The Indians Add Another Cy Young Award Winner

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The Cleveland Indians have added another Cy Young Award winner to their staff. Well, sort of. Frank Viola, who won the award with the Minnesota Twins in 1988, has signed on to work with the Indians’ pitchers during spring training in Goodyear Arizona.

The former big leaguer will work along side pitching coach Carl Willis. Viola’s main duties will be to work with the left-handers in camp on their mechanics and their approach to pitching.

The three-time All Star has a connection to the Indians because he was a teammate of manager Eric Wedge when they were both with the Boston Red Sox in 1992.

Throughout his 15 year career in the majors, Viola won 176 games while playing for the Red Sox, Twins, Reds, Mets and Blue Jays.

The pitcher had two twenty win seasons during his career including his Cy Young award season when he won 24 and posted a 2.64 ERA.

An Indians pitcher has won the American League Cy Young Award in each of the past two seasons with Cliff Lee doing it last year and CC Sabathia taking home the award the year before. The two year streak came after a drought of more than thirty years for the organization since Gaylord Perry won it in the 1970s.

The Indians have a lot of new arms coming to their camp and one of their main focuses this off season has been to bolster a bullpen that was anything but impressive during the 2008 season.

The Wahoo’s Cliff Lee recently spoke about the team’s chances this year and claimed that there is no reason to believe that the Indians do not have a great chance at winning the Central Division. This comes one year after they were picked by many to perhaps win the World Series and didn’t even come close to making the playoffs.

Bill Jordan is a contributor to BaseballReflections.com. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].