The Cleveland Indians’ hitting slump is now reaching the one-third point of the season. It isn’t one or two players; it’s everybody on the team. Really, when you think about it, only a couple of Indians are having acceptable seasons, and one of them, Grady Sizemore, is capable of a whole lot more. Manager Eric Wedge doesn’t have a lot of alternatives at his disposal. Travis Hafner is the hitter blamed the most, but he is hardly the only culprit. What’s a manager to do?
GM Mark Shapiro always points out that he doesn’t want to evaluate his team until 40 games are played. The Tribe has now played 45 games, so the time to make a change is here. This team might just need a major jolt to shake it out of the doldrums. Asdrubal Cabrera was a major spark on last year’s division winning team, but he is struggling mightily right now. Why not call Josh Barfield up to see if he can do something with the big club. He plays good defense, and even though he didn’t hit well last season, he still hit around .250, which is 70 points higher than Cabrera at this point. The latter needs to regain his stroke, and why not let him do it by playing everyday at Buffalo?
Perhaps a new voice is needed on the coaching staff. In 2005, the club replaced hitting coach Eddie Murray with Derek Shelton and the team took off, missing the playoffs on the last day of the season. Is that type of move needed now? Outside of a six-week stretch from the middle of August to the end of the season, the Tribe hasn’t been a good hitting team for almost an entire season. It may be that they are collectively bad hitters, but the track record shows differently. The Indians were in the top half of the league in runs scored each of the last three seasons, so the ability is there. Wedge and Shapiro have to at least study the possibility that the hitters have tuned Shelton out.
Shelton preaches a patient approach, and for the most part it is a good idea. The Yankees of the late 90’s wore pitchers out with this type of hitting, and the Tribe used it last year too. However, sometimes it works against the team when it comes to situational hitting, it can work against the team. As an example, in Sunday’s game against the Reds, Michael Aubrey came to the plate with Ben Francisco on second and no one out. The rookie took an inside pitch early in the count, and then on a 2-2 pitch grounded to third. Working the pitcher is great, but you have to pull the ball in that situation, and Aubrey failed to do that when he didn’t pull the inside offering.
Another thing you can do, and Wedge has tried this, is to bunch the guys who are hitting together. The skipper did this last night by moving Francisco into the #2 spot behind Sizemore. The result was they both went 0 for 4. In fact, the first four hitters in the batting order went 0 for 16. My suggestion would be to move Victor Martinez, who is not driving the ball into the #3 spot in the lineup and then hit Travis Hafner fourth. By the way, it made no sense to hit Casey Blake eighth over the weekend with the pitcher hitting. Blake has been hitting a little bit, but wasn’t going to be pitched to in any meaningful situation with the pitcher up next. If Cabrera was playing, he should have hit in that spot.
Eric Wedge has prodded, cajoled, and held the hands of his hitters. Now, it’s time to throw cold water in their collective faces. The Tribe has the best pitching in the American League, but even that kind of pitching cannot win if the offense is producing only one or two runs per night. This team is last in the American League in on base percentage and tied for last in slugging percentage. A wake up call is most definitely needed. You can’t blame Andy Marte, by the way, he has just 25 at bats.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 