Pitchers and catchers report to Winter Haven for the last time at the end of this week, as the Cleveland Indians will move their home for Spring Training to Arizona in 2009. It is the first sign that spring, warm weather, and baseball are just around the corner. Last year, the Tribe came up just short of the World Series, dropping the American League Championship Series in seven games to Boston, despite having a 3-1 series lead. Can the Indians take the next step? Here are five question marks heading into the spring…
Will the offense click? The Tribe ranked 6th in the AL in runs scored last year but were in the bottom half of the league in the second half. The key is obviously Travis Hafner. If he hits like the Pronk of ’04-’06, the attack will get an immediate jolt. Also, the ballclub must get more offense out of the corner outfield positions, especially left field. Unless a late spring training deal is made, Cleveland needs David Dellucci to hit like he did prior to last season when he killed right handed pitching. I believe we will see much better production from Ryan Garko.
The bullpen. Yes, I realize this was a strength in 2007. However, most baseball experts will tell you that the relief corps is the most volatile part of a team. Last year, Rafael Betancourt had arguably the best season a non-closing relief pitcher ever had, at least according to Baseball Prospectus.com. He likely will not be that good this year. However, GM Mark Shapiro has brought in reinforcements in Masahide Kobayashi and minor league free agent Jorge Julio. Also, don’t forget how Jensen Lewis performed down the stretch. Joe Borowski saved 45 games, but he was like watching a cliffhanger on a nightly basis, and outside of the Yankee series, Rafael Perez struggled late. The parts are there, but it is still something to keep an eye on.
C.C. and Fausto’s workload. Terry Pluto and others have touched on this, but it is definitely a concern that both pitched a lot more innings than they ever have in a single season. I think Eric Wedge has to take it easy on both guys early in the season. It’s okay to give Sabathia an extra day when the schedule has an off day. It would be okay to pull either hurler if they have a big lead after six frames. Error on the side of caution. The Tribe needs both to make 30-35 effective starts apiece if they are going to play deep into October. There is no need to push either guy in April and May.
Will the young guys improve? I love how most people have put the star label on Asdrubal Cabrera after he played a month and a half in the big leagues. Many people figure Josh Barfield will start the year in Buffalo, but they don’t take into account that Cabrera may struggle. I’ve already written that I think Ryan Garko will get better, but what about Franklin Gutierrez? He showed some pop last year with 13 HR’s, but needs to be more consistent. The front office thinks the second time around is difficult for most players, and both of these guys will be going through that in 2008. Luckily, the Indians have alternatives in Barfield or Jamey Carroll at 2B, and Ben Francisco/Shin-Soo Choo in RF.
Andy Marte at 3B. Certainly Casey Blake and his bloated one-year deal will begin camp as the starter, but the Tribe needs to find out what they have in Marte, particularly because he is out of options. Marte is suffering through a poor winter season, but he started last year at 3B, and was among the team’s RBI leaders at the time he was injured. The team needs to find out what they have in the youngster, so he will be given a long look in camp. I believe he could have a typical Blake year (.260, 20 HR, 70 RBI) if given a chance. If Shapiro paints himself into a corner with Marte, another Brandon Phillips deal could be in the offing. The difference would be that Phillips got more of a chance to play than Marte.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 
5 answers:
1) yes the offense will click. for one thing we won’t have trot "the rot" nixon in right field anymore and f-goot will be there for the whole year. grady sizemore will be one more year older and he still hasn’t reached his peak yet. scary. same with garko, peralta and asdrubal cabrera who are all still developing. victor is in the prime of his career and if pronk bounces back and does anything similar to what he did in 2004-2006, lookout. as for casey blake and the artists known as michaelucci dellilichaels, meh. if they all 3 hit about .270 with 50 rbi’s apiece and 30+ home runs between the 3 of them, i could live with that. what would be really nice would be for everything to suddenly all come together for andy marte. then it’s katie bar the door.
2) who’s to say that bullpens always have to be on a roller coaster from season to season??? we always used to have mainstays like eric plunk, paul assenmacher, derek lilliquist, paul shuey, mike jackson and yes i would even include jose mesa. when you look at the beginning of last season, the bullpen was supposed to be one of our weakest points which is why shapiro went out and signed the likes of keith foulke, oldberto hernandez, aaron fultz and joe-bo. the funny thing is that the best performer of the bunch was another mainstay in the form of raffy right and once raffy left got called up, foulke retired, hernandez got even older and fultz got hurt, things really came together for the bullpen and so with the majority of the same guys all coming back and the addition of "the hotdog eater", i see no reason why the bullpen can’t be just as good as they were last year.
3) bob feller once threw 36 complete games in a season and threw over 370 innings and never once got injured or suffered any ill effects from it the next season. if you ask me, the reason why pitchers get hurt today is from lack of use and not being allowed to develop the necessary arm strength and stamina to pitch 200+ innings. i swear they baby these guys way too much. i say just let ’em pitch and don’t worry about it and nothing will happen. it’s when you worry about an injury occurring is usually when it happens, so just don’t worry about it, ok???
4) yes i do believe the young guys will improve. like yogi berra once said "90 percent of the game is half mental". what he meant was so much of being a good player has a lot more to do with your mental toughness than your talent level. baseball history is chock full of guys with million dollar talent, but 10 cent brains. super joe charboneau anyone??? a player has to have the confidence in his own abilities and when he has success, he needs to build upon that success and develop some sort of consistency. we’ve already seen that sort of progression out of grady, victor and pronk over the last few years, although travis did struggle all last season, if hitting 24 home runs and driving in 100 rbi’s is seen as "struggling". shoot, if casey blake had the kind of season that pronk had last year we’d all be clamoring for an all-star spot for him. just goes to show you the idea of "relativity". anyway, i already saw enough of cabrera to know that he has that necessary confidence in his own abilities. the same thing goes for garko. i would like to think that f-goot can take that next step in his career as well since he will go into spring training as the starter in right and not just looking to make the team. barfield obviously needs to go back to the minors for at least half a season and get his confidence back. obviously the change in leagues had a negative effect on him. should he be able to recapture it and hit like he did his rookie year in san diego, there’s no reason why he couldn’t come back up here and produce again. i obviously think the kid pitchers will all do well. they’ve been developed in the minors to do exactly what they did last year which is produce. fausto, raffy left, jensen lewis and aaron laffey will do nothing but get better get better as a result of the success they all enjoyed last year. we can only hope.
5) andy marte concerns me. i honestly think we are looking at another brandon phillips fiasco in the way that marte is being handled by the tribe. if the tribe does not keep him, i have no doubt he will just go to another team and mash the ball all over the place just like phillips has done in cincy. while i never hate to see anybody get injured, it sure wouldn’t bother me if casey blake pulled an oblique muscle and opened the door for marte to get some extended playing time so he can develop into the kind of player he has the potential to become. again, we can only hope.
I totally agree on the Marte/Blake situation. Let’s give Marte until Memorial Day and find out what he does. I still think Hafner is the key to the season. If he rebounds, and I think he will, the Tribe will win the Central again.