It was hard to believe the Indians would play the way they started for a long time.

Their pitching is too good.

And they hit well enough last year to win 96 games.

So this week, finally, some good signs arrived.

The Indians swept a doubleheader in Kansas City. They beat the New York Yankees, won five of seven, four in a row.

And Cliff Lee continues to dominate.

Lee’s ERA in four starts is 0.28, a ridiculous number. But he has pitched that well. The reason is Lee has better control of his fastball, which allows him to use his secondary pitches more effectively.

Bob Gibson might want to worry about his season record ERA of 1.12. Then again, maybe not.

Lee, though, seems to have pretty much bounced back from last season’s struggles -- in 31 2/3 innings he’ has given up one earned run.

This is called good pitching.

The Indians also were encouraged by C.C. Sabathia’s six shutout innings in Kansas City. Sabathia had been a mess his first three starts, prompting many to question his mental frame of mind in his contract year. Well . . . prompting me to question his mental frame of mind in his contract year.

The Indians dismiss this potential distraction. The team thinks that Sabathia’s problems were in his delivery, which prevented him from getting his fastball low in the strike zone. They were encouraged he took a step toward straightening that out as he lowered (yes, lowered) his ERA to 10.13.

Since Sabathia and the Indians were embarrassed 13-2 by the Detroit Tigers, the Tribe has won five-of-seven, scored 42 runs and pitched two shutouts.

The 10-12 record still is not good.

And Travis Hafner continues to struggle -- he’s hitting .226, and against right-handed pitchers he’s .217. The Indians believe that his struggles are mechanical, but they don’t deny that he has to improve. A winning team can’t have a guy hitting .226 batting third.

The good news is nobody in the AL Central is doing much.

At 10-12, the Indians are only 2 1⁄2 games behind the Chicago White Sox.

Pretty much the entire division is glomped together – with the White Sox in first, the Indians tied with the Minnesota Twins and the Tigers one-half game back (all as of Friday afternoon).

It might be syrupy and overly optimistic, but it’s impossible to believe a team with the Indians’ pitching staff can struggle all season.

ON THE GIBBER

A casual glance at Gibson’s numbers show just how much baseball has changed.

Folks were squawking that Sabathia threw too much last year when he pitched 241 innings.

Gibson threw 304 innings in 1968 and had a 1.12 ERA.

Talk about nasty.

The next season he threw 314 innings.

In fact, in the seven seasons after he set the ERA mark, Gibson pitched 1,361 innings. That’s an average of 194 innings.

That’s as he was an “aging” pitcher. In this day and age of the long-, middle-, in-between and medium-short relievers, 194 innings would be cause for celebration.

In those seven years Gibson also won 114 games.

RANDOM THOUGHTS…

-- The more a person is away from the NFL Draft the more silly it seems.

-- One of the better football Web sites out there – http://coldhardfootballfacts.com – had a poll asking which was more annoying – the buildup to the draft or the buildup to the Super Bowl. …

I vote draft.

-- It’s such conjecture and so much bologna about up-side and difference-makers and physicality that it makes a person just want to retch.

-- Kind of humorous for Bill Parcells of the Dolphins to upstage the entire No. 1 pick thing by signing Jake Long last week and holding a news conference for him in Miami. So much for that event in New York City.

Something tells me that Carmen Policy would not have handled it that way.

-- I just don’t get why so many people are eager to trade Browns quarterback Derek Anderson.

Repeat after me: It’s good to have two quarterbacks.

It’s very good to have two quarterbacks.

-- Be good if the Indians’ Rafael Perez started throwing like he did last season.

He really hasn’t been himself since the AL Championship Series.

-- USA Today reports that many people are upset with the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, that it’s violent and not suitable for kids.

Hmm … a video game about stealing cars.

What a wonderful thing to give our children.

-- I don’t know which of the studies on these games are right or best, and I might be an old fuddy-duddy -- Elmer Fudd did use to crack me up (“Pesky wittle wabbit!”) -- but doesn’t it seem like we might be able to find a better topic for a video game than stealing cars and characters being drawn into violent underworlds. What’s next? Riding With Capone?

-- Favorite line from Bugs Bunny comes from the time Bugs walked up to Yosemite Sam dressed as Abe Lincoln, complete with top hat and beard and said: “Look me up at my Gettysburg address.”

Now that’s humor.

-- NBA commish David Stern was in the house at the Verizon Center on Thursday, and after an opening statement about how wonderful the NBA is -- “Life is good,” he said constantly -- he said: “OK, now you can ask me about the hard foul.”

So someone asked about the hard foul on LeBron James.

And Stern said the call and ejection of Brendan Haywood were proper, that Haywood did not go for the ball.

Stern said he based that on the “1,700 or so replays” he had seen.

-- He declined to get into whether Haywood should have been suspended, saying it was up to this basketball folks -- Stu Jackson and Ronnie Nunn -- and he trusted their judgment.

-- Stern also said it’s ridiculous to say that stars get preferential treatment and calls in the NBA.

“They don’t,” he said, adding it’s “statistically provable.”

“We know it’s not a star-preference system,” he said.

-- Right.

-- Cavs guards really struggled in Game 3. Kind of raises the old worries about them that had seemed to dissipate after the first two games.

-- That’s the thing about these playoff series -- the feel and tenor of them change drastically from one game to another.

-- As for Anderson Varejao . . . why can’t anyone get him to stop dribbling?

-- Until next time, there you have it.