Remembering 2004, the last time the Cleveland Indians had 5 All-Stars

The Cleveland Indians have five All-Stars in 2017. Do you remember the last year it happened? It was 2004. Now, can you remember the names?

Remember when the Cleveland Indians last sent five representatives to the MLB All-Star game?

Your memory probably tries to remember those mid-to-late 90s teams that seemed to send five or six players every year.

But that’s not the last time the Tribe so well represented in the mid-summer classic.

You’re forgetting that 2004 squad, which featured Matt Lawton, Ronnie Belliard, Jake Westbrook, CC Sabathia and Victor Martinez.

CC and V-Mart were household names around Cleveland. Sabathia and Martinez will be remembered as great Major League players who had long careers.

But those other three? You hear them mentioned as All-Stars and you can’t help but to do a double-take.

The 2004 season served as a sign of things to come for the organization. The Indians came into 2004 after a horrible 2003 campaign, in which they went 68-94.

The 2004 club went 80-82, and it left diehard Tribe fans asking: “Maybe we have something here.”

The organization possessed some nice young talent though, and while it was short lived, the Tribe had a small window that started to come together in 2004.

The 2005 club won 93 games and missed the playoffs, while the 2006 team played well below expectations.

This window to win culminated with the team blowing a 3-1 lead to the Red Sox in the 2007 ALCS.

Jake Westbrook, SP

Then GM Mark Shapiro had on that squad and Westbrook was one of them. The sinker-baller was the perfect complement to rotation ace, Sabathia.

Westbrook won 14 games during his All-Star campaign of 2004. It was the first of three consecutive 14-win seasons for the pride of Madison County High School (Athens, Ga.) Before the break, Westbrook was 6-4 with a 3.21 ERA.

Based off those three seasons, the Indians gave Westbrook a three-year, $33 million contract extension. About a year later, Westbrook needed Tommy John surgery. He missed most of 2008 and all of 2009 because of the injury. He returned in 2010 and it was apparent the time off had caught up with. Westbrook was 6-7 with a 4.65 ERA before the Indians traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals.

The trade worked out for both clubs, as Westbrook picked up a ring and won a World Series game for St. Louis in 2011.

The Indians, however, got future Cy Young Award winner Corey Kober for Westbrook as a piece of the three-team trade that involved the Cardinals and the San Diego Padres.

Matt Lawton, RF

Matt Lawton’s All-Star appearance gave the fan base at least some sense of relief because he was one of the players the Tribe got back in exchange for Roberto Alomar.

Prospects (Alex Escobar, Billy Traber anybody) were a big part of that Alomar trade, but the Indians thought they were getting a decent, proven big-league player in Lawton, who had made the All-Star team in 2000 as a member of the Twins.

In 2002, he hit .236; in 2003, he hit .249. Fans had given up on him by his third season at Jacobs Field, just as they had grown weary of the organization as the hey days of the 90s were long in the rearview mirror.

However, Lawton hit 20 homers and drove in 70 runs during his All-Star season of 2004, but if you look at at his pre/post All-Star splits, you can see Lawton was nearing the end of his career, which came after the 2006 campaign.

Before the break, Lawton hit .305 with 15 homers and 49 RBIs. He also stole 16 bases. After the break, he hit just .239 with five homers and 25 RBIs. He stole just seven more bases the rest of the season.

After the season, the Indians traded him to Pittsburgh for Arthur Rhodes.

It turns out the Indians traded Alomar at the right time. He never made another All-Star team after 2001, but the haul the Indians got in return plagued the franchise through most of the 2000s.

Ronnie Belliard

Like Lawton, Belliard got off to a hot start in 2004, batting .304 with an .801 OPS. After the break, he regressed to a .254 hitter (.738 OPS).

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But his play did enough to convince then Indians manager Eric Wedge that the Tribe could move on from Brandon Phillips, which it did in 2005.

It was a poor decision, but it belongs to history now.

Belliard was a fun player to watch. He was one of the first second baseman who showed a sign of things to come, defensively. Wedge would often times have Belliard playing shallow right-field with the shift on, according to Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes.

Belliard had a couple good seasons with the Tribe and played a key role on that 2005 squad, which won 93 games. Belliard hit a career high 17 bombs that season, while bating .284.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the long-term answer at second the Tribe had hoped for, and the position didn’t get solidified until Jason Kipnis emerged in 2011.

Next: Should Indians take a look at Miguel Montero?

With the Indians playing well below expectations in 2006, Shapiro traded him for Hector Luna. It worked out for Belliard, who picked up a World Series ring with the Cardinals that same season.

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