Indians need a much better bullpen to contend in '07

Roberto Hernandez will be counted on as much for his experience as his right arm.
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. (AP) -- Inside the Cleveland Indians' 512-page media guide is every statistic, record and nugget of information imaginable. There's a whole section devoted to "2006 Team Highlights."
The bullpen barely got mentioned.
That's because the biggest reason for the Indians' slide in '06 -- they followed a 93-win season by going 78-84 -- can be traced directly from the pitcher's mound to the bullpen door, which should have had a "Caution: Highly Flammable" sign posted on it.
The only relief in Cleveland came when the season ended.
Indians relievers posted a major league-worst 27 saves, had a hand in 27 losses, blew 21 saves and allowed 46 percent of inherited runners to score. Baseball Prospectus ranked the '06 Indians bullpen among the bottom 3 percent of all teams since 1959.
There's bad, then there's historic bad.
Extreme makeover
Manager Eric Wedge can only hope he doesn't witness an encore.
"I'm confident we're going to be better than last year," Wedge said, slightly amused at his safe prediction. "I'm not sure just what that means to anybody, but I'm confident we're going to be better."
They'd better be.
In order to keep pace with Detroit, Chicago and Minnesota in the AL Central, the Indians will have to be able to count on their relievers to protect late-game leads and close out wins.
General manager Mark Shapiro spent part of the winter rebuilding Cleveland's bullpen, which was in need of an extreme makeover. He signed closer Joe Borowski, veteran right-hander Roberto Hernandez and lefty Aaron Fultz as free agents, an infusion of experience, quality and depth -- three variables missing a year ago.
Keith Foulke, too, was brought in to compete for the closer's job but the right-hander retired before reporting to camp.
Wedge has been pleased with what he has seen from his relievers this spring, but nothing accomplished in February and March will mean a thing once the regular season starts in a two weeks.
Borowski the closer
Wedge will begin the season with Borowski, who had 36 saves for Florida last season, as his closer with Hernandez and Rafael Betancourt as the primary set-up men. Fultz will mostly be used against lefties. Matt Miller and Fernando Cabrera will work the sixth and seventh innings and Jason Davis' role will be as long reliever.
"The roles are always going to evolve," Wedge said. "But when you look at the options we have this year, when you look at the experience we have, when you look at some of the experiences of our people we have coming back, we're in much better shape than we were last year."
The 42-year-old Hernandez has 326 career saves -- 10th all-time -- in more than 900 appearances. Since starting in California's organization in 1986, he's pitched for the White Sox, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, the New York Mets, Pittsburgh, and the Mets again.
The Indians, though, didn't sign him to just get three outs in the ninth. They're hoping Hernandez can serve as a mentor to their young pitchers, some of whom got knocked around in 2006.
"If you can take a positive out of last year, it's that all these young guys basically went through hell and now they've got something to lean on or fall back on," he said. "Now they've got experience and there is no substitute for that in the majors.
"For a lot of these guys it was the first time they were hit on the chin and fallen on the canvas and gotten up. Nowadays, you've got your top prospects and they are hardly given a chance to fail and they breeze on through and then the first time they fail in the big leagues is a shock. But it happens to everybody."
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