Return of the Tribe

This is a new day of hope!  Long sought after changes are happening, and it is time to believe again.  With my apologies to Jay for plagiarizing his "Why We Will Win" post, this is why we are still going to win.

There are 93 games left this season.  If the Indians can play .666 ball and go 62-31, they'll finish with 93 wins which should put them mighty close to a playoff berth.  Is it going to be easy?  No.  Can this team do it?  Yes!

The Tigers and White Sox do not matter.  Well, maybe they matter a little bit, but I find it very hard to believe that both those teams can win more than 93 games if we do as well.  The truth is we need to take care of ourselves first, and if we can do that, we'll be in it on the last day.

A Great Offense.  Regardless of consistency, this is still a great lineup capable of scoring a ton of runs.  Heck, we are 2nd in runs scored right now, and there is no reason for that to stop especially since this offense really clicks in low pressure situations, and since everyone thinks we are done, there is no more pressure!

Tougher Rotation.  The staff has been really good as of late.  Paul Byrd has settled in, and if you can forget the first month of the year, he has been as good as anyone could have hoped.  Sabathia still look like a stud besides a couple of mediocre outings.  Westbrook and Lee will give us a chance to win every night, and now there is no longer a guaranteed loss out of the 5 spot!

Improved Bullpen.  Don't believe it?  Relievers are incredibly volatile -- because they pitch so few innings, it's hard to figure out who's really good and who ain't, so teams fluctuate wildly from year to year or within a season.  Our bullpen has just gotten younger and better with the addition of Mujica.  Carmona is looking like the 8th inning guy we're missing.  Beatencourt will go back to the 6th and 7th inning where he is most effective, and all of a sudden we'll be holding games instead of blowing them.

A Great Team. We had a great team in 2005 -- whether or not you noticed, and not much has changed.  We easily could have won 5 games that we lost in the last 10 days.

We don't appreciate how good this team is and how great it can be.  We forget how we have pummeled teams early on because our pitching was so poor.  The starters have been great ever since the first month, but we remember JJ blowing it all the time, or we lose a close game and it shows in the loss column so we can't appreciate the start.  This team is very good and easily capable of playing .900 ball for 3 weeks.  Heck by the Pythagenport Adjusted Standings we are 7 games worse than we should be.  A few lucky bounces and who knows.

This is a very good team, maybe even a great team, and they will make the playoffs. I still believe it.