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1995 Indians vs the 1997 Indians vs the 2016 Indians

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Piggybacking off the Francona is better than Hargrove nonsense in the other thread....

Where do you stand ?

To me the 1997 Cleveland Indians were the most complete overall team of any of the World Series teams.

Not only did they have the better balanced lineup (Grissom replaced Lofton with ease)— their players defensively were better with Matt Williams at 3rd... Loved the platoon of Tony Fernandez and Bip Roberts

David Justice and Matt Williams were both excellent middle of the lineup hitters with a more experienced Thome and Ramirez in the lineup....

And obviously Sandy Alomar Jr of 1997 was one of the best we’ve seen in Cleveland...

Loved the bullpen too....

2016 gets the starting pitching nod.... Also Andrew Miller was a difference maker....

Belle and Lofton of 95 are there too....

For me the 1997 Cleveland Indians are not only underrated but to me were the most complete team of all 3 that made the World Series....
 
First off, 2016 was cute and all... but this is a two horse race between that 1995 team which restored the franchise and their objectively most talented team, the 1997 squad who just needed another year or two without disaster.

Unappreciated asides under my breath:

1. I met Eddie Murray in '95 and his head was three times the size of my head. I was in college.

2. How awesome is it that the '95 team had four future MLB managers?

3. I had a brief tour of duty as an intern the summer of '97 with Channel 43, met most of those guys. I had to bribe David Justice an extra fifty bucks to do an interview for the station that broadcasts his games. It rubbed me the wrong way.

4. Julio Franco was a part of the 1997 run, which pretty much counteracts the sting of Lofton and Belle being gone. Between watching Omar and Williams shut down the left side and Julio taking, you have some beautiful baseball optics.

5. 1997 featured some Jeff Manto at bats and smoking butts in the dugout. Treasure that.
 
I had a brief tour of duty as an intern the summer of '97 with Channel 43, met most of those guys. I had to bribe David Justice an extra fifty bucks to do an interview for the station that broadcasts his games. It rubbed me the wrong way.
You must have met Marquis Grissom...what a true gentleman he was. I met him at charity golf outing he organized for his college some years back and he was terrific. So was Otis Nixon...but David Justice? Not so much. Also had a long conversation with Lenny Webster, who was STILL livid over the Omar Vizquel bunt/no bunt incident in extra innings that helped cost the Orioles the series that year. Great guy, but still mad as hell about that. My golf team drew Dean Palmer. OMG, nice fella, but what a snooze fest. Would have loved to have drawn someone like Tim Raines or Vince Coleman instead...someone with a little personality.
 
1995 was the most dissapointing, I mean, best of the 3. There really is no excuse that a team that loaded offensively, with enough steroids coursing through their veins to kill a horsemeat factory stockyard, would be so neutered by the likes of Steve Avery. Yes, that Braves rotation had some HOFers, but those same HOFers didn't carry the Braves through any other WS they were in. That rotation and bullpen, too, was the best complete group of the 3, and even if they were crustier than a Florida retirement community they were more than effective. Francona did by far the best job in 2016, that team never should have made it out of round 1 let alone come within a game of winning it all. Corey Kluber and the Bullpen Days should be heralded by local sports fans on the level of the Miracle of Richfield and the coked out 80s Browns that fans still worship. mean holy shit, that run smoked two guys arms in Allen and Miller. The teams best power hitter was Mike Fucking Napoli. But alas, this town full of champions only sees this year as a dissapointment since most didn't start paying attention until they found out the Tribe made the playoffs. Oh well.



Oh and 97? I don't talk about 97.
 
2016 doesn't even belong in the conversation.

But, it is a great example of how baseball has such greater variance in winning, when compared to a sport like basketball.

In the NBA, the better team pretty much wins the series. Individual games have less variance, and when you repeat them seven times, upsets are more rare.

Due to the high variance of individual games in baseball, a team whose starting pitching contained Ryan Merritt, Josh Tomlin, and a few of Trevor Bauer's fingers can make it all the way to extra innings of game 7 of the World Series.

I always had a penchant for '99. We still have Manny, Thome, Lofton and Vizquel, but added Robbie Alomar, and Jaret Wright and Bartolo Colon came into their own (good for Bartolo, bad for Jaret). As much as I loved Matt Williams as a player in San Francisco, I found him a bit disappointing at the plate as an Indian. I also struggled to enjoy our lack of a second baseman to replace Baerga. With all the guys we went through, I felt Jose Vizcaino was the only one who ever produced.
 
If you look at WAR, the 1997 and 2016 teams are dead even with 43.1 WAR between their hitters and pitchers.

