Reason for optimism: Improvement to the offense led by three new faces should be just what's needed to complement the league's best rotation.
Reason for pessimism: Above average production from the three new additions would have been a sure thing ... in 2011.
Cleveland's long-suffering fans are used to season summaries such as this one from 2015: Fewer wins than the prior season, a third-place finish and a defense that once again squandered the work of a dominant rotation. In other words, a 2014 redux, right? Not beneath the surface.
Let's start with the record: The Indians might have won four fewer games in 2015, but they improved their run differential by 13 runs. As often cited in these previews, that tells only the story of actual runs scored and runs allowed. In terms of the component performance that determines the expected output of runs scored and allowed, the Indians were the third-unluckiest team in the majors and the unluckiest team in terms of runs allowed.
That negative cluster luck obscured the most encouraging part of Cleveland's 2015 season: After three straight years of well below average defense, the Indians surged to a top-five unit in 2015. But that sentence, while accurate, can be written in a much more revealing way.
Following three years of bottom-tier defense, the Indians were equally bad for the first quarter of the 2015 season, before a single lineup change in June turned them into the best defense in baseball for the second half of the season. The change, as all Indians fans know, was the promotion of shortstop Francisco Lindor, whose slick glove and .835 OPS bat supported his runner-up finish for the AL Rookie of the Year award, despite his playing only 99 games.
In short, unlucky sequencing erased the roughly 50 runs the defense saved, compared to the year before. The latter has a much better chance than the former of repeating in 2016, and that's important because absent luck and supported by an average defense, the Cleveland Indians have the best rotation in the American League. Despite having to face designated hitters all season, Cleveland's starters struck out 24.2 percent of the batters they faced. That was not only the most in the AL but also better than all NL rotations except the Chicago Cubs'. The entire Indians rotation is back this year, and every one of them is still on the happy side of 30 years old, so there is no reason to think their skills will diminish.
Not only is the rotation the envy of most AL teams, but also the bullpen finished second in the league in ERA at 3.12. As I wrote last year after the 2014 pen finished with exactly the same ERA, "bullpen performance is highly variable from year to year, but Cleveland's pen, thanks to its ability to strike out batters and induce ground balls, has the collective skills to support an overall 3.12 ERA for the team."
Now that's a forecast. Call Nate Silver!
The same analysis applies this year. I'd add that although the Yankees' and Royals' back-end bullpens get a lot more attention, Cody Allen, Zach McAllister and Bryan Shaw take a back seat to no one's shutdown closing trio. This means the Indians have all the ingredients in place to challenge for the AL lead in fewest runs allowed. Can they improve the run-scoring side of the equation to produce a 90-plus-win season?
It certainly looks encouraging because the 2015 Indians got sub-replacement offensive production from a few different positions. This year looks promising because the culprits have all been replaced. Mike Napoli at first base will greatly improve the lineup and allow Carlos Santana to take over designated hitting duties, which potentially improves two of last year's weaknesses. Rajai Davis won't produce much more than an average center fielder, but he has never slugged less than his on-base percentage, as huge free-agent disappointment Michael Bourn did last year. Finally, the free-agent signing of Juan Uribe means a replacement for Mike Aviles.
Aviles, Bourn and the departed Nick Swisher had 750 plate appearances and combined for a slugging percentage of just over .300 -- that's not on-base percentage but slugging percentage. All the Indians need is something around league-average production from Napoli, Davis and Uribe, and Lindor, Santana, Jason Kipnis and Michael Brantley will take care of the rest.
If the defensive improvement holds this year, all the pieces are in place for Cleveland to have not only the best record in the AL Central for the first time since 2007 but also the best record in the American League. Oddsmakers have clearly warmed to the Indians, as they have the highest total wins market in their division, at 85.5, but as is often the case when a team is poised to make the leap, (see Cubs, Chicago last year) Vegas can't make adjustments quickly enough.
This is my pick to represent the American League in the World Series, so the "over" is an easy call.
2016 projection: 88-74 (first, AL Central)
Bet recommendation: Over