Today, June 11, is a day sacred to Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck. Luck, or more appropriately, the lack of luck, is a subject familiar to all followers of the hapless Cleveland Indians. Every team suffers misfortune, of course. Some teams catch more than their share of breaks (see the Cincinnati Reds this season). But the Tribe has been different. The Indians get dumped on, year in and year out. The Romans considered Fortuna to be a fickle or wayward woman. But Clevelanders see little of this, because for us she shows only one side: her bad one.

There are many examples. Consider the recent draft. Three (or was it four?) premium talents, followed by a legion of also-rans. Where does the Tribe draft? Fifth, of course, just out of the money. It's supposed to even out, but it doesn't. The best Tribe team in 80 years, and what happens? A strike. Snow. Fingers. Boras. And so on and so forth.

So what, you might ask, and you would be right. Bemoaning Cleveland luck won’t get you very far, and it’s not an endearing habit. Nor is it original. But lately I’ve been thinking about the place of Fortuna in baseball, and it has given me pause. There are times when I believe the entire game is random. Consider yesterday’s seventh inning: a single followed by two walks. (And then, of course, two strikeouts.) Why not two walks followed by a single? So much of the game is beyond the realm of talent or intent. Bloop hits, seeing-eye grounders, BABIP, RISP, draft choices—all merely rolls of the dice. What pitchers you face, which umpires call strikes and balls. The weather. The variables make fools of all of us. At times the game itself seems a child of chance, controlled by Dame Fortuna.

Branch Rickey said luck is the residue of design, but what did he know? He’s from Portsmouth, Ohio (also home of Al Oliver and Larry Hisle). Luck drives the game in extraordinary ways. It seems to dominate everything else. But it cannot be controlled or even predicted. Mostly the actions of fortune are inexplicable and baffling. Nobody knows how it works, or why.

Rationalists decry luck, though they will begrudgingly acknowledge its existence. Someday, perhaps, there will be a quantitative definition of the term, and we will see plainly when one team gets every bounce, and when Fortuna smiles on them. Louis Pasteur said, boldly, that fortune favors the prepared mind. But I think that’s ridiculous, and there’s no way to anticipate it. I prefer Lefty Gomez’s version: "I’d rather be lucky than good." Let this serve as a small offering to Fortuna. May she, finally, give the Cleveland Indians a break or two. Please.

A quarter of the way through the season is a traditional time to assess what a baseball team has. And what this baseball team has is not good.

So far, we are enjoying yet another season of dashed hopes and inexplicably underwhelming performances. By my count that’s five out of the past six seasons, which makes it hard to believe it’s just bad luck.

Let’s start with an appallingly bad offense. The Tribe is 27th in the majors in runs scored; 29th in home runs; 24th in doubles; 26th in slugging—and that was with Asdrubal Cabrera and Grady Sizemore in the lineup. I thought there were troubling signs with this offense in 2009, and I expected the offense to sputter, but I didn’t anticipate anything anywhere near this bad. This team is on a pace to score 604 runs.

It’s easier to list the hitters who have played up to or beyond expectations: S.S. Choo and Austin Kearns (riding a .420 BABIP). Virtually every young player—from Valbuena to LaPorta to Marson to (dare I say it?) Donald—has been a profound disappointment. The other remaining irregulars (Peralta, Hafner, Grudz, Redmond) have not exactly set the world afire. It’s odd that so few players met or exceeded expectations, but results are results.

I’m reminded of the joke about the restaurant where the food is bad but the portions are small. The Indians can’t score, but they can’t pitch, either. Pitchers have thrown the fewest strikeouts in the majors (and are sixth in the majors in issuing walks). Only the Brewers have a worst on-base percentage against.

It’s hard to find a positive with the pen. Tony Sipp has been impressive, though I’m now convinced it’s just random, and if his performances ever matter he will suck. Chris Perez has been promising. But Jensen Lewis, Zombie Perez, Joe Smiff, Kerry Wood, Aaron Laffey—need I go on? Hard to believe, but the FO has built yet another disaster pen.

