CLIFF LEE, starting pitcher:  You couldn't make this story up.  Underachieving in 2006, injured and frustrated and humbled and nearly cast aside in 2007 ... dominant in 2008.   In a season when so much has gone wrong, something has gone very right for this guy.

GRADY SIZEMORE, reserve outfielder:  No longer just a coverboy, he now leads the league in home runs, and he's on pace for 38 stolen bases.  He dives all over the outfield and basepaths and already owns a Gold Glove.  He shows little sign of ever taking himself seriously.  And chicks really, really dig him.

NOT APPEARING TONIGHT:  Lee Stevens, Brandon Phillips, Bartolo Colon and Tim Drew.

The series:  Visited Texas (win, loss, win, loss) and Detroit (win, loss, loss, win), hosted Minnesota (win, loss, win) and San Diego (win, loss, win).

But first, an editorial note:  This piece and the two that will follow pick up the threads of the Week In Review series that ran here for the first nine weeks of the season.  Since the last installment on June 2, the season has changed dramatically.  I never lost interest in keeping up with Week In Review, but I had to put it on hold because of other significant demands on my time.  I love this format, but it is frankly a bit time-consuming to put these together  Going back to do piecemeal recaps at this point may seem like an odd idea, but it's something I've decided to do for all the same reasons I started doing the Week In Review — to give the season a little more clarity and structure, to put it into chapters.

At any given moment, we tend to be viewing the season mostly in two timeframes — the first being the last 48 hours, today's game and maybe yesterday's, and the whole season cumulatively from the beginning.  The most accessible stats we look at reinforce this point of view — all the main stat pages are showing season-to-date, and we check out the box score to see what happened.  In doing so, we miss a lot of the ebb and flow of the season for the team, and especially for individual players.  We patch together vague narratives later on, much of it from inaccurate memories — "Peralta was blocked by Cora," "Francisco was amazing last year" — only occasionally making note of anything in a context larger than a day or two, and missing many in-season developments entirely.

I starting writing these Reviews to see better the season that was developing for each individual player, and I'm as interested as ever in doing that.   The first nine installments focused not so much on an exact week as on two series, or six to eight days.  This installment and the next will each focus on a two-week, four-series period.  The one after that will cover three series, ending at the All-Star break, today.  I believe I will go with the three-series format for the second half of the season; in general, the format has seemed still a little too micro to really see trends well.  We'll see how it develops — and I apologize in advance if the dissection is depressing.

The big story:  The Indians' injury problems went from bad to worse, led by the startling news on June 2 that Jake Westbrook would be returning to the DL just days after making a solid return to the rotation.   By June 7, the news got much worse — Westbrook would undergo Tommy John surgery, missing not only the rest of the 2008 season but as much as half of the 2009 season as well.  Westbrook had signed a three-year contract extension in March 2007, at $33 million the largest contract ever awarded by the Indians at the time.  He ran into injury problems almost immediately but returned last July with a huge flourish, finishing with the fifth-most innings pitched and seventh-lowest ERA in the league in the second half.  Coming into 2008, we were regaled with reports of a new pitch and improved velocity, and scouts wondered aloud if the sinkerballer might take his game to a higher level at age 30.  Westbrook did pitch well in April, but his injury dashed completely all those raised expectations, and the Indians have now lost his services for solidly half of that new contract's three years.

In other news:  Asdrubal Cabrera mercifully and belatedly was demoted to Triple-A, where he probably should have started the season, and where he almost certainly would have started the season had he not gone an improbable tear after being promoted into the heat of the 2007 pennant race.  His demotion created an opportunity for Josh Barfield — our erstwhile and bored/untalented second baseman, who certainly had not been forcing the club's hand with his Triple-A performance (.255/.297/.382, 4.7% walk rate).  Barfield responded by going 0-for-6 — he put the ball in play all six times, so you could argue he was just unlucky — before breaking his finger, giving him a very well-paid trip to the big-league DL.

That same day, Victor Martinez was also put on the DL — also mercifully and also belatedly, in that he'd been hitting terribly for nearly six weeks and (let's all say it together) hadn't hit a home run all season.  Three role players emerged and not only filled the shoes of the injured players, but far exceeded the production we'd been getting from those players before they went on the DL.  Shoppach, Carroll and the newly healthy Shin-Soo Choo — essentially taking over playing time from Martinez, Cabrera/Barfield and Hafner — each posted an OPS of 1000 or better over these 14 games.  Reliever Rick Bauer, catcher Yamid Haad and infielder Jorge Velandia, previously known to Indians fans as guys they'd never heard of, joined the big-league roster to play dominoes with Marte.

We drafted some guys with really interesting names — Chisenhall and Cord,  "Jeremie Tice" and "David Roberts" — and though our first three picks were age 19, 17 and 20 on draft day, some people still screamed that the Indians were being "too safe" or "wrong" or "not adhering to Baseball America rankings" — or something or other.  Experts, experts everywhere, whatever are we to make of all of this expertise?

Back in the majors, in general, the pitching slumped and was uncharacteristically carried by the offense in these series.  So while the pitchers posted a 5.68 ERA, including a few critical late-inning blowups by the bullpen, the hitters amazingly posted the feel-good, Garko-in-a-good-year line of .294/.364/.468.  That 1,088-run pace allowed the team to tread water over a period in which the rest of the AL Central was essentially doing the same — Minnesota and KC dropped a few games but held their places in the standings, while the other three clubs each won eight.  The AL Central was still very winnable, and if you squinted enough, you could still see a bruised-but-not-beaten Indians club actually winning it.

