With their win over the Twins Monday night the Indians have now won five games in a row since the all-star game. That has never happened before. Who would have thunk that this Indians team would do something this year, in a positive way, that no Indians team had ever done before?

Not only that, but the Indians have done it against two of the best teams in the Central Division, the Tigers and the Twins. And the Indians have done it with outstanding pitching. How many improbables can you stack onto one week's worth of work?

How should we interpret this winning streak? Well, it's a good sign that the team is progressing, even though it is shorthanded. The Indians have only had the first three hitters in their lineup - Asdrubal Cabrera, Grady Sizemore, and Shin-Soo Choo - in the lineup at the same time in just 28 games this season. The loss of those three players for varying degrees of time has been countered, to a certain degree, by the promotion of Carlos Santana, who has changed the lineup by, even as a rookie, being the most mature hitter in the lineup.

Santana's rare ability to work the count, reaching a 3-2 count a ridiculously high percentage of the time, has had a positive effect on the lineup. But the biggest reason for the Indians' imnproved play lately has been the pitching staff, which very quietly has put together a nice two or three week-run in which the starters have kept the team in the game and the relievers have been able preserve most of the leads late in games.

The result has been one of the Indians' best runs of the season. Can they keep it up? Probably not. But they are at least capable of sustaining it for this long. That, in itself, is progress.