Cleveland Indians: 26 players, 26 years at Jacobs Field

Managerial Candidates

Mike Hargrove, Charlie Manuel, Terry Francona

I don’t know what kind of cruel masochism is at play when I have to decide between Charlie Manuel and Terry Francona as the manager of this Indians team. I would run through a thousand brick walls for either one of them if I were a professional baseball player. In fact, I’ll run through a brick wall for either one of them anyway. The city of Cleveland is lucky to have had (and still have) them.

And that’s without even mentioning Mike Hargrove, who skippered the team to five straight winning seasons and two World Series appearances between 1995-99. Hargrove was let go by the Indians after a 97-win season in 1999, a fate that always struck me as a little harsh considering the run of success the team had been enjoying with him at the helm.

You can call me a prisoner of the moment, but I’ll lean toward Francona here.  As much of a joy as Manuel would be to play for, it wasn’t until he presided over the Phillies’ dugout that his greatness as a manager truly shined through. Francona has the highest winning percentage of any Indians manager since 1956, and could take over the franchise lead for wins by the end of this upcoming season.

At the end of the day, if I could play baseball for any manager who has ever held the title, I’d take Francona a million times out of a million. I don’t imagine the players I’ve selected would voice any objections.

Starting Rotation

Corey Kluber (2011-19)

You can arrange the starting rotation in any order you’d like, but I’m going with Corey Kluber as my Opening Day ace. Kluber is the only Indians pitcher in this era or any other to win two Cy Young awards, and he gets bonus points for putting the team on his back and nearly carrying it to a championship in 2016.

Kluber ranks third in franchise history with 1,461 strikeouts, behind two guys who are unlikely to be caught any time soon in Bob Feller and Sam McDowell. Both of his Cy Young campaigns landed him inside the top 20 for highest WAR by an Indians pitcher in a single season (2014: 8.3; 2017: 8.1). Before Kluber, the last Indians pitcher to earn an eight-win season was Gaylord Perry in 1974.

The numbers and accolades speak for themselves. Kluber is an all-time Indians great, and number 28 should be retired.

CC Sabathia (2001-08)

CC Sabathia will be remembered more for his role in the Yankees’ 2009 World Series run, a stretch in which he earned ALCS MVP honors, but it all started in Cleveland. Sabathia anchored the Indians’ rotation for the better part of a decade before being traded to Milwaukee in the summer of 2008.

The year prior, he won his only Cy Young award. Sabathia’s 2007 campaign catapulted the Indians to a tie for the best record in the American League, a season that ended one win shy of a World Series berth. Sabathia largely came undone in the playoffs that year, especially in the ALCS against the Red Sox, when he got lit up to the tune of a 10.45 ERA in two starts.

Dependability was a huge part of what made Sabathia so important to the Indians during his time there. He logged at least 180 innings in each full season he pitched for Cleveland, including his age-20 campaign in 2001.

Cliff Lee (2002-09)

Continuing with our theme of great Cleveland pitchers who won Cy Young awards and were eventually traded, Cliff Lee’s 2008 season was a revelation. The unassuming lefty went 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA that year on an otherwise mediocre team.

What made Lee’s breakout all the more impressive was how badly he struggled in 2007, a season in which he was actually demoted to the minors for his lack of performance.

Lee was traded to Philadelphia in 2009 after a first half in which he followed up on his Cy Young campaign with a 3.14 ERA in 22 starts. The Indians had shipped off the incumbent Cy Young winner at back-to-back trade deadlines.

Bartolo Colon (1997-2002)

Of course, Lee would never have played for the Indians if not for the 2002 trade of Bartolo Colon. Colon debuted for the Tribe in 1997, but he began to come into his own in his second season.

Colon averaged just over 4.5 bWAR from 1998-2001; he ranks 18th all-time in club history with a mark of 22.7. In the 1998 postseason, Colon surrendered just two runs in 14 2/3 innings. He was similarly impressive in the 2001 ALDS, when he gave up three earned runs across the same number of innings in two starts.

Like Sabathia after him, Colon was an innings-eating workhorse. He logged at least 200 frames in three of his four full seasons with Cleveland, and came up just shy of that mark with 188 innings in 2000.

He was on pace for his best season in an Indians uniform in 2002, posting a 2.55 ERA and 4.7 bWAR in just 16 starts, before he was traded to the Montreal Expos for a haul that included Lee, Sizemore, and Brandon Phillips. Colon would go on to win a Cy Young with the Angels in 2005.

Charles Nagy (1990-2002)

For the fifth and final member of our rotation, we could go in any of a number of directions. Carlos Carrasco received serious consideration here, and it pains me to leave him out. I decided to tip my hat to Charles Nagy, who was a cornerstone of the pitching staff during the heyday of the Mike Hargrove era.

Nagy put up a respectable rookie debut in 1991, but he emerged as the pitcher the Indians would rely on for the rest of the decade in his second full season. In 1992, Nagy posted a 2.96 ERA in a career-high 252 innings, was selected to his first All-Star team, and finished seventh in Cy Young voting.

After missing most of the 1993 season, he settled in as a horse on the mound for the next several years. From 1994-99, Nagy logged at least 169 innings every year and finished over the 200-mark four times (he was headed for a fifth before the strike in 1994). His 1996 campaign yielded a career-best 6.6 bWAR.

Nagy struggled in both the 1995 and 1997 World Series, posting identical 6.43 ERAs in each. He also surrendered the series-clinching walk-off single to Edgar Renteria in ’97, though it was a blown save that put him in that position to begin with.

The wheels started to come off for Nagy after 1999; he would never again reach even 100 innings in a season over the final four years of his career. All the ups and downs taken into account, Nagy deserves a fair share of recognition for his role on some of the best Indians teams of the last 70-plus years.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for if you’ve read this far: the All-Jacobs Field Era starting lineup.