SI’s Indians preview

Sports Illustrated has released its preview of the 2007 Cleveland Indians. The magazine predicts that the Indians will finish atop the AL Central and will be the 7th-best team in baseball. The preview hinges on Jhonny Peralta, who last season played with poor eyesight, arguably a significant factor in the decline in his performance both at the plate and in the field from his rookie season in ‘05 to his sophomore season in ‘06. He claimed that last season he could see much better during the day than he could at night and his batting numbers support this claim: Peralta hit .244 at night vs. .285 during the day. He also had difficulty reading the signs from Victor Martinez, which made playing defense harder because he didn’t know what the calls were and so could not adjust accordingly. Also, if you can’t see the baseball you can’t catch or hit the baseball. Also, seeing matters in baseball. Also, [self-evident fact].

After last season Peralta had corrective surgery and now he can apparently see just fine, which is nice, but still doesn’t explain why no action was taken last season to correct his problem. Oh, wait, action was taken — Peralta tried wearing contact lenses, but found them uncomfortable so he stopped. He opted for no corrective apparatus over being able to see..until the last two weeks of the season, when he finally started wearing contact lenses. He hit .355 over that period.

It is unclear that the team knew about Peralta’s vision problems, but it’s hard to fathom the gross oversight (no pun intended) on the part of the team if it failed to properly test Peralta’s vision before signing him to a contract extension, or before allowing him to take the field at the start of last season. I don’t know what an acceptable analogy would be, but something on par with a basketball team checking to see if a player has functioning knees capable of allowing the player to jump sounds about right. If the team knew Peralta couldn’t see well, couldn’t the team demand that Peralta wear something that corrects this very correctable but also wildly important problem? How is this not in his contract? I know I’ve harped on this before, but it still baffles me. If Peralta had problems with contact lenses, then why couldn’t Eric Wedge super glue rec specs to Peralta’s head? The team is paying him millions of dollars, after all. Allowing Peralta to not take any action to fix his vision until after the season is impermissible.

(I don’t even want to contemplate the possibility that the team had no idea about Peralta’s vision problems. That’s almost too depressing for words. So is the fact that Peralta has been given a free pass by pretty much everyone who’s covered this story. Even the curmudgeon Bill Livingston hasn’t made a fuss over this mess and this is exactly the sort of story that’s in his wheelhouse. When he did deal with this story and he gave it a pass.)

Anyway.