Series Learning Experience For Indians
They had hitting. They had pitching. They had fielding.
The Cleveland Indians had everything but postseason experience.
“We think we have a better team than them, but they’ve been here three times. This time, they won,” Cleveland second baseman Carlos Baerga said Saturday night after the Indians’ remarkable season ended with a whimper - one hit, no runs, eight strikeouts in a 1-0 loss to Atlanta’s Tom Glavine.
The best-hitting team in baseball all season, the Indians often looked like scared rookies once they got to the playoffs, hitting .219 against Boston in the A.L. division series and .257 against Seattle in the championship series.
They were numbers that didn’t bode well for them when they finally ran into the world’s best pitching staff in Atlanta. The Braves held them to a .179 average and 19 runs in six games, an average of 3.2 runs by a team that scored nearly six per game during the regular season.
“We never had this experience before in the playoffs and World Series,” said Baerga, whose fly ball to center fielder Marquis Grissom ended it. “This is going to be good for us.”
The Indians posted such incredible numbers during the regular season, their failures in the postseason were that much more glaring.
They led the majors in hitting (.291), scoring (840 runs) and home runs (207) this year. The home run total beat the old team record by 20, in spite of a season shortened to 144 games by the strike.
Yet the only hit Glavine allowed in eight innings Saturday was a soft flair to center field by Tony Pena, the weakest hitter in the lineup other than the pitchers. The Indians’ Series average was just four points better than the six-game mark for futility set by the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Athletics in 1911.
The Series thus ended the way it began for the Indians, who managed just two hits in the series-opening loss to Greg Maddux exactly one week earlier.
“I don’t think we hit one ball hard off Glavine,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “It was a tremendous performance. It ranks up there with Maddux’s game in Game 1. He kept the ball down and kept down the mistakes.”
Glavine never let Cleveland get started.
“They have the best pitching staff in baseball,” Pena said, “and they showed it in this Series. They are champions.”