(Who fed it and Who ate it are after the jump.)

Continue reading this post »

"The player to be named component is a very important part of the value equation for us ... I know it's hard to get your arms around it when you see that PTBNL in there, but that's an advantage for us that we negotiated, to give us a little more time ... we'd probably have gone in a different direction if that player wasn't included."

If you came here looking for info on Sabathia and LaPorta — see below.

Ryan reported heavy trade talks on Friday night.

Andrew said farewell to C.C. on Sunday morning.

Ryan linked to reports of an imminent deal Sunday afternoon.

I wrote up the basic deal a few hours later.

Ryan summarized the reasons for the deal late last night.

Our buddy The Diatriber posted a nice intro to LaPorta last night.

Despite that little flurry of content, however ... we still don't know quite what to make of this deal, because we don't have all the details.  As of this moment, the Brewers have concluded their press conference and Shapiro is speaking live on TV right now, including the quote above.  We can talk about Sabathia and LaPorta, but we can't really assess this deal until all the players are known.

The talks initially were reported as involving our getting three prospects — one impact guy, one potential impact guy, and another solid prospect from the lower levels, akin to Phillips, Lee and Sizemore from the Colon deal.  It quickly became apparent that that second "potential impact guy" was two much to ask.

The deal then became one major prospect and two other good prospects — and that's where it remained.  But a confusing twist emerged when a fourth player was added to the deal — Triple-A pitcher Zach Jackson — and the insertion of those letters "PTBNL" in place of an actual.

While potentially useful, Jackson is not a prospect, and there is every indication that he is the fourth guy — the throw-in — rather than one of the main three guys who are key to the deal.  And in contrast, the PTBNL, almost always a throw-in, in this case apparently is a significant prospect — reportedly a choice of three prospects that includes 3B/2B Taylor Green, the Brewers' minor league player of the year last season.  So from what we understand ...

THE DEAL IS NOT:

1. Impact prospect OF Matt LaPorta
2. Lower-level prospect RHP Rob Bryson
3. Scrub minor leaguer LHP Zach Jackson
4. Throw-in PTBNL

THE DEAL IS:

1. Impact prospect OF Matt LaPorta
2. Quality prospect PTBNL (such as 3B/2B Green)
3. Lower-level prospect RHP Rob Bryson
4. Throw-in LHP Zach Jackson

LaPorta is comparable to Phillips (as a 2002 prospect).  The PTBNL, as we understand it, may not be at the level of Cliff Lee (2002) but is still a significant talent to add.  Bryson likewise is not quite comparable to Sizemore (2002) but isn't too far off.  Jackson isn't Lee Stevens at all, but the needs were different — at that time, the Expos needed us to take Stevens' contract; at this time, we need another warm body — any warm body — to throw the ball at the plate in Buffalo and possibly Cleveland.

As for the PTBNL, aside from Green, the most commonly cited name is CF Michael Brantley — a potential leadoff hitter who may not have enough pop to make his patience and contact-hitting work in the majors — and RF Lorenzo Cain — a five-tools guy who skipped Double-A but has yet to put up impressive numbers at any level.  None of these names can be reported officially, and the only name that has been reported consistently as being on the Indians' pick list is Green.

As Shapiro acknowledged, this is hard to get a handle on — it is, in a sense, a tremendously clumsy bit of PR, adding insult to Indians fans' injury on already bruising day.  But give Shapiro credit for consistency — ever since the Colon deal, he's always been willing to take a PR black-eye when he thinks he can get better value for the team.  A few voices within the industry are saying they think the Indians could have done better — and that may well be the case.  But it's hard to really make a judgment on that until the Indians pick that second guy, and according to Shapiro, they have a ful two months (the end of the minor league season) to do that.

We'll have more on Bryson and Jackson later today.

Both ESPN and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are now reporting that the Indians have reached an agreement to trade C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers.  The Indians will receive OF/1B Matt LaPorta, the seventh overall pick in the draft just one year ago, along with two other players, both presumably lower-level prospects.

The Brewers, loaded with talent at the Double-A and Advanced-A levels and eager to make a big move for the 2008 postseason, always appeared to be the most logical and likely trade partner for the Indians, and they reportedly pushed the Indians to complete a deal tonight so that Sabathia can make a Tuesday night start in Milwaukee.  Starting on Tuesday, rather than Thursday, means that the Brewers will get two starts out of Sabathia prior to the All-Star break, in addition to 15 starts in the second half.

LaPorta was a consensus Top 25 prospect in the offseason, rated as Milwaukee's best prospect by Baseball America and a five-star prospect by Baseball Prospectus.  Three months into the 2008 season, he has done nothing to dispel those high ratings, putting up a .288/.408/.576 line and leading all of Double-A with 20 home runs.  The other two players the Indians are getting are not yet known, but the package is believed not to include 3B Mat Gamel or SS Alicedes Escobar.  Advanced-A 3B Taylor Green and Double-A CF Michael Brantley have been mentioned in some reports.

LaPorta immediately becomes the best prospect in the Indians organization, or at worst a very close second to Triple-A LHP David Huff, another first-rounder having an outstanding season.

Sabathia was drafted by the Indians out of high school in 1998, weeks before his 18th birthday, and he was summoned to the majors to start the 2000 season at age 19 with barely more than a year of professional experience under his already sizable belt.   Sabathia spent 8.5 seasons with the Indians, and more than any other one player, he led last year's squad to the best record in baseball, winning the Cy Young for his efforts.

For Indians fans under 40, Sabathia is simply the best Indians pitcher of our lives.