The Cleveland Indians officially can’t do this

I had some guys over to the house this past Friday to watch the Indians gear up and try and make an unlikely run to the 2011 playoffs. After all, it’s not like the Reds are worth watching anymore; and I truly haven’t had a Cincinnati game on since before I went to Las Vegas weeks ago. I’ve quit on them. My interest has shifted to upstart underdogs like the Indians and Arizona Dbacks from now until the end of this season. Hopefully one of them gives me something worth watching when the playoffs roll around.

Long story short, the Indians proved to me this weekend that they amount to no more than a cock-tease. They seemingly searched out every way they could on Friday evening to blow an insurmountable lead; only to come back last night and blow a 3-0 lead with six outs to go.

At the risk of sounding like Colin Cowherd here (because I lack statistical fact and I’m only going off solid observation and opinion)–and granted the Indians never have a strong showing against the Texas Rangers–I’m officially selling the Indians as a true playoff contender. They’re done. I don’t care that they play Detroit 9 more times this season, including the final three games of the year.

They’re a solid, hard-battling, over-achieving group. There is a lot to like about them. They’re a lot better than I thought they would be and they made moves to do as much as they can to supplement what they started the year with in bringing in Ubaldo Jimenez and Kosuke Fukudome. But they’ve blown too many must-have games already at this point. They have shown me that they’re not going to be able to hang with the heat that a pennant race truly forces on a group of men.

They’re done. That said, Detroit isn’t good enough to put these guys away in the manner that Milwaukee has done to the Reds. They’ll hang around enough to be ‘in it’ until the last week or two of the season, but the Indians are largely just pretenders at this point. Come see me when you can get out of Texas with a series that you had on a platter.

After those deflating losses, they’ll lose two of three to Detroit in Cleveland this week (beginning on Tuesday) and the dream will never be real again.