The 1995 team, however, outpaced them both with 47.9 WAR in just 144 games.

With @Out of the Rafters at the Q mentioning that '99 squad, I feel like the '17 team should be mentioned as well.

The 2017 team had by far the best pitching of any of the teams mentioned, while the '99 team had the best lineup. Overall, the 2017 team might have been our most talented team since our last championship although '95 was certainly the highest achieving.

YEAROFFPITCHTOTAL WAR
199527.820.147.9 (144 games)
199731.311.843.1
199934.415.549.9
201624.918.243.1
201726.730.457.1
 
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If you look at WAR, the 1997 and 2016 teams are dead even with 43.1 WAR between their hitters and pitchers.

The 1995 team, however, outpaced them both with 47.9 WAR in just 144 games.

With @Out of the Rafters at the Q mentioning that '99 squad, I feel like the '17 team should be mentioned as well.

The 2017 team had by far the best pitching of any of the teams mentioned, while the '99 team had the best lineup. Overall, the 2017 team might have been our most talented team since our last championship.
95 was the best team of the era.

MVP Belle that season was unreal. Plus we still had Baerga at second... I like 99 personally, but you can't touch the offensive potency of '95. Losing Belle is just unreplaceable.

2017 was certainly better than 2016. Just got unlucky in the playoffs.
 
It’s 1995 for me. Loaded lineup and the pitching was good enough. The ‘97 team had a similar but not as loaded lineup, but they never clicked until late. They only won 86 games and no other team in the division was over .500 (including the Brewers in the old 6 team central).

Williams and Grissom were very good players who did not play their best in their one year in Cleveland. Williams was an upgrade to Sorrento but Grissom was a downgrade from Lofton. The Fernandez/Roberts platoon couldn’t replace Baerga; Justice was really good but so was Murray in ‘95; and Brian Giles wasn’t an adequate replacement for Belle.

The ‘97 rotation included Hershiser, Nagy and Ogea with young Wright and Colon breaking in. That team went through a bunch of arms that year before landing on the young guys (Brian Anderson and Albie Lopez still being tried as starters, and veterans McDowell, Smiley and Juden). The ‘95 rotation of Martinez, Hershiser, Nagy, Ken Hill and young Ogea was better and more playoff tested.

The 2016 team would have had by far the best pitching if healthy. The lineup had peak years from Kipnis and Santana but was missing Brantley. Lindor and Ramirez had great years but had yet to become power hitters. And Napoli batted cleanup when he would’ve batted 8th on the 90’s teams.
 
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If you look at WAR, the 1997 and 2016 teams are dead even with 43.1 WAR between their hitters and pitchers.

The 1995 team, however, outpaced them both with 47.9 WAR in just 144 games.
I was just about to post.

I loved all of these teams, but that 1995 was basically a historic team. They were on pace to win 113 games (in a 162 game season), they were the number 1 hitting team and number 2 pitching team that year. There was no reason they shouldnt have fucked the braves shit up that year, and coasted to a world series win.

The 1997 team and 2016 were both very good teams, but no where on the same level of the 1995 team
 
Two different eras.

And the 2016 team wasn't healthy going into the Series.

A lights out rotation of Kluber-Carrasco-Salazar-Bauers-Tomlin lost Salazar and then Cookie, and morphed into basically Kluber and a wing and a prayer.

I loved all three.
 
Two different eras.

And the 2016 team wasn't healthy going into the Series.

A lights out rotation of Kluber-Carrasco-Salazar-Bauers-Tomlin lost Salazar and then Cookie, and morphed into basically Kluber and a wing and a prayer.

I loved all three.
1) Don't forget that we had some of Trevor Bauer's fingers back for the World Series.
2) "Tell me you're from the Midwest without telling me you're from the Midwest" you put an "s" on the end of everything. Trevor Bauer. Jake Bauers.
 
1) Don't forget that we had some of Trevor Bauer's fingers back for the World Series.
2) "Tell me you're from the Midwest without telling me you're from the Midwest" you put an "s" on the end of everything. Trevor Bauer. Jake Bauers.
I still struggle mightily not referring to the grocery store ALDI as ALDI's.
 
I still struggle mightily not referring to the grocery store ALDI as ALDI's.
There are some really common ones, like Paneras, Aldis, etc.

Then there are some out of touch with technology old people ones like "Facebooks" or whatever.

But my all-time favorite, and true identifier for this area, will always be "Rini-Rego's"
 
The 2017 team was so much fun to watch- I loved watching our lineup smack teams around. It really seemed like that was our year and I was so crushed when things went south against the Yankees. I still think Kluber's back was bothering him more than he ever let on.
 

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