A Right Turn

CLEVELAND The future of baseball is on display here, personified by the intelligently run, fundamentally sound, close-knit Cleveland Indians. All around this town, the signs say, "It's Tribe Time Now." They're not correct yet. The Boston Red Sox kept themselves from being eliminated by winning Game 5 of the American League Championship here on Thursday night, 7-1, behind the customary playoff brilliance of Josh Beckett.

In a broader sense, however, baseball itself has moved into Tribe Time -- a period when Cleveland's cutting-edge best practices epitomize the healthiest trends in the sport.

A glance at the Indians' roster, a study of how they acquired their stars and a gasp at their $61.6 million payroll, 23rd in the sport, shows where the old game may finally and mercifully be headed -- toward sanity.

A third of Cleveland's starting lineup was made up of Indians farm products in their first full year in the major leagues. In fact, eight of the Indians' 25 players, including 19-game winner Fausto Carmona, are in their first full season. This game's starter, C.C. Sabathia, was a home-grown draft pick and has spent all 10 of his professional seasons as an Indian. Dotting the lineup were stars such as Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner, wangled from other teams in trades long ago when they were minor leaguers. As for expensive free agents, not one can be found. Instead, the Tribe only springs for occasional scruffy vets like Paul Byrd or closer Joe Borowski, each of whom has played for seven teams and barely rated a headline when the Indians signed them.

This October several other teams are also proving the value of a farm-system-based sane-budget approach to building an excellent franchise. This new breed includes the Rockies, who'll play in the World Series, and the Diamondbacks, who reached the NLCS. At least a half-dozen highly competitive teams, including the Brewers, Padres and Twins, all between 18th and 26th in payroll, are proving that a new relationship can be created between economic muscle and winning percentage.

Everywhere we look, we see the fallout from this tectonic shift. For the first time in the 31-year-old free agent era, a wide variety of team-building methods are now viable, including old-fashioned Spend 'Til You Drop, like the Red Sox who spent $103 million for Daisuke Matsuzaka, the right-hander who likely would start Game 7 at Fenway Park on Sunday, if necessary. All across the game, there is a shift, no longer subtle, from bucks toward brains, that is reviving baseball's sense of fair play.

For Washington, which is opening a publicly financed park next spring, and Baltimore, unable to match the wealth of division rivals in New York and Boston, the times are finally changing for the better. Just in the nick of time, too. A vicious cycle has broken. It's no longer essential to sell every seat every year to buy rich free agents each winter so that you can remain a contender that wins enough games to keep those seats eternally full. The age of the general manager as Sisyphus may be over.

Look around. Money just isn't buying happiness. The Mets, the game's No. 3 spenders, are in misery, now nip and tuck with the '64 Pholdin' Phils as the biggest September chokers ever. In the Bronx, a 34-year era of spend-and-gorge is finally and mercifully over. George Steinbrenner, the checkbook-in-chief, isn't really the Boss anymore. His sons are taking the reins now.

Joe Torre's departure after watching $1.4 billion in salaries produce zero world titles in seven seasons; the Mets' humiliation; the quick disappearance of both Los Angeles teams; the divisional sweeps of high-dollar clubs like the Cubs and Phils and the season-long collapse of the $109 million White Sox, who won fewer games than the Nats, all point in the same direction.

Since free agency arrived in '76, money hasn't been the only thing in baseball that mattered. But, like it or not, wealth has been the sport's No. 1 competitive factor. Now, thanks to a series of hard-won insights inside the sport, coupled with more revenue sharing among franchises, more teams realize that brains and team chemistry can compete with Hessian lineups.

-- Scouting -- from Texas to Caracas to Tokyo -- is the starting point. Search out the talent, the younger the better. And then allow those youngsters to play at the big league level as soon as feasible. An almost ridiculous eight of 25 Cleveland players are in their first full big league season, including slugging first baseman Ryan Garko, slick second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera and right fielder Franklin Gutierrez. Another first-full-year star is fearsome Fausto Carmona, who paired with Sabathia to give the Tribe their first pair of 19-game winners since '56. Relief star Rafael Perez (1.78 ERA) spent most of '06 in the minors while pitchers Jensen Lewis and Aaron Laffey made their debuts this year.

-- Coaching in the minor leagues, especially establishing a consistent methodology throughout an organization, establishes a team-wide pride in playing the game properly. The Indians clubhouse is loose because so many players have been friends so long or have had similar experiences along the Burlington to Kinston to Akron to Buffalo trail. The high jinks, like those shaving cream pies in the face after wins at home, didn't just begin when these guys got to Jacobs Field.

-- Intelligent trading, based on principles similar to value-stock investing, has become essential to new wave franchises. Some GMs talk like Wall Streeters. Players can be "inefficiently priced."

The use of trades and waiver claims has helped Cleveland build a team that, while short on future Hall of Famers, has absolutely no weaknesses. No Indian hit more than 24 homers and only one batted over .285 this year. But look at the OPS of the nine Indians hitters Thursday night -- every one falls in a range between .771 (above average) and .879 (less than superstar). Cleveland's season also illustrates a less comfortable truth about building a champion with modest means. The Yanks have reached the postseason 12 years in a row. In contrast, the Indians have prospered, in part, because they have been the healthiest team in baseball this season (fewest days lost to the DL). The Indians' fifth and sixth starters have been terrible, but seldom needed. Fans of teams that build on this model, including the Nats, must accept that great seasons will require great luck.

Current trends may have made massive home attendance less essential. In Jacobs Field's first eight years, the Indians averaged over 41,500 a game and spent freely for free agents who helped them to the Series in '95 and '97. As with all parks, the novelty faded. From '03 through '06, the Indians averaged less (23,321) than the Nats drew last season at decrepit RFK Stadium. Even this season, with 96 wins, tied for tops in baseball, Cleveland was 10th in the AL in attendance with only 28,449 a game. Yet that level of support, coupled with increased revenue sharing, has allowed GM Mark Shapiro to reinvent the organization.

A decade ago, if Washington had opened a new park, then hit snags and drawn less than expected, a downward spiral of bad teams and small crowds might have been hard to escape. That danger still exists. But as the Indians, Rockies and D-backs all proved this year, you can be in the bottom half of the sport in attendance, and in the bottom quarter in payroll, yet still reach the final four if you draft, scout, trade and develop players wisely enough.

Ironically, this month began with universal anticipation that the sport's most famous, and not coincidentally, richest teams would create a series of glamorous postseason matchups. Mourn the absence of a World Series between the Red Sox or Yankees and the Cubs or Phils if you wish. But the shocking results of the last three weeks have unmasked the new and welcome direction that baseball has taken -- toward parity, unpredictability and intelligence, not dynasties and dollars.