I was gone for one week.

It was Saturday morning, the 23rd of April. I got up bright and early, sans the bright – was on my way to Hopkins to kick off a week long vacation down in St. Pete by 4 AM. The Tribe had just taken game 1 in Detroit on the back of Josh Tomlin. I obviously didn’t know it at the time, but they’d go on to sweep the Tigers in the Motor City for the first time since people started wearing shoes. 9-7 heading into a 3 gamer against the caboose of the American League in Minnesota, followed by 3 more against the no-demeaning-introduction-needed Philadelphia Phillies? We were finally gonna have ourselves an April folks.

Three walk-off losses in four days. Five one-run losses in six days. One Cy Young candidate lost for 28-42 days.

I was gone for one week.

The dust has settled, the bodies have been cleared and we’re left with the fourth sub-.500 April in Terry Francona’s four Aprils in Cleveland. Underwhelming, considering getting off to a “hot start” was the overwhelming takeaway from coaches and players alike when they broke camp in Goodyear a month ago.

Here’s how things stood before the calendar turned to May:

Not great.

Comparatively speaking, though, not that bad.

I know it’s not great. I wish they would get off to better starts. They wish they could get off to better starts. But at this point, until they have another chance to try again next year, it is what it is. And “what it is” is that it could be worse.

I caught myself using this line in an argument a while back – “If we played .500 ball in April and close to .500 ball against the Tigers, we’d have made the playoffs every year since Tito got here.” So like we always do here at Bottlegate, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and try to back up my point with lackadaisical research and questionable logic.

It’s real simple – I wanted to apply the Indians winning percentage in April this year to each of the past three seasons to see if that change in record would have changed the outcome after game 162.

2013 was basically a wash, but we made the playoffs anyway, so ha. Three more wins and three less losses in ’14 and ’15 would surely launch us to the top of the (Wild Card) table.

That argument sounded so much better in my head. Although I stand by it if we could have managed a winning % better than what you get for putting your name on an exam in college against the Tigers.

KEEP THE CHIEF