Is Boston Really Under More Pressure Than Cleveland?

This morning while driving to work I was listening to ESPN’s Colin Cowherd talk about the upcoming ALCS and he was of the opinion that Cleveland has the edge over Boston because the Red Sox are under more pressure to win, the Indians’ aces are better than Boston’s, and because Cleveland has better middle relief. Is he kidding me?

About point two I can’t really argue. Frankly I’d take Josh Beckett over C.C. Sabathia, but it’s close and Beckett mostly gets the edge because of his postseason track record. But I have to admit I like Sabathia and Fausto Carmona over Beckett and Schilling (or Matsuzaka). You could certainly argue that Schilling’s postseason track record gives him an edge over Carmona, but Carmona looks to be the better pitcher and both he and Sabathia are legitimate Cy Young contenders while Schilling isn’t.

The Red Sox staff has more depth, though. Assuming a seven-game series, Beckett will most likely start Games 1, 4, and 7 and Schilling will most likely go in Games 2 and 5. That leaves Matsuzaka to pitch Games 3 and 6 against either Jake Westbrook or Paul Byrd. There’s also speculation that Tim Wakefield will be healthy enough to pitch Game 4, which would obviously muck up the above scenario, giving Beckett one less start, but also taking one away from Matsuzaka.

I like the back end of Boston’s rotation much more than Cleveland’s.

Cowherd’s third point was that Cleveland has better middle relief than Boston. Middle relief is important, although I have no idea what impact middle relievers have had on past playoff series. At least statistically anyway. Bill James makes no mention of middle relievers in his World Series Prediction System, giving points based on the performance of each team’s entire pitching staff, probably because middle relievers (or any kind of relievers) are new to the game, relatively speaking. Regardless I wanted to see if Cowherd had a point or if he was just blowing smoke out of his ass, so I compared each team’s middle relief corps.

It looks like Cowherd was right. Cleveland clearly has a better middle relief corps. Even if they remove Gagne from the picture (we can always hope), the Sox’s ERA (2.67) is still higher than that of the Indians. Jon Lester could be a wild card for Boston, though, as he’s been moved from the rotation to the bullpen, but that could backfire just as easily as it could help.

So I guess my only bone of contention with Cowherd is his insistence that the Red Sox are under more pressure to win than the Indians. According to Colin, the Indians are “loose” while the Red Sox are “tight.” How he knows this is anyone’s guess. I don’t know either, so I’ll have to come at this from a fan’s perspective. No city in America is as passionate about its baseball team than Boston (New York, St. Louis, and Chicago notwithstanding). Except for New York, media coverage is neither as prevalent or intrusive as it is in Boston (it’s not uncommon for the Red Sox to get 15 or more pages of coverage in the local papers during the postseason) and the papers can adopt a doom and gloom attitude when things aren’t going well.

Having said that, I don’t think Red Sox Nation feels the same way about winning (or losing) the World Series as it did prior to 2004. If the Sox lose to the Indians we’ll be upset for sure, but we won’t be suicidal. Our entire winters won’t be ruined by yet another near miss at a championship that none of us had ever experienced. It won’t feel like it did in 2003 when Grady “Effing” Little ignored the most obvious signs (not to mention clear-cut stats) and left a clearly fatigued Pedro Martinez on the mound to lose to the “effing” Yankees. It won’t feel like it did in 1986, 1978, and 1975, and every other postseason series we lost in between.

If the Sox lose, I can honestly say I’ll be able to move onto something else until next spring when I begin to prepare for another season. I hope I can speak for the rest of Red Sox Nation when I say that. I also hope the players feel the same. Winning the Series in ‘04 finally took the edge off and vanquished that ridiculous Curse of the Bambino bullshit. Besides, we have a 5-0 Patriots team that looks to be favored to win another Super Bowl, a fourth-ranked Boston College football team that’s ranked as high as it’s ever been, and a Celtics team that might actually be good enough to compete for a change. If nothing else they’ll be entertaining.

Meanwhile Cleveland has a Browns team that looks to be improved but is far from a championship, a Cavaliers team that made it to the NBA finals last year but lost in four games, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a river that once caught fire. It also hasn’t welcomed home a World Series champion since the Truman administration (1948 to be exact; don’t worry I had to look it up too, not the year but the part about Truman). In 1954 the Indians won a then American League record 111 games only to be swept in the World Series by the Giants. It took them 41 years to win their next pennant, but they lost to the Braves in the ‘95 World Series, then fell to the Marlins in ‘97. They haven’t been to the World Series since.

Cleveland may not be a city that puts a ton of pressure on its sports teams, at least not to the degree of Boston or New York, but I have to think that Indian Nation is a bit tired of a championship drought that is coming up on 60 years. I find it difficult to believe the Indians aren’t feeling the hot breath of failed Octobers past on the nape of their necks.