Starting pitching has been about where I expected it to be. Westbrook looks good, Fausto shows promise, Masterson remains an uncertainty. Huff is a stiff and Talbot has been pretty good as a fifth starter. But this team does not seem to have even a replacement level starting rotation yet, and that bodes ill for 2011.

Say what you will about the talent in the minors. I’ve become dubious of the whole lot of them. Remember: Jhonny Peralta once tore up the International League. The Indians have had quite a few players who looked great in Akron or Buffalo only to founder in Cleveland.

Another area of failure, one less often considered, has been the front office. Mark Shapiro seems to have gone into hiding. Success has many parents, but failure is an orphan. It would be admirable if Shapiro had the courage to address the fans about this sorry state of affairs.

Right now, this is a team of historically bad proportions. If matters do not dramatically improve—and it’s hard to imagine where such improvement would come from—we’re looking at a 100-loss season.

In this season of discontent, with many mysterious disappointments, it's easy to overlook particular failure. In classic Cleveland fashion, we are not looking at one or two crashes in 2009—or even three or four—but an entire cascade of underperformances that would boggle the mind of a probabilistically inclined fan. My nominee for most disappointing is Jhonny Peralta.

Jhonny was regarded by many as a potential breakout figure this year, based on an impressive 2008. Last season he was tenth in the league in slugging percentage and extra base hits (with an impressive 69). He had 42 doubles last season (only nine so far this year) and 23 homers (versus two in 2009). Going into his age 27 season, Jhonny appeared poised for greatness. And then, he turned into Julio Lugo.

Peralta's eqA is .255. His VORP is 4.5, right behind Erick Aybar and Old Omar V. His OPS+ is a robust 84. Although his slugging percentage is no longer lower than his OBP (though just barely), he is slugging 80 points lower than his career average. In short, he sucks.

So, the question is: why? He's a warm-weather hitter, so we can expect improvement. But he doesn't seem to be hitting to right center, which is where he gets his doubles. I suspect he's an intense guy who took exception with being moved out of shortstop, but even that can't begin to explain the extent of his offensive collapse. He's "benefited" from a .353 BABIP this season. His line-drive rate is a little off (16.3% in 2009, as opposed to 19.6% career), but he has a significantly higher ground-ball rate (54.1% in 2009 against 46.5% career). Another interesting aberration: Jhonny is OPsing .567 against lefthanded pitchers.

In a normal season (for a normal team), this sort of decline would not necessarily be so deflating. But for the Indians—in the midst of a teamwide disintegration—Jhonny's lack of performance has been devastating.

I try not to pay attention to spring training, but this spring has gone on forever.

I looked today at spring stats (numbers before Friday's game) because I've been worried about the offense. With the prominent exceptions of Sizemore and Peralta, there doesn't seem to be a lot of hitting. Anytime I watch, I see weak grounders, pop-ups and off-balance swings. Who's squaring up on the ball?

The Indians have scored 135 runs this spring, which is good for 20th most in the majors. They are 23rd in on-base percentage, and 17th in both total bases and slugging percentage. The team is also 22nd in the majors in doubles, which is one of my favorite indicators of offensive prowess. These mediocre numbers come in what appears to be a hitter's park (let us hope so for the sake of Indians pitching, which has allowed more runs than all but seven other teams). I don't recall there being one of those 16-4 romps we remember from alligator land.

It wasn't long ago the Indians could really knock the ball around. The team scored 870 runs in 2006. The Tribe could go on a tear and score six or seven runs without breaking a sweat. I know offenses have lessened in the past few years (thanks to the humidor, etc.), but the Indians have had what could be generously described as an unreliable offense over the past two seasons: in 2007 the team scored 811 runs (still quite good) and 805 in 2008 (good for sixth or seventh in the bigs as I remember). But I can't forget that stretch in late April when the starting pitching was truly incredible—when Laffey, Lee and Jake were in the top ten in ERA—and the team couldn't score four runs if it had five outs an inning.

