Just how bad is the current Indian’s team?  I put it at the bottom of all Cleveland baseball teams for the last 50 years – and that’s bad, real bad.   In fact the only Cleveland team that was clearly worse than the current bunch would be the ’99 Cleveland Spiders.  Other than that collection of stiffs, this team can compete with any other Indians team in total ineptness.

Now you can disagree with me here as to whether this is the worst club in 50 years – I think it’s futile, but you can give it a shot – but here’s my point.  The last two truly awful Cleveland teams – ’85 and ’91 – were better baseball clubs than the Indians as currently constituted.  The ’85 club was just a little dip in the Tribe’s ongoing journey of Horribleness only to be followed by a struggle for mediocrity  The ’91 club though had the seeds of a Juggernaut growing below the surface.  Belle, Baerga and (Sandy) Alomar were already on the big club, Thome had been called up for a cuppa coffee, the sainted Hank Peters was about to draft the savant know as Manny Ramirez and Hart was a step away from two of the biggest talent heists in club history – Taubensee for Lofton, followed by Fermin for Omar.   In other words many of the pieces needed to produce one of the longest runs in Cleveland history were in place or on the way.  But still it took three more years for the Tribe to compete for a Championship.

Now I recognize that the AL Central was measurably stronger than the current division.  And I know that the ’93 Indians had to deal with the sudden, unexpected loss of three of its players but still.  Given were we’re at and what we have, I think we’ll be lucky if it takes just  three more years to assemble the talent needed to get back into the play-offs. 

I’d like to know what the rest of the LGTers think.