Suppose Jake Westbrook had not been hurt. Suppose he did not undergo Tommy John surgery in the spring. Suppose he pitched this season as he did in spring training, when he was untouchable. I can’t remember a Cleveland pitcher ever enjoying a better training camp. He was the Indians’ best pitcher when the season began.
It turned out that he had arm problems during spring training, so this was not a sudden injury. The dreaded Tommy John surgery is the consequence of prolonged problems.
Nevertheless, I toyed with the hypothetical. How would this season have changed for the Indians with a healthy Westbrook?
You would think they would not have totally collapsed, even with the strangest batting order we have ever seen. It isn’t often that your leadoff hitter leads the team in home runs and RBIs, and your shortstop is next in both slugging categories. This is major league weird. Furthermore, the Indians’ leadoff hitter and shortstop also lead the team in strikeouts. This cannot be rationalized in Baseball 101.  
But pitching overcomes all other weaknesses, we are told. With the one-two punch of Cliff Lee and Westbrook, it says here, they would have remained within striking distance of first place. Therefore, they would not have raised the white flag and unloaded CC Sabathia and Paul Byrd. They would have kept Casey Blake at third base instead of prolonging Andy Marte’s dreadful audition. Even with the injuries to Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez, the starting pitching would have kept them in the hunt.   
Furthermore, all of this is probably wrong because a bad bullpen negates all other strengths. Westbrook wasn’t the “tipping point,” to borrow the current popular expression from the Sunday morning panel shows. No, Joe Borowski was.
Cliff Lee’s 18-2 season is truly a miracle considering that the Indians’ bullpen, until recently, has been occupied by pyromaniacs. To minimize the danger Lee has averaged seven innings per start. If he averages seven innings over his final seven starts, he will total 227 innings, 25 more than he ever pitched in one season . That is a number eclipsed only once by Sabathia,  who has a reputation as a workhorse. Westbrook never pitched that many innings. Byrd’s heaviest workload was 228 innings in 2002 and the next summer he had Tommy John surgery.
All the good work of a healthy Westbrook would have been lost by the bullpen, just as the bullpen undermined Sabathia and Byrd. The Indians would have wound up exactly where they are now.
This season was doomed by  Borowski and his successors in the Tribe’s closer by committee.
I was never completely sold on the idea that a relief pitcher could be a most valuable player. Not everyone agreed when Jim Konstanty of the Philadelphia Phillies was the National League MVP in 1950.  He never started a game. As a relief specialist — the concept of a “closer” had not yet evolved —  he went 16-7 and saved 22 games. He worked 152 innings and he had the lowest ERA on the staff.
The Phillies would not have won the pennant without Konstanty. I have bought into it. Later Rollie Fingers, Willie Hernandez and Dennis Eckersley came out of their bullpens to win MVP awards. A good closer will make no difference to a pathetic starting rotation that never has a lead to protect, but a bad closer will destroy a good staff.
Welcome to Cleveland, 2008.
Dan Coughlin is a columnist for The Chronicle-Telegram and a sportscaster for Channel 8. 

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