Coming into the 2011 season, the Indians’ return on the CC Sabathia trade had been disappointingly small. Not only had centerpiece Matt LaPorta failed to make an impact at the major-league level, but Zach Jackson washed out early, Rob Bryson still toils in the minor leagues, and the second-biggest piece, Michael Brantley, had struggled mightily in his short time with the big club, compiling a .291 wOBA and -1.2 WAR in his first two seasons (100 games, 446 plate appearances) as a Cleveland Indian. As has been the way with seemingly everything in Cleveland in 2011, though, Brantley has turned it around. The 24-year-old center fielder carries a .349 wOBA into Monday’s action, and it appears that he may finally be here to stay at the MLB level.

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April is over, and as expected, the Cleveland Indians have the best record in baseball. Okay, you’re right, not one single person on this planet expected that. ZIPS projected 71 wins for the Tribe, while the readership here at FanGraphs was a little more optimistic, penciling them in for 73 victories. They’re currently on pace for 114 wins, and would need to play .400 baseball the rest of the way in order for the crowd’s projection to come true.

It’s not just wins and losses, either. The Indians have the best run differential in baseball (+47) and they’re second in the majors in team WAR (+10.5), trailing only the offensive juggernaut in St. Louis. The Indians aren’t winning a bunch of nail-biters, but, instead, they’re pounding their opponents into submission. At 5.41 runs scored per game, they’re nearly keeping pace with the Yankees offense, and yet they’re simultaneously holding opponents to just 3.67 runs per game. Only Oakland and Anaheim are preventing runs at a better rate.

So, 27 games of excellent baseball later, we have to ask the obvious question: are the Indians for real?

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If you go to the leaderboards here on the site, you’ll see a whole bunch of familiar names that you’d expect to see doing well, a couple of interesting guys having rebound seasons, and Jack Hannahan. The Indians third baseman is mixed in with the likes of Alex Rodriguez and Troy Tulowitzki, and he’s doing it in a surprising manner.

Hannahan has always been a terrific defensive third baseman so it’s no surprise that he’s racking up the fielding value again, leading all third baseman in UZR. Most of his value has come at the plate, however, and from the one area – power hitting – where he hasn’t traditionally shown much ability. Hannahan already has four home runs this year, as many as he hit in all of 2009 when he racked up 301 plate appearances for the A’s and Mariners.

But, that’s not the most surprising thing. Hannahan is strong enough that a four home run binge over the course of a few weeks isn’t all that weird. It’s an outlier, and it’s the kind of thing you come to expect from small sample sizes in April. What you don’t expect, however, is this.

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Based on traditional metrics like wins, losses, and ERA, Justin Masterson has been a below-average starting pitcher during the past two seasons. With a 10-23 record, and an ERA above 4.50, the former prospect looked like a superficial candidate for the label of “bust”. But defensive independent metrics suggested Masterson was a quality starter — who struggled shaking the luck dragons known as left-on base percentage (LOB%) and batting average on balls in play (BABIP).

In 2009 and 2010, the right-hander’s average on balls in play was roughly 25% more than the league average, which came despite a fantastic groundball rate. It certainly did not help that most of those groundballs came in front of the second worst defense in the league during the same period. With an increased amount of balls finding holes, his strand rate fell about 6% below the average of his peers.

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When you’re sitting on top of the world, it’s sometimes easy to overlook the flaws. The Cleveland Indians, at 14-8, currently own the AL’s best record and lead their division by 2.5 games. While we’re a long way from anointing them 2011’s surprise team, they certainly have impressed to this point. Their 5.18 runs per game actually ranks second in the AL (though only a hundredth of a point ahead of Texas). Yet amid all that, they haven’t yet clicked on all cylinders. That’s because Carlos Santana has gotten off to something of a slow start. But there are plenty of indications that his approach will pay off in the long run.

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Heading into this past weekend, Indians fans were already abuzz. Then the Tribe went out and swept the Orioles.

As a result, when baseball fans awoke this morning, only three teams were in the top 11 in both offensive and pitching WAR. Two were preseason contenders, the Philadelphia Phillies (11th among position players, first among pitchers) and Colorado Rockies (third and third). The other was the fightin’ Cleveland Indians. And, for good measure, yesterday’s game also featured the triumphant return of Grady Sizemore.

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At least Nick Punto could fly.

Today’s edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews of two games, with sexy, updated Team NERD scores and sexy, updated ZiPS projections.

2. Notes on a third game you shouldn’t watch.

3. A poll on what’s the most depressing thing about the current iteration of the Twins.

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Cleveland fans have a rough life. It seems like all their sports success is tainted with pain: the Cavs were good in the 2000s, but then LeBron James dissed them on national television; the Browns were good in the 1980s, but they consistently lost in heart-breaking fashion in the playoffs and have only had three winning seasons since; and the Indians were great in the late 1990s, but haven’t won a World Series since 1948. There are many markets in the running for the title of “most miserable fans,” and while I won’t go so far as to crown a winner, I think Cleveland has a case to be considered among the best (worst?) of them.

So it should come as no surprise that after the Indians’ hot start, which has included an eight-game winning streak and a sweep of the Boston Red Sox at home, some Cleveland fans are already talking about being buyers at the trade deadline and making a run for the playoffs. While obviously it’s waaay too early in the season to be making such pronouncements, is there reason for hope in Cleveland this season?

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If you haven’t taken a statistics class, regression can be rather tricky to grasp at first. It’s a word you’ll hear bantered about frequently on sabermetrically inclined websites, especially during the beginning of the season: “Oh, Albert Pujols is hitting .200, but it’s early so he’s bound to regress.” “Nick Hundley is slugging over .700, but that’s sure to regress.” This seems like a straightforward concept on the surface – good players that are underperforming are bound to improve, and over-performing scrubs will eventually cool down – but it leaves out an important piece of information: regress to what level?

The common mistake is to assume that if a good player has been underperforming, their “regression” will consist of them hitting .400 and bringing their overall line up to the level of their preseason projections. I like to call this the “overcorrection fallacy”, the belief that players will somehow compensate for their hot or cold performances by reverting to the other extreme going forward. While that may happen in select instances, it’s not what “regression” actually means. Instead, when someone says a player is likely to regress, they mean that the player should be expected to perform closer to their true talent level going forward.

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The Cleveland Indians have scored the third-most runs per game in the American League. That’s one line I never expected to type, no matter how early in the season. What’s more, they’ve already swept the Boston Red Sox, and have won their last eight games after dropping their first two. While the pitching staff has certainly done its job, the offense has stepped up big time. A number of guys are contributing in big ways, but perhaps none has advanced his team more than Asdrubal Cabrera.

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