So what can be expected this season? Another awesome season from Sizemore; perhaps a breakout season from Peralta. Regression from Shoppach, Choo, Carroll and DeRosa. More of the same from Garko, Barfield, Dellucci and Hafner (this is not a good thing). Some improvement from Victor and Francisco. 

Can this team score 800 runs? I fear not. The offense has underperformed for the past two seasons, but maybe what we see is what we get. And the starting pitching won't be as good as it was in 2008, so the offense needs to show some vitality.

I'm not exactly encouraged by what I'm seeing in Goodyear.

Euthyphro:  So no doubt you saw in the paper, Socrates, that Adam Miller has re-injured his finger?

Socrates:  Old news, lad.

Euthyphro:  No, again. If only he could stay healthy.

Socrates:  Perhaps we could say: If only he were good.

Euthyphro:  But he is good, Socrates. He throws 97—he's the best pitching prospect the Tribe has had since Sonny Siebert!

Socrates:  Would you say he is better than Francisco Cabrera?

Euthyphro:  Of course. No comparison.

Socrates:  Cabrera threw 97 as well, and had great promise that never materialized.

Euthyphro:  But Cabrera never could put it all together. He was maddening, for all his inability to harness his talent.

Socrates:  And Miller? When has he "put it all together?"  In Arizona?  Years ago in Winter Haven?  He has better control than Cabrera but is less of a pitcher.

Euthyphro:  But Socrates ...

Socrates:  There is no difference between the profligacy of Miller's talent and the waste of Jason Davis'. Or if there is a difference it is simply one of location. Did we not once have great hopes for Jason Davis? Did we not see in him the future of our bullpen?

Euthyphro:  Yes, of course, but he had a chance to throw and was found wanting. Miller never gets to the mound at all.

Socrates:  And your point is?

Euthyphro:  Well, it's not fair.

Socrates:  Life isn't fair, Euthyphro. In terms of results, Miller cannot throw strikes any more than David Aardsma. Therefore, Adam Miller cannot pitch, and therefore he sucks just as much as Jason Davis.

We are all familiar with the common belief that the Dolan family is greedy, avaricious and pathologically cheap. But in fact they are pretty good owners. There are plenty of worse ones. So I got to thinking about where the Indians' owners rank. Consider this a purely subjective list. Graded on overall performance, lack of interference, success, investment in product, and general likability. Some of the owners below (e.g., Pohlad, Moorad) are out of date.

I don't know anywhere near enough to pass judgment on most of these owners, but here's an attempt at ranking them:

(1) Boston Red Sox (John Henry): Hired Bill James, keeps mouth shut, invests in farm system.  

(2) Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (Arturo Moreno): Something of a showboat, but didn't re-sign Frank Rodriguez.   

(3) St. Louis Cardinals (William O. DeWitt, Jr.): Classy organization in best baseball town in America.   

(4) Milwaukee Brewers (Mark Attanasio): Complained about the Yankees' signing everybody.     

(5) New York Mets (Fred Wilpon): Not too obnoxious for a New York team.   

(6) Chicago White Sox (Jerry Reinsdorf): Hard to believe, but maybe he's a good owner. Probably the most hawkish, anti-Players Association owner. Don't forget 1994.   

(7) Cleveland Indians (Larry Dolan): Might rank higher if Dolan would ever take out his wallet. Where are the onions? And who's doing his PR?   

(8) Philadelphia Phillies (David Montgomery): This is just a guess. According to reports in Philly, he's a piker as well.

(9) Tampa Bay Rays (Stuart Sternberg): Took over for a lunatic owner and seems to have a clue.   

(10) Colorado Rockies (Charlie Monfort): Appears to be smart, and hired Dan O'Dowd.   

(11) Atlanta Braves (Liberty Media): Ted Turner doesn't like them—is that a bad thing? TV station gets bonus points for shutting down Chip Caray.  

