New Season ... Old Carmona of Three Years Past

This column was first published on LandLoyalty.com on April 3, 2011.

I know it was just one game.

But during Friday’s opener against the Chicago White Sox, Fausto Carmona looked bad. Really, really bad. The bad guys scattered 11 hits in his three-plus innings of work, and few (if any) were cheap. They hit the ball hard. Again, just one game … but not a good sign.

When you look at the Tribe and try to project what will happen in 2011, you can’t feel great knowing Carmona has been labeled as the ace of the staff. We all remember how brilliant he was in 2007 (19-8, 3.06 ERA) but that three full seasons ago. Nothing he has done in the past three years suggests he will return to those numbers. Since the start of the 2008 season he is 26-34 with a 5.08 ERA. That’s our ace, everybody! (In Carmona’s defense, he was better last year than the two years prior. His ERA was 0.71 higher than 2007 as opposed to 2010, but his win-loss totals were skewed because he played on a bad team. He had 13 less strikeouts last year than he did in 2007 in five fewer innings. He was better – but certainly not back.)

It’s not like the Indians have a ton of other options for their top starter. Are you going to put Carlos Carrasco at the front of your rotation? Justin Masterson? No. People need to stop buying into the idea Carmona is an ace until he shows something. The Fausto Carmona of 2007 is gone … and maybe dead and buried. Bury the expectations with him.

We all recall how crazy 2007 was, so maybe it was all an aberration. Carmona won 19 games and finished fourth in the American League Cy Young vote. The Browns won 10 contests and Derek Anderson went to the Pro Bowl. LeBron James was all-everything in the playoffs and Cleveland reached the NBA Finals. Just chalk it up as a fluke.

Now we all say Anderson was a fraud and a one-year-wonder. We say the Cavaliers were probably a year early and got lucky with the stars aligning so they could reach the championship round. We should now be able to admit that Fausto Carmona simply had it working in 2007.

I know yesterday was just one game so it’s silly to over-react. But it’s about as silly as expecting a guy to be a dominant ace after having just one good year in a five-year career.