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As he recalled in a phone conversation Tuesday, Terry Francona, in his first year as a major league manager, was bound and determined that the Phillies' pitchers were going to be a strong defensive unit, and from the start of spring training, he had them doing all kinds of drills. "Pretty soon, everybody's arm hurt," said Francona, laughing at the memory of his rookie-manager exuberance. He will carry that perspective to spring training next month, for sure, and wants to make sure he doesn't wear out his players. But following the Indians' experiences of 2014, they will work a lot on defense. With mostly the same cast, Francona seeks different results from a defense that was arguably baseball's worst last summer, so bad that you could hypothesize, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, that the Indians' glove work might have cost them a playoff spot. Pick any defensive metric, and Cleveland was awful in it. The Indians surrendered 72 unearned runs, the most in the majors. They committed 116 errors, the most in the majors. The Indians were minus-75 in defensive runs saved, which was -- yep -- the worst in the majors. So there's room for improvement, for a team dwelling at rock bottom in this area of the game. Some of that process began midway through last season, when Asdrubal Cabrera, the respected veteran shortstop, was traded to the Nationals. In the eyes of some evaluators, this was addition by subtraction, because Cabrera's range had lagged.
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