By Justice B. Hill / MLB.com
CLEVELAND -- General manager Mark Shapiro can look ahead without having to dodge debris everywhere in front of him. Not that what Shapiro sees necessarily falls under the category of picturesque, but the scenery sure looks a lot prettier now than his rebuilding project did two offseasons ago.
For Shapiro finds himself deep into the next stage of the project, and that stage moves the ballclub from an also-ran to a contender, which is what Shapiro has vowed the Indians will be in 2005.
He has good reason to believe they will contend, too. His optimism springs from what Shapiro saw in 2004. It was a season that fortified the foundation that he had put in place two seasons earlier.
"It's been a very positive season," he said, "with a lot of encouraging results that lead me to feel very confident that next year is gonna be the year that we hope it will be, which is a year we begin the season with the expectations to contend for our division."
He's right in part. The Indians did show signs that might lead anybody to go into next season with a big helping of optimism as well. They were a team that caught the public's fancy through its hard-nosed baseball and its commitment to hard work that a Rust Belt town like Cleveland demands from its sports teams.
For a brief moment in mid-August, the team with no quit in it flirted with contention. It came within a Corey Koskie two-run homer in the top of the 10th inning of tying the Twins for first place in the AL Central, and it had the city in a tizzy over its hopes for a pennant race.
But those hopes died quickly as mid-August rolled into September and contention went the way of the Dodo bird. The Tribe had to hang on just to keep the Tigers from overtaking it for third place.
"I think we hit a spot in the schedule where we played some very good teams," Shapiro said. "I think they also got outside of what made them successful to that point, and I think there was some mental and physical fatigue as well that set in.
"A 162-game schedule doesn't allow you to hide."
No, hiding is impossible in a marathon season, and the shortcomings of a young ballclub showed themselves for all to see.
The most obvious of those shortcomings was the pitching. It remains young and untested under the strain and tension of a dogfight late in the season. That pitching unraveled in the latter weeks of the season, particularly the work of two linchpins: C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee. Their less-than-impressive work since the All-Star break raised questions about their readiness to help the Indians contend next season.
