and the injury.
Two superstars and a good supporting cast gets a team into contention and often to the playoffs. The Indians got half the equation right, and that may result in the most unusual Cy Young-MVP combination in history.
Don't forget that they would have had a third person in contention for both (CC) had they kept him.
What a miserable failure. I'm ashamed to be an Indians fan. How many 2006s and 2008s does Wedge deserve? Or Shapiro for that matter?