What about the Cleveland Indians' young lefties?

"... members of the Tommy John family of pitchers can't pitch effectively with a bad team. Why? Too much pressure on the defense. Without strikeouts, there are a lot of hard-hit balls in play. A bad team can't get enough outs from those to save the pitcher's ass -- but a good team can. Thus, members of this family tend to be valuable to good teams, but useless to bad teams. If you know that, then maybe once in a while you can make a judgement you can't otherwise make." -- Bill James, "The New Bill James Historical Abstract," p. 893.

I have been pondering for a while why it seems like some junk-balling lefties develop into good starters and some don't. Some, like Jamie Moyer, find themselves in mid-career.
Bill James' statement above does as much as anything to explain the difference.
Where am I going with this?
The Cleveland Indians have a number of young lefties who don't throw exceptionally hard and would be classified as Tommy John-type pitchers: Jeremy Sowers, David Huff and Scott Lewis. The Indians also had the recently-traded Zach Jackson, who was in the same boat.
They all had good minor league records. But, it seems as though a soft-tossing lefty with good minor league numbers will fail at the big league level more often than not.
They get touted as prospects, throw a half season in the big leagues, get creamed and disappear forever. Sometimes, like Brian Tallet, they come back and put together a career.
So, is this the trick? If you are young and left-handed without a great fastball, you may succeed if you pitch with a good team?
If this is true, none of those guys on the Indians would seem to have a chance.
Clearly, they all have talent.
Sowers was awesome in the second half of 2006. The Indians were good that year, as evidenced by their 90-plus win seasons in 2005 and 2007. However, he never recaptured that form, and the Indians have collectively gotten worse.
Huff led the team in wins last year, but with a ERA of nearly 6.
Laffey has always been the most consistent of the bunch, and announcers and writers always seem to think he is a great pitcher, but his records have never been more than mediocre.
Lewis just has some great numbers in the minors, and got a brief shot last year before getting hurt.
You have to feel for these pitchers. The 2010 Indians don't promise to be very good. Their defense, not including Shin-Soo Choo, Grady Sizemore and maybe new shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, doesn't look like it will help prevent a lot of runs. The offense doesn't inspire much confidence either.
To follow what James said piece by piece: My guess is the Indians pitchers won't strike out a lot of batters. There will be lots of hard hit balls in play, and the team just won't be very good.
It follows that one way for the Indians to improve significantly in 2010 is to concentrate on upgrading the defense to make their group of young pitchers better. It would not only help the young lefties, but it would make Jake Westbrook, Carlos Carrasco, Justin Masterson and Fausto Carmona better, too.
The other piece to this, of course, is that good teams not only catch more balls in play, they hit better than their opponents, too. A good offense takes a lot of pressure off a pitching staff. It's easy for a pitcher to look good when he gets six runs a game to work with.
The 2010 Indians don't look to have offensive players who are so good they will make up for a weak defense anyway.
Here's the bottom line: The Indians aren't going to be very good this year, unless something unforeseen and drastic happens, and it will be very difficult for their young lefties to overcome the team's lack of offense and defense.
It probably won't be long before the Indians are starting hard-throwing righty Hector Rondon in the majors and the entire starting rotation at AAA Colmbus is left-handed.