Not a predicition but Zac Meisel had this on the Indians 2021 season:
Detroit will play host to the start of a new era for Cleveland’s baseball bunch, or perhaps the first few days of an awkward, caught-in-between year for a franchise motioning from one collection of players to the next. The Indians have steered toward this point for the past couple of years. They have gradually recalibrated the roster, trading starting pitcher after starting pitcher and, ultimately, the All-Star shortstop. Along the way, they stockpiled middle infielders too young to partake in one of those alcohol-infused celebrations.
This is a new dawn, a new universe, and what unfolded on the diamond from 2013 to 2020 is in the rearview. The 2021 season isn’t even so much about 2021; it’s about charting a path to that moment in time when halting the team’s 73-year championship drought again seems attainable.
If this winds up looking like a transition year, that’s because it is. If this winds up being the Indians’ worst season since Francona took the reins as manager, it won’t be shocking. If this winds up serving as a springboard for the next run of postseason appearances, well, that’s their hope and their top priority.
The theme of this season is learning who will be a part of the next wave and who will not, learning who deserves to stick around when Tyler Freeman and Nolan Jones and Owen Miller and Gabriel Arias and George Valera equip the club with some long-desired position-player talent to pair with a promising pitching staff.
To accomplish that, there will be some trial and error. (Clock’s ticking, Jake Bauers.) There will be some experimenting. (Good luck in center, Amed Rosario.) There will be plenty of roster shuffling. (Don’t get too comfortable in Columbus, Oscar Mercado, Daniel Johnson, Bobby Bradley and Nick Sandlin.)
Those strategies can be detrimental to the win column, but it’s a necessary evil to weed out who doesn’t fit and to figure out what works. The Indians have a roster filled with guys in their mid-20s who haven’t proven they can cut it in the big leagues. They have to get answers.
And, maybe in a twisted way, that makes this season more intriguing than certain 162-game campaigns in recent memory. There’s something alluring about the mystery clouding the expectations for guys like Zach Plesac, Aaron Civale, Logan Allen, Josh Naylor and Andrés Giménez. Some players will enjoy breakout seasons and firmly plant themselves in the team’s plans for 2022 and beyond. Others will disappoint and lose their grip on a roster spot.
It leaves the overall outlook for the team a bit murky.
A productive season for the Indians would be to reach the fall with confidence that the 2022 roster could be loaded with young talent. That doesn’t completely rule out fielding a competitive team over the next six months, but that will prove far more difficult than it has for the past five years.
