Indians Enter Small-Market Spiral

CLEVELAND -- The home opening pageantry Monday included eight stars being unfurled on the Progressive Field outfield.

The cynic smirked and thought that was more stars than Indians fans will see all season long.

But alas ... that is not polite. Not even after Texas ruined the first home game of 2010 with a 4-2 win in 10 innings.

The home opener is a quasi-holiday in this working-class city, with kids leaving school early and businesses going without employees as folks stream to the ballpark. Monday featured pageantry, cardboard stars, a sellout crowd and a crushing loss. Which would be two crushing losses in a row, making the Indians 2-5 and reeling seven games into a 162-game season.

Sunday in Detroit, "closer" Chris Perez walked the bases loaded, then walked in the tying run, then threw a wild pitch that brought the losing run home in a 9-8 loss in Detroit. That was a game the Indians led 7-1. Monday's home opener saw Perez again load the bases with no outs in the ninth, but be saved by his bullpen-mates.

That same bullpen, though, gave up the game in the 10th on Nelson Cruz's two-run home run.

Some teams might shrug off a 2-5 start. Long season and all that. Not the Indians. This is a team that has come apart since coming within one game of the World Series in 2007, a team that saw its next two sesasons short-circuited by terrible Aprils. New manager Manny Acta spent much of spring training dedicated to avoiding another poor start. He's got one anyway.

"There's a lot of season left," Acta said, uttering a truth, but not one a team or its fans want to hear in the second week of the season.

Cruz's home run came off Jamey Wright, a 35-year-old with his eighth team.

"You want to make a good first impression," Wright said. "And I didn't."

Lots of folks failed to make a good first impression on the home crowd. Shin Soo-Choo had three hits, but inexplicably ran from first on a fly ball to left as if there were two out when there was only one. The double play led to boos. Choo later was nearly picked off first.

Another fundamental mistake loomed large. Texas had runners on first and second with one out in the fifth when Michael Young sent a ground ball up the middle. Indians second baseman Luis Valbuena got to the ball, but instead of smothering it to keep the runners from advancing, he tried to shovel it to second with his gloved hand and whiffed. The ball rolled to center and Texas tied the game. Valbuena's gaffe also allowed Elvis Andrus to go from first to third. Andrus scored on a Fausto Carmona wild pitch -- another basic no-no with a runner on third -- to give Texas two gift runs.

The wild pitch phenomenon has plagued the Indians. They had four in the season opener, then lost a game on one Sunday and gave away a run with one on Monday. Perez lamented catcher Lou Marson not stopping the ball in the dirt on Sunday, saying a pitcher has to be confident enough to throw the ball in the dirt at times to entice a bad swing. Monday's wild pitch came with Mike Redmond behind the plate. The Indians are playing Marson and Redmond while standout prospect Carlos Santana plays in Triple-A Columbus.

Texas' catchers twice caught balls in the dirt -- apparently they are not schooled in the same way as the Indians tandem. Then again, it's not like the Indians had a homegrown, switch-hitting All-Star behind the plate before these two took over.

Of course that's exactly what they had -- but Victor Martinez now plays in Boston. The Martinez trade last season was part of a stunning two-year selloff by the Indians that saw consecutive Cy Young winners traded (CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee) along with Martinez. Less than two seasons after almost reaching the World Series, the Indians became a victim of a steadily decreasing payroll brought about by decreasing attendance brought about by poor starts.

The Indians now are in the dreaded spiral of the small-market team, the one that links payroll to attendance and prohibits them from getting better because they can't spend beyond their means, and they see their means dwindle with each bad season.

Things have dropped so precipitously since 2007 that Carmona actually had a strong outing in the home opener -- his first in a long time -- and it was worth little. After 2007, the Indians signed Carmona to a seven-year extension. He went 13-19 with ERAs of 5.44 and 6.32 the next two seasons. (They didn't sign Sabathia or Lee, in case anyone didn't notice.) He threw eight innings and gave up just two runs -- but for the second game in a row the bullpen blew the game. The bullpen numbers the last two games: 12 hits, eight earned runs, seven walks, five innings.

Perez is the closer because Kerry Wood is hurt, but if Wood comes back and pitches well it wouldn't be surprising to see him traded. Same with Travis Hafner, if he hits well this season.

"I pitched like crap," Perez said, later adding: "Based on how I've thrown here and in spring training, I probably don't deserve the role right now."

Acta pointed out that Perez did have two saves in Chicago in the season's first series.

"I told him he's going to be OK," Acta said. "We're counting on him. Two games from now he's going to have a chance to save a game."

Spoken like a man who is either confident in Perez or aware he has no other real options.

Meanwhile, Texas' closer, 21-year-old Neftali Feliz, earned his first save, retiring all three Indians with ease. He's now struck out five of the last nine hitters he's faced. The Rangers' 4-3 start is their best in five years, and their starters have given up nine earned runs in 43 2/3 innings.

The Indians are doing their best to sell this rebuild as one made for the long-term, not the short. And it may well turn out that way. But if they were going to have any kind of season that would keep fans interested and keep revenues at any kind of acceptable level, they needed a decent start.

Four losses in a row, two of them in the most painful of ways, with a bullpen struggling to get through an inning does not exactly fit the definition.