Cleveland Indians: The franchise all-time bracket

The Cleveland Indians all-time bracket features two World Series winners plus three other might-have-beens that rank among the best teams ever.

The Cleveland Indians have the longest World Series drought of any non-expansion franchise. The last Indians team to win a World Series was in 1948, more than 70 years ago.

In fact, there have been only two Indians World Champions, the other coming through in 1920.

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Yet if the franchise is light on championships, it has produced some of baseball’s greatest and most memorable non-champions.

The 2016 team stood within one win of a World Series title before being overtaken by the even more championship-starved Chicago Cubs. In 1995, the Indians produced a .694 winning percentage, a record of success that has been bettered only twice in the ensuing 25 years.

And in 1954, the Indians famously won an American League record 111 games, a .721 winning percentage that is the fifth-best in all of baseball history.

So an all-time Indians bracket, while not especially deep, is loaded with exceptional talent.

Historically the Indians have been quite good, a statement that may come as a surprise to fans who grew up watching the desolate teams of the 1970s and 1980s.

Granted, between 1969 and 1992 the Indians muddled their way to only three winning seasons, with a cumulative record that was nearly 400 games below .500.  But both the pre- and post-desolation Indians have been historically strong; since 1995, for example, Cleveland teams have made 11 post-season appearances with just eight losing seasons.

Filling out an all-time Indians bracket begins with the five obvious selections: the 1920 and 1948 World Series winners plus the 1954, 1995, and 2016 AL champions. The 1997  AL champions must also be included.

That leaves two final spots, logically to be selected from among the eight post-1994 post-season teams that did not reach the World Series. The 2017 AL Central champions, the only Cleveland Indians 100-game winner since 1995, is an obvious pick.

With 1995, 1997, 2016 and 2017 bracketing the period, the final spot should go to a team somewhere in the center of that time frame. The obvious choice is the 2007 Cleveland team, which won the AL Central with a 96-66 regular-season record.

Chronologically, then, our eight teams are: 1920, 1948, 1954, 1995, 1997, 2017, 2016 and 2017.

The format is identical to previous bracket challenges. Each matchup in the tournament is decided based on seven criteria. You can think of each as a ‘game,’ the winner of four games advancing. The seven criteria are:

• Game 1: Regular season winning percentage.
• Game 2: Post-season winning percentage
• Game 3: Team OPS+
• Game 4: Team ERA+
• Game 5 (if necessary): Team WAR
• Game 6 (if necessary: Fielding percentage above the league average for the season in question.
• Game 7 (if necessary): Hall of Famers or likely future Hall of Famers