Wake up people. We’re from Cleveland. We don’t have the luxury of saying a season is a complete and utter failure if we miss the playoffs. We’re not the fucking New England Patriots. Sure, last season was a blast. Giambi’s walk-offs. The ten game win streak to end September. Actually seeing people sitting in the upper deck at The Prog for the wild card game. It was fun. Absolutely. But that team wasn’t scaring anyone in a one game playoff, let alone a five or seven game series. Our season came down to one night in October in Cleveland and we trotted out a 23 year old kid with not even 50 major league innings under his belt to toe the rubber. Michael Brantley wasn’t fourth in majors in hitting and third in WAR. Yanny Gomes and (second half) Carlos Santana weren’t what they are this year. And this was still playing shortstop.

I’m one million percent more excited for next year than I was for 2014 after the Rays donkey punched us last October. Going into last winter we were nervous about what our starting rotation would look like after losing Scott Kazmir and Ubaldo fucking Jiminez. Look at us now. Corey KKKluber has arguably been the best pitcher in baseball this year (.2 WAR behind Clayton Kershaw). Carlos Carrasco has been almost as good since returning from the bullpen, and according to Fangraphs has had the best slider in baseball in the second half. T.J. House has pretty much been Kazmir 2.0 and is six years younger. Trevor Bauer has gone from terrible to not that bad.  Salazar has been up and down as well but has looked a lot more like the 2013 version as of late.

The bullpen has been fantastic as well. Cody Allen has done what we all thought he could since taking over as closer. Bryan Shaw is fucking gassed, I think that’s pretty clear, but has been very good up until this past week and a half or so. Not even going to try and spell his real name but Scrabble has done his job against lefties, and Kyle Crockett has made the jump from his freshman high school team to the major leagues admirably. Nick Hagadone has had somewhat of a renaissance. Scott Atchison, who coached Crockett’s father in tee-ball, has been rock solid. I know there’s a lot of one sentence verdicts and not much statistical analysis here, but I’m just trying to get the point across that what Tito Francona and Mickey Callaway have done with this pitching staff in the past 365 days has been nothing short of a god damn miracle.

The only step backwards we have taken this year is with our gloves. And it hasn’t been as much of a step backwards as it has been a step backwards, off a cliff, body bouncing off boulders, breaking every single limb hitting the ground, crawl and bleed for 3 days until you finally find a cabin, smoke coming from the chimney so someone must be inside, knock on the door and Andy Dirks blows your fucking head off with a shotgun. It can only get better next year. And I’m pretty sure it will. Moving Kipnis to the outfield is something I’m sure will be discussed and I’m all for it. Jose Ramirez has proven he can play at this level, both in the batters box and on the infield dirt. Whether Francisco Lindor starts next year in the majors and we move Ramirez to second and Kip to the OF, or Lindor stays in Columbus and Ramirez continues to play short, I’m convincing myself there’s no way in hell we can be this bad defensively again.

I’m sick of reading tweets about how this year is a let down. Playoffs or no playoffs, but probably no playoffs, the Indians are in much better shape than they were a year ago, and it’s not even close. Get your shit together Cleveland. This team knows what they’re doing.

KEEP THE CHIEF