What in the name of Moses Cleaveland has happened to the Cleveland Indians?

Because what is happening defies logic.

A team simply does not finish one-half game out of first place at the All-Star break, then fall apart less than a month later with 11 losses in a row, some embarrassing, some excruciating.

Unless the team is simply not that good to begin with.

Cleveland’s collapse is near epic. Even their most reliable players have contributed. Chris Perez has blown two saves in a row, and Tuesday night Casey Kotchman failed at the one thing he can do, play defense. Not that they’re alone. Earlier in loss number 11, second baseman Jason Kipnis and shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera contributed with an E4 and E6. Which leads to the question: What is wrong with the third baseman?

Cabrera has 15 errors. A defensive specialist. Fifteen errors. Tied for the most in the American League. Which might explain a lot, actually. A defensive standout who signed a contract extension this season has 15 errors. Interpret as you will.

There are a myriad number of other theories as to why the bottom has dropped out, but as they head to an afternoon game the day I write this, the Indians are two games away from setting the team record for consecutive defeats — set in May of 1931.

This losing streak defies all logic unless the Indians simply were held together by baling wire and string — a claim a very good friend named Geoff Beckman posited to me when the season began. He’s about as knowledgeable as any Indians follower I know, and could be more knowledgeable than many who work in baseball. Before the season, he simply said the Indians had many glaring holes.

At this point he sure seems right.

The pitching staff has given up at least five runs in every game of the losing streak, and the starters have been an unmitigated disaster. Even with Casey Kluber’s good outing Tuesday night, the starters are now 0-8 with a 10.44 ERA in these 11 games.

That doesn’t give a team a chance to win, so when a manager says the starter “gave us a chance” it’s now clear what he means.

It’s easy to find negative stats in a losing streak, though. Very easy. Losing teams produce losing numbers.

But the Indians are collapsing after playing some pretty good baseball for a few months.

Which points to issues.

The  Ubaldo Jimenez trade has been a disaster. Two first-round draft picks for a guy who has been 12-15 with an ERA of 5.22? Where’s the ability, the heart? The Indians disagree, but I go back to the end of spring training in a game when folks are supposed to get in and out healthy and Jimenez felt the need to throw at Troy Tulowitzki because he and the Rockies had criticized his desire for a new contract. That told me all that needed to be known about Jimenez right there. Yes, at the time I defended the trade … because it seemed to have merit. But it sure hasn’t worked out.

Losing streaks expose team problems. Needs in left field and third base glare like the signs on Times Square. There’s the paying of Grady Sizemore to do nothing, the paying of Travis Hafner to be in an out of the lineup, the lack of run production at first base, the lack of development of Carlos Santana, the decline in play from Cabrera and the struggles on the mound.
Add those up and the overall record might not be surprising.

Except that for half the season the Indians competed.

And played with heart.

It’s not Manny Acta, though he’s not exactly finding the way to get the team out of this funk. And perhaps a different voice might get a different result. But when the team struggles the keee-jerk reaction is to change the manager, so anything can happen.

The front office is hearing its share of criticism, and at times like these the words of Chuck Noll come to mind. Noll said after blowout losses that “when you lose that bad, everything they say about you is true.” Negativity in this sports environment seems to sprout and fester willy nilly, but at this point, in a losing streak like this, any criticism is fair.

The Indians have a few players they can count on: Michael Brantley, Shin-Soo Choo, Kipnis, Perez, Vinnie Pestano. Though Choo will gone after next season at the latest.

This front office foisted players like Sizemore and Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe on the fans, and then watched them disappear to injury or be released. Ezequiel Carrerra suddenly is the left fielder. Jose Lopez went from DFA (designated for assignment) to cleanup hitter to DFA. Again. What in the world? Are the money limitations that bad that these are the moves that must be made? If so then the team is in a world of hurt.

Players notice this kind of thing too. And the one thing I can’t get out of my head about the streak is it happened right at the trade deadline. The Indians started a road trip with three bad losses in Minnesota, then at the trade deadline the Indians added Lars Anderson. At that point, the bottom dropped out.

Psychologically — and admittedly this is armchair analysis — you have to wonder if the team felt let down by the inaction. Some of the trades proposed were ridiculous (Jason Kipnis and Vinnie Pestano for Alfonso Soriano? Please), but giving a team nothing when it so glaringly needed a right-handed bat and an arm was a non-statement of disastrous proportions. And the non-move came on the heels of the decision not to sign Josh Willingham in the offseason while it did sign Sizemore. Psychologically, you have to wonder if any kind of mindset crept in to the effect of “if they don’t care, why should we.”

That’s a far-reaching statement, which is always dangerous.

But it’s certainly a possibility. The players could see as well as anyone what was needed, and what was not acquired. If that kind of negativity creeps in, it’s tough to get it out.

The Indians will dismiss this psychology, and maybe they should. A bat, an arm that can get somebody out … those things will fast change the mental approach. Too, professionals are paid to be just that, professional.

But losing streaks like this do not just appear.

There are underlying reasons for them.

And this losing streak is a doozy.

The image of Jim Leyland flashes to mind, after the last game the Indians won. Which would have been when they came back against Justin Verlander, which ignited this losing streak.

Leyland sat at his desk, his dinner in front of him.

As he spoke, he cut at a pork chop and munched on said pork chop and some scalloped potatoes. Eventually he unbutton his shirt as he kept on chewing and talking.

Leyland was not happy Verlander lost, but he sure wasn’t obsessing about it. He had his pork chop in front of him.

It’s not tough to figure who the pork chop is now.