GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Some big league pitchers spend their offseasons attending college football games or sitting in a duck blind before cranking it up in earnest in January. For Cleveland Indians starter Trevor Bauer, there's no such thing as a hiatus from training -- or learning. The winter, like the regular season, is a nonstop voyage of baseball introspection.

Bauer spent the offseason in the Houston area, where he plunged head-first into a self-designed program he calls "differential interleave training.'' As Bauer patiently explains, the goal of the program is to "create permanent skill acquisition, not just practice effect.'' When he wasn't working to improve the eight pitches in his repertoire (or nine, if you include the two grips on his changeup), Bauer was engaging in some very unorthodox activities.

He threw weighted balls between throwing sessions ... and shot baskets ... and threw in the dark.

And the Indians were OK with that.

Old-school types might view Bauer as some kind of smarty-pants subversive, but the Indians are giving him the freedom to chart his own course. With the 26th-biggest payroll in the game in 2014, the Indians can't afford to be dismissive of talented young players who are driven to be better -- even if their methods seem free-spirited by baseball standards. For want of a better word, you might refer to the team's approach as "nurturing.''

Trevor Bauer, 24, is a potential breakout candidate for the Indians in 2015. Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

"I think we try to excel in every area,'' said Indians general manager Chris Antonetti. "But one of the things we're very cognizant of is that for us to be a successful organization, we have to acquire and develop starting pitching. We've worked to have an integrated philosophy and try to help players develop. It's not a cookie-cutter approach where it's one-size-fits-all.

"We really try to understand each individual's strengths and how we can build off that to help guys. In Trevor's case, he's incredibly committed and dedicated to being the best pitcher he can possibly be, and he'll explore every avenue to make that happen. That's not something we would ever want to discourage.''

The Pittsburgh Pirates have earned a reputation as the gold standard for turning around pitchers who've stagnated in other organizations (see: Francisco Liriano, Edinson Volquez, Charlie Morton, Vance Worley et al), but the Indians are carving out a budding niche of their own as a team with a knack for getting talented young pitchers over the hump.

In 2014, Cleveland achieved impressive results with the youngest rotation in baseball. Indians starters ranked second to Baltimore in the American League with a 3.03 ERA after the All-Star break and led the majors with 633 strikeouts in that span. So it's no wonder Cleveland is a trendy pick to make the playoffs this year.

"With a lot of teams, when you talk about pitchers having another year under their belt, there are concerns about the wear and tear on their tires,'' said manager Terry Francona. "With our guys, it's another year of maturity. We have guys who are still learning who've been thrown into the fire and held their own, and sometimes done better than that.''

Even with the bad news that Gavin Floyd will be out for an extended period with a significant elbow injury, the Indians think they have enough arms to make some noise in the AL Central this season:

• Corey Kluber, acquired from San Diego as part of a three-team trade in 2010, crossed the bridge from promising to formidable at age 28. He chased down Felix Hernandez to win the American League Cy Young Award and joined Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens as the fourth pitcher since 1987 to finish a season with 18 wins, a sub-2.50 ERA and 260 strikeouts.

• Carlos Carrasco, long regarded as a pitcher with untapped talent, left the bullpen for the rotation on Aug. 10 and ascended to a higher level. During a span of 10 starts in August and September, Carrasco went 5-3 with a 1.30 ERA, 78 strikeouts and 11 walks in 69 innings.

• Bauer still has some work to do, as evidenced by his 3.87 walks per nine innings and meager 56 percent ratio of first-pitch strikes last season. But he made major strides with his command and has plenty of room to grow at age 24.

• T.J. House, who averaged 1.9 walks per nine innings last season, and the highly regarded Danny Salazar (9.8 strikeouts per nine) were expected to compete for the fifth spot in the rotation this spring. Now that Floyd is gone, they're the clear front-runners for the final two spots.

