If Casey Blake did not exist for Eric Wedge, it would be necessary to invent him. Like many people, I was relieved to see the Indians trade Blake. It seemed like an opportunity to find out finally what the team (particularly Marte) could do, once Wedge had no choice but to play someone other than Casey.

But damn if Wedge didn't find another guy to fill the role of gamer. Perhaps these sorts of gamers are projections of Wedge's view of himself as a player, and of what he considers to be the ideal ball player.

Carroll—whose middle name is Blake, after all—is from Evansville, the other end of the state from Wedge's hometown, Fort Wayne. (Don Mattingly is also from Evansville, by the way.) Jamey's alma mater, University of Evansville, even plays Wichita State in baseball. 

Do the Indians need this again? Jamey Carroll will be 35 years old next year. He is on a pace this season to have the second-highest number of at bats in his major league career. He already has the second-highest total bases in his major league career. He has a career OPS+ of 81. His minor league career was similarly undistinguished. He had a .679 OPS over 785 games in the minors.

Considering his current favored status, I wonder: Has Carroll played himself into a starting role for next year? Maybe the general manager will remember previous infatuations—Ramon Vazquez says hi—and forbid Wedge from playing Jamey every goddamn day. But, as we've seen, Wedge can be foxy when it comes to filling out his lineup card.

Carroll has proved to be a valuable utility guy. The Tribe had a utility guy name of Blake who became a superutility guy and then got stuck every day at third base. Perhaps this is just another way of grousing about the treatment of Marte, but is it possible that the manager is smitten all over again?

I root for Jeremy Sowers. Like a lot of people, I want him to succeed, to be an exception to those who say he doesn’t miss enough bats to make it in the bigs. This year his K rate has gone up. He seems to have regained the arm strength he lost after he was shut down early in 2006. But, man, has he been lousy on the mound since 2006. In four of his eight starts this season Sowers has given up nine hits or more. Batters hit .356 when Jeremy pitches. His WHIP is 1.86 (the major league average is 1.38). Lefties are 15 for 42 against him in eight starts, OPSing 1.106. With RISP and two outs batters OPS 1.219 (going 8 for 21). His pitch-per-inning rate has gone up since 2006. In that season he was getting groundball outs (a 1.54 G/F rate). Last year he was about even, and this year he is right about league average for inducing ground balls. Some of this is sample size and who he has faced. The Tigers, who kill lefties, love to see him. In 9.2 innings at Comerica he’s given up 17 hits. Miguel Cabrera is four for five against him. Sowers had an incredible year in 2006, but his career numbers aren’t good: 196 innings, 232 hits, 30 homers, 53 walks and 77 strikeouts for a 5.42 ERA. He often seems a pitch away from getting out of a jam, and can’t get the out. He doesn’t seem to nibble so much this season. He has great minor league numbers. What gives with this guy?

I think it was Terry Pluto, a few years back in the Beacon Journal, who wrote that good luck is always in short supply for Cleveland teams. Cleveland rarely is fortunate. I’ll avoid all the clichés about Cleveland sports and limit my comments to the 2008 Indians.

A rational person will say it is irrational to complain about bad luck, and they’d be right. It’s a misinterpretation of chance, a superstition. A team in the throes of a losing streak only appears to be cursed. But what is the probability the Indians will go through an entire goddamn season without hitting a broken-bat chalk double with runners in scoring position? What do Bernoulli or Bayes say about that?

"It has been suggested that statisticians don’t believe in luck," writes Bill James. "Statisticians see luck as an Eskimo sees snow. To a statistician, luck is so much a part of our environment that we have difficulty being certain there is anything else."

Consider the past three games. The Tribe gets a favorable draw in interleague play, and runs into a sad-sack Reds team when they’re on a four-game roll. Now it’s a seven-game roll.

This season the Indians have amazing starting pitching. The bullpen, so far, has regressed some from last year’s excellence, but that isn’t unexpected. As we all know, there has been no correction whatsoever—none—from the offense. The Indians had (or we thought they had) down years last season from Hafner, Sizemore, Dellucci and Blake. We could possibly expect improvement from Garko, Gutierrez, Cabrera and Marte. If just a few of these players returned to form—or even got lucky and exceeded historic form—it was not improbable to anticipate an offense that could rank maybe fifth or sixth in the big leagues in runs scored. Instead, as Hans points out, we’re third from the bottom in team EqA. We're the worst team in the American League in team equivalency average!

The gambler’s fallacy says we’re going to start ripping up the park, that we’ll even out our bad luck with a proportionate run of offensive fortune. Garko will go 25 for 25 (with a lot of seeing-eye grounders) and Hafner will hit one or two home runs everyday, mostly off the foul pole. Except that’s not how it works.

Luck is the residue of design? Luck follows merit? We rely on BABIP for consolation, or SSS, regressions to mean, etc. But this has been going on for far too long. Broadcasters say luck has a way of evening out over the course of a long season. Except it doesn't.

Why do Wedge teams underperform to their Pythagorean expectations? Is this a function of Wedge’s management? I don’t think so. I think it’s a function of scoring runs (and allowing runs) at the wrong time. In other words, bad luck.

Is it too much to ask for the Indians to have good pitching and good hitting in the same season? Consider the White Sox in 2005. A magical year, where everything went their way: hitting, pitching, bullpen. White Sox players exceeded expectations, had career years, and most bounces and breaks favored Ozzie Guillen. Remember the dropped third strike against the Angels? Both Josh Paul and umpire Doug Eddings had to screw up that play for Pierzynski to get to first base. That was lucky, plain and simple. The White Sox had to wait a long time, since 1919, to get one of those years, but they got one. Now where’s the Indians’? Will they ever get a year where everything goes right?

Can a Cleveland hitter exceed expectations? Just one?

Tonight's game reminds me why I approach interleague play with trepidation. 

Lopsided interleague records have had strong effect on standings in the AL Central.

2007 AL Central Interleague Record:

Detroit 14-4

Minnesota 11-7

Kansas City 10-8

Cleveland 9-9

Chicago 4-14

2006 

Minnesota 16-2

Detroit 15-3

Chicago 14-4

Kansas Ciy 10-8

Cleveland 8-10

2005

Cleveland 15-3

Chicago 12-6

Detroit 9-9

Kansas City 9-9

Minnesota 8-10

2004

Minnesota 11-7

Cleveland 10-8

Detroit 9-9

Chicago 7-10 (?)

Kansas City 9-9

The Indians have not played well in interleague games during past two seasons, and seem to have problems with the Reds, with whom they've gone 3-3 last year and in 2006. That's not bad, but Cleveland should do better against a lame Reds team.