Indians' weak arms no cause for alarm

Sporting News, The, April 21, 1997 by Peter Schmuck

The early weeks of each new season are replete with skewed statistical information. Sandy Alomar entered the week batting .618. Ken Griffey is on pace to hit about 150 home runs. If Derek Jeter can keep it up, he will end up with about 300 hits.

It's fun to extrapolate, but everyone knows those outlandish numbers will be tempered by baseball's lengthy schedule.

Why then all the panic over the early travails of the Indians' starting rotation?

Righthanders Orel Hershiser and Jack McDowell stumbled out of the gate--stumbled badly, in fact--leaving a lot of people with second thoughts about the consensus favorite in the A.L. Central.

Hershiser pitched poorly in each of his first two regular-season starts. McDowell gave up 21 hits in his two starts. The two of them have a combined ERA so frightening it would be easy to pull the plug on those preseason World Series predictions. It also would be too early.

If memory serves, the same concerns were raised about Hershiser this time last year, when he was off to such a difficult start there was speculation his supposedly fragile arm wouldn't last the season. He was 4-4 with a 6.35 ERA after eight starts. The fate of the team hung in the balance. Sound familiar?

Hershiser snapped out of it in time to win 15 games, and the Indians won the division. Charles Nagy was the ace of the staff, but the aging Hershiser pitched well all summer and proved--if nothing else--it would be foolhardy to count him out after two tough games.

McDowell has raised similar questions, though he is not in a similar situation. He used to be one of the biggest winners in baseball. He is 31--supposedly in his prime. And yet his ERA has risen in each of the past four seasons, topping out in '96 at a career-high 5.11--more than a full run higher than in any previous major league season.

McDowell is one of the hardest working I guys in the game. He pitched more than 250 innings in each season from 1991 to '93 and won 59 games. He hasn't been quite the same since, but still is considered one of baseball's top righthanders. Will that still be the case six months from now?

The Indians are favored to win the A.L. Central because they have a great offensive lineup and a solid bullpen and appear to have the right balance of youth and experience in the rotation. But they have displayed enough inconsistency to create doubt about their true prospects for 1997.

Nagy, 29, and righthander Chad Ogea, 26 have pitched well, but top pitching prospect Bartolo Colon was hit hard in his first two major league starts. The Indians must get a representative performance from either Hershiser or McDowell to be a viable contender. They must get that from both to be around at the end of October.

The other big variable is the mind-set of closer Jose Mesa, who was acquitted of rape and assault charges, but he looked fine in his first relief appearance last week.

There is no reason to panic, because no one is puffing any pressure on them at the moment. The White Sox were expected to provide the biggest challenge, but they lost third baseman Robin Ventura before the season and got off to a horrible start.

The Sox have pitching problems, too. They were hoping that Doug Drabek would be able to bounce back from a pair of difficult seasons in Houston to fill out the rotation, but he is off to an even worse start than Hershiser. He did not last more than four innings in either of his first two starts and rolled up a 20.25 ERA.

Chicago's slow start just buys the Indians some time to get their pitching situation in order. It might not look like it now, but Cleveland still is the team to beat.

New name, new game

Indians catcher Sandy Alomar knows his tremendous start is not exactly par for the course. He had two home runs and 10 RBIs last April but had five homers and 12 RBIs in the first seven games of this season, prompting reporters in Cleveland to ask him how he might account for the difference.

Said Alomar: "I've changed my last name to Griffey."

Rest easy, Cal

Orioles outfielder Eric Davis walked into the clubhouse last week and saw that his name was not in the starting lineup. He hadn't asked for the day off, but he has a strained tendon in his left knee and manager Davey Johnson didn't want to push it.

"That doesn't bother me," Davis says. "Cal doesn't have to worry about me breaking his streak."

Take that

It may have looked like revenge, but the Royals apparently were not getting back at the Orioles when they waited until nearly gametime to postpone a recent game et frigid Kauffman Stadium.

The Royals were upset a week earlier when the Orioles decided six hours before gametime to postpone opening day at Camden Yards, so they would have looked hypocritical doing exactly the same thing. Especially after the two clubs played extra innings in a snowstorm the night before.

The grass was greener

To their credit, the schedule-makers tried to tilt the early season schedule toward warm-weather cities, but no one could have anticipated how disruptive the weather would be. The eight postponements last Saturday forced millions of baseball fans to switch channels and watch--ugh!--golf.