Cleveland Indians: A Bullpen Call to Arms: Part One

It is no secret that the Indians and GM Mark Shapiro are looking for some new recruits to pitch highly leveraged situations late in games. Cleveland fans have witnessed it.

Over the past three seasons, the Indians and its bullpen have gone from very bad to lights-out dominating to again not-able to-watch bad, and it has shown in their records. These vital situations can make or break a team.

This is because the bullpen is such an important part of any championship contending ball club.

Just look at the teams in the World Series. Both Philadelphia and Tampa Bay were top-five in the Major Leagues in bullpen ERA. They had excellent late-inning relief, just as the Tribe had in ’07 when they were oh-so close to the World Series.

So where does the Indians bullpen go from here to recapture that magic, and again contend in ’09? It must get an infusion of outside talent on top of praying for a return to normalcy from a certain few arms if there is to be a sniff of any October baseball on the lake again, right?

That would be ideal, but contrary to general perception, the Indians' bullpen may not be as bad off as you think.

And one might argue that this year’s bullpen will be deeper and more talented than it was entering 2008 when it was viewed as a team strength, especially when taking into consideration the vast pool of talent at AAA.

I will deal with this in two parts. The remainder of this article will discuss pitchers on the Indians active roster that will be slated to start the season in the bullpen. The second article will feature upcoming minor league talent and external options.

Locked-and-Loaded for 2009

On any team you can pretty much write in that there will be six...maybe seven...guys in the bullpen at any given time. Currently, the Indians have already five names virtually locked in to start the season.

Starting in long relief, which the Indians really didn’t have entering ’08, is Zach Jackson

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