(12) Oakland Athletics (Lewis Wolff): Hard to get a read on this franchise. Dump players, sign players, then dump them again. Where would they be without their GM?  

(13) Seattle Mariners (Nintendo): Game company just a shadow owner; the club is actually owned and operated by one Ichiro Suzuki.   

(14) Arizona Diamondbacks (Jeff Moorad): Former agent (about to go to San Diego?), lots of debt, franchise can't figure out what it is: big market or not?   

(15) Detroit Tigers (Mike Ilitch): Pizza maniac throws money at Pudge, Sheff, D Train, etc. Wha' happened?   

(16) Toronto Blue Jays (Rogers Communications): Hired J.P. "Big Pimpin'" Ricciardi; renamed Skydome.

(17) Chicago Cubs (Tribune Company): Absentee owners don't care as long as the seats are filled. Party is soon to be over. Any team can have a bad century.  

(18) San Diego Padres (John Moores): Unloading assets to pay for divorce; can't the Padres buy any hitting?   

(19) San Francisco Giants (Peter Magowan): Spends money foolishly; see Renteria, Edgar. Likes old people, though. 

(20) Kansas City Royals (David Glass): He was supposed to be enlightened, but then he gets Mike Jacobs and Kyle Farnsworth.   

(21) Minnesota Twins (Carl Pohlad): RIP, but ein echte Karger. Contract me!

(22) Los Angeles Dodgers (Frank McCourt): Indians have Carlos Santana to show for his interference with baseball operations.  

(23) Texas Rangers (Thomas O. Hicks): Chan Ho Park, George W. Bush, Alex Rodriguez: the prosecution rests.   

(24) Baltimore Orioles (Peter Angelos): Forces his operations people to make stupid moves. Overvalues his assets. 

(25) Houston Astros (Drayton McLane, Jr.): Always unloading salary; then buys a dumb contract. In his favor: dumped Phil Garner.

(26) Cincinnati Reds (Robert Castellini): Pity the Reds. Almost makes Marge Schott look good.  

(27) New York Yankees (George Steinbrenner): The greatest meddler in the history of the game (Chas. Finley?) and a bona fide blowhard. Also a convicted liar, as Billy Martin said.   

(28) Pittsburgh Pirates (Robert Nutting): Setting the record for the longest losing streak ever.   

(29) Washington Nationals (Theodore N. Lerner): Micromanager extraordinaire. Requisition forms required for purchase of paper clips. Permitted Jim Bowden to extend Cristian Guzman's contract.   

(30) Florida Marlins (Jeffrey Loria): Hands down, worst owner. Still trying to get a stadium from Florida taxpayers. Puts revenue sharing in his pocket. Ruined the Expos.   

"Now that the Angels are out, the team with the best record in baseball has won the World Series just twice in the 16 postseasons since baseball creatively went to the wild-card playoff format. If the Dodgers win it all this year -- and if there is such a thing as a favorite going into the second round, they might well be it -- the playoff team with the worst of the eight records will have won the World Series three times. One can sympathize with the Angels' frustrations, especially after the final game with the botched squeeze, Jason Bay's bloop and Jed Lowrie's ground ball through the hole. We understand that after winning 100 games they believed they were the best team in baseball, but the fact is they didn't play well in the Boston series."—Peter Gammons, in his latest espn.com blog

Recently, Jay wrote about rule changes: "If you want to talk rule changes, it’s a whole other discussion, but like most diehard fans, I’m totally sure that my rules would be a lot better than the current ones. I personally would rather change the rules for postseason berths."

A team should be rewarded for winning the most games in the regular season. I think it's lame that the Cardinals won the World Series a few years ago. I'd hate to be an Angels' fan after the way they lost to Boston. I think the wildcard team has too much of an advantage. Should they come in down 0-1? Should they have one fewer home date (teams would squawk about lost revenue)? Let me point out that wildcard teams tend to come out of the AL East. Big market teams.

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.