Cleveland Indians: 26 players, 26 years at Jacobs Field

Outfield Bench

David Justice (1997-2000)

David Justice hit nearly one-third of his career home runs as a member of the Indians despite playing just three-and-a-half years there in a 14-year career. Justice’s best season in Cleveland happened to be the year the Indians went to the World Series in 1997.

Justice led the 1997 Indians in slugging (.596) and OPS (1.013), and trailed only Jim Thome in home runs (33). He finished fifth in MVP voting. Things would never be quite that great for Justice again in Cleveland, as he posted identical 21-homer, 88-RBI campaigns in 1998-99 before a resurgent 2000 season got him traded to the Yankees.

The fact that Justice is coming off the bench for this team should tell you all you need to know about the starting outfield.

Grady Sizemore (2004-11)

Oh, what could’ve been. In 2005, his first full season in the bigs, Grady Sizemore kicked off a four-year stretch of scoring at least 100 runs. He made three straight All-Star Games, finished at least top-12 in MVP voting, and won two Gold Gloves from 2006-08.

In all of his four full seasons with the Indians, Sizemore posted a bWAR of at least 5.5. He appeared in all 162 games in both 2006-07, and was the heart and soul of the team that nearly took down the Red Sox in the ’07 ALCS.

Sizemore played with reckless abandon, a quality that endeared him to fans but also helped shorten his career. Following 2008, he’d never play a full season again–in Cleveland or anywhere else. Injuries cost Sizemore 276 of a possible 486 games from 2009-11, and after that, he didn’t even step on a major league field again until 2014.

Any career adversely affected by injury is devastating, but Sizemore’s is especially tragic. He was just 26 when his troubles began in 2009, and he was on a trajectory toward being one of the all-time greatest players in franchise history–if not the single-greatest center fielder.

Infield Bench

Omar Vizquel (1994-2004)

Considering Omar Vizquel is a fringe Cooperstown candidate, it might be controversial to list him as a bench player on his own team. Allow this to serve as a bit of foreshadowing as to who the starting shortstop is…

Vizquel was a true Cleveland lifer, spending 11 seasons with the Tribe and winning a Gold Glove in eight of them–consecutively. Vizquel’s reign as the best defensive shortstop in the AL spanned nine years in total, with the first of those coming in Seattle the year before he came to Cleveland.

Offensively, Vizquel left plenty to be desired. He smacked just 60 home runs in 11 years and posted an OPS above .800 just once. But those of us who watched him play know that anything he did to produce runs was secondary to what he did to prevent the other team from scoring them–especially with the cast of power bats around him.

Forget about the last 26 years; Vizquel was a centerpiece in one of the most dominant stretches of Indians baseball ever.

Matt Williams (1997)

Matt Williams played just one season with the Indians, but it was well worth the short-lived union. Williams’ 1997 campaign–in which he launched 32 home runs and led the team in RBI, helped propel the team to the World Series. Williams also won a Gold Glove in 1997 for his defensive ability at third base, one of four in his career.

But it was the World Series itself in which Williams made his mark in Indians lore. Williams was an absolute force in the seven-game Fall Classic, slashing .385/.515/.538 with eight runs scored and three driven in.

Any time a team with a seven-decade championship drought comes as close to winning the whole thing as that 1997 Indians team did, it is going to stand out in your memory. Williams earns a tip of the cap here for the part he played.

Carlos Santana (2010-17, 2019-Present)

Carlos Santana is nearing “most underrated player in franchise history” territory. While the catcher-turned-third-baseman-turned-DH-turned-first baseman–who has also taken a couple of flies in the outfield–has never been regarded as one of the Indians’ best all-time players, his consistency throughout a long career in Cleveland has carried the team through thick and thin.

Santana began his ascension before the current version of the Indians started coming into its own, helping build the foundation for the club as we know it today. He has never posted an on-base percentage below .351 in eight full seasons with the Tribe, and he’s coming off the best year of his career at the improbable age of 33.

He spent the 2018 season with the Phillies despite establishing himself as a cornerstone of the 2016-17 Indians teams that dominated the American League. Thanks to a trade last winter that brought him back to Cleveland, we can forget that Santana ever left in the first place.

Backup Catcher

Sandy Alomar Jr. (1990-2000)

By far the best season of Sandy Alomar Jr.’s career was 1997 (are we noticing a theme here?), when he hit 21 home runs and finished with an even .900 OPS. Alomar was a six-time All-Star, with all such seasons coming in an Indians uniform.

Detracting from Alomar’s case as an all-time Indians great is that he missed an exorbitant number of games due to injury throughout his career. But he did provide the Indians with two of their most heart-stopping moments of the ’97 run.

The first of these was a game-tying home run off of Mariano Rivera (of all people) in the eighth inning of ALDS Game 4. The second came in the ALCS, when Alomar drove in Manny Ramirez on a walk-off single to win Game 4. He also slashed .367/.406/.600 in the World Series that year.

Now it’s on to the next phase of our roster construction, in which we’ll name our starting rotation and hire a manager. Spoiler: four of these six decisions are as easy as it gets.