"Asked exactly what changes he'd made in his swing the last two years to compensate for a right shoulder that has been slow to respond to surgery, Travis Hafner said, "I think I've blocked the last two years out. I can't recall anything."

He was laughing when he said that, but he'd like nothing better than to erase the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

Hafner's numbers and reputation have taken a hit. His $11.5 million salary is glaringly out of place on a team that has traded its best and most expensive talent and replaced it with a younger, leaner and cheaper model.

He knows some people think he's done or has reached a tipping point in his career. He's 32 and it's been two years since his shoulder surgery. If he can't resemble the hitter he was from 2004-07 this year, will he ever?

"I don't look at [this season] in any specific way," said Hafner. "I just want to play as well as I can. I'm just looking forward to being healthy and going out there and playing the best I can and winning games."

For the Indians to have any chance at success, every move they make has to work. One of those moves involves Hafner not only playing four, five and six days in a row, but to produce the kind of stats he once did. In his best four-year stretch, he hit .296 and averaged 32 homers and 109 RBI.

That is the Hafner people want and speculate about. Hafner said he does not acknowledge such attention or expectations.

"It's just a distraction basically," he said. "I show up, get my work done. Other people's opinions really don't matter, whether good or bad."

Hafner's contract, which runs through 2012 with a club option for 2013, carries its own kind of weight. It's one thing to say the Indians might be able to trade Kerry Wood and his $10.5 million salary at the All-Star break. Hafner, no matter how much progress he shows this year, isn't going anywhere because the Indians still owe him, including this season, $40 million. "