Group effort

It's hard to ignore the collaborative impact Francona, pitching coach Mickey Callaway, minor league pitching coordinator Ruben Niebla and the other instructors in Cleveland's system are having on young arms and minds. Before this crop of pitchers began to evolve, the Indians hit pay dirt with Ubaldo Jimenez, who parlayed a successful 2013 season into a four-year, $50 million contract with Baltimore. Things haven't gone too swimmingly for Jimenez since.

Carrasco, 27, is a classic case of a pitcher who pays dividends with time and patience. Coming up through the Philadelphia Phillies system, he dazzled scouts with his stuff, but had a reputation for losing his composure with runners got on base. He began rushing, lost his command and displayed the body language of a pitcher who expected the worst.

An encore performance from Corey Kluber should keep the Indians in contention in the AL Central. AP Photo/John Locher

"That was my problem in the past,'' Carrasco said. "When I had the bases loaded, you could count on an easy three or four runs right there.''

Everything changed last season. The Indians sent Carrasco to the bullpen in late April, and the change of scenery worked wonders. When he returned to the rotation in August, Carrasco junked his windup and continued to pitch exclusively out of the stretch, even with the bases empty. He also did a better job of keeping his left, or lead arm, higher in his windup, and it prevented him from flying open too soon as he delivered the ball to home plate.

Through trial and error, Carrasco has developed a comfortable routine when it's his turn to start. He arrives at the park early, heads to the field for some pregame running and long-tossing with his partner, closer Cody Allen, then returns to the clubhouse to stretch out his arm. Carrasco returns to the bullpen before the start of the game and throws 25 pitches, then takes the mound in a focused, businesslike frame of mind.

"They've allowed me to do what I feel comfortable with,'' Carrasco said. "I was always good in the bullpen, but I would lose it between warming up in the bullpen and going in the game. I never transferred anything from Point A to Point B.''

Communication a key

Carrasco's transformation was kid stuff compared to the learning curve of Bauer, a former UCLA mechanical engineering major whose inquisitiveness knows no bounds. It's not every ballplayer who'll casually drop the terms "laminar flow and turbulent flow'' into a discussion about two-seam fastballs, or proclaim that "baseball is in the dark ages when it comes to training,'' or post an 18-minute YouTube video explaining the pitches in his arsenal.

In his first pro stop in Arizona, Bauer butted heads with a number of people in authority and paved his road out of town. He's found a much more receptive audience in Cleveland.

"I like to go out and do my own research and have a reason for everything I do, and they've been helpful with that here,'' Bauer said. "When they ask me to do something or have a suggestion, it's not just, 'Hey, do this.' It's, 'Hey, we've looked at the numbers and we think you should do this, and here's why.' It's a lot easier to get on the same page because they have a reason for what they're telling me. It helps me feel like they value me as a player and a person.'''

Before heading home for the offseason, Bauer collected some high-definition video of Kluber's two-seam fastball to study. That's one of many lessons that Cleveland's young pitchers can learn from Kluber, a quiet leader with a work ethic and demeanor in the mold of St. Louis ace Adam Wainwright. When the best pitcher on the staff never takes shortcuts, it's only natural that the pitchers behind him will adopt the same approach by osmosis.

"We all get the benefit of seeing Corey pitch every fifth day,'' Antonetti said. "What's almost more impressive, to us, is the work he puts in for the four days leading up to that. There aren't too many guys who win a Cy Young Award and go into the offseason focused on, 'How do I get better?' That's Corey's mindset.''

Newly cast as the dean of the Cleveland staff, Kluber is determined to make sure that he and his rotation-mates are ready out of the chute. Over the past two seasons, Cleveland's pitching staff has logged a 4.13 aggregate ERA before the All-Star break, compared to 3.08 in the second half. That will not suffice in 2015.

"We're all excited about the potential of the staff,'' Kluber said. "But at this point, that's what it is -- potential. We did a good job finishing up in the second half last year, but there's been a pattern the last couple of years where we started off pretty slow and picked it up as the season goes. We need to do a better job getting ready for Opening Day and being at our best before the games start.''

Cleveland's pitchers raised the bar of expectations significantly in 2015. The challenge now is convincing everyone that the lessons they've learned -- and the synergy they've built -- can hold up for the long haul.