The Cleveland Indians are lucky. They are lucky that no team in the AL Central has gotten off to a great start, so even though they have had a tough first month of the season, they sit just 2-1/2 games out of first place. They are lucky that the Cavaliers won their first round playoff series, so some of the attention has been removed from their lack of hitting. And they are fortunate that every once and awhile they score a substantial amount of runs, so they don’t rank last in the American League in every offensive category.
The hitting woes for the Tribe continued over the weekend when they were held to four hits in both games against the Kansas City Royals. First, Luke Hochevar did it, and then Gil Meche, who came into the contest with an ERA over 7. Not exactly Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale doing the deed, is it? The Tribe has scored four runs or less in more than half their games this season, and in today’s era of baseball, no team can win with that sort of offensive attack.
The Indians rank 10th in the league in runs scored, ahead of just Baltimore, Toronto, Kansas City, and Minnesota. In OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage), Cleveland is ahead of only the Twins and the Royals, a lowly ranking indeed. Surprisingly, they have dropped to fifth in the circuit in striking out, but they have only walked more than five teams. Their team slugging percentage ranks third last, ahead of only the Blue Jays and Royals, meaning the extra base hit, which had been a staple of the offense, has all but disappeared.
What can be done? Well, there isn’t anyone red hot at Buffalo that deserves a call up, but apparently Ben Francisco will be back with the team in New York tomorrow night. Will the Tribe make a move with Jason Michaels, or take the easy way out by sending little used reliever Tom Mastny back to the minors? Another move that needs to be made is sending Asdrubal Cabrera back to Triple A, and bringing back Josh Barfield. Barfield isn’t hitting and still is whiffing a lot, but the youngster who provided a spark to the team last year appears to have no idea at the dish.
This is a broken record for this blog, but really, could Andy Marte do any worse than the rest of the guys who are playing? He has just 13 at bats for the year, and with Casey Blake’s defensive deficiencies starting to creep up again (two key errors in the past week), what harm can come from giving the youngster a shot.
Eric Wedge has tried just about everything. He has shuffled the lineup; he has even started to play some small ball, something he really doesn’t like to do (and I agree with that). The only thing left is to try some different personnel. Swing mechanics have something to do with it as well, as this team is hitting an unusual amount of pop flies. Perhaps a new hitting instructor should be looked at since the team hasn’t hit since before last year’s all-star break with the exception of the last six weeks of the season.
With three games at Yankee Stadium followed by Toronto’s fine pitching staff (we will see Roy Halladay on Friday night), the promise of improvement doesn’t look good. The Cleveland Indians are wasting some excellent pitching performances. They are lucky they have not been buried in the AL Central Division race.
KM
Cleveland Sports Perspective 