Indians’ GM Mark Shapiro always says a team needs to wait until a quarter of the season, 40 games, to properly evaluate the ballclub. Well, the Tribe’s record is now 16-27 on the season, which is 43 games.
So Mark, how about taking a look at your team.
This is a team that coming into the season was supposed score runs but have troubles with their starting pitching. However, just the opposite has wound up being the truth.
The Indians rank 12th in the American League in runs scored and rank 13th in the league in slugging percentage. The bottom third of the lineup on a nightly basis can’t buy a hit.
Meanwhile, the pitching staff’s ERA is about a half a run lower than last season at 4.48 for the season. And that’s with several pitchers falling below expectations.
This team has too many of the same players currently on the roster. For example, let’s look at LF. The Tribe currently has Austin Kearns, Matt LaPorta, and Shelly Duncan on the team. They are all right-handed “power” hitters. There aren’t enough at bats for all of them.
LaPorta, who was the centerpiece of the trade for C.C. Sabathia, has to play every day. If he’s not going to do it in Cleveland, then he should be sent to Columbus so he can get some rhythm. Playing sporadically is not going to help his development.
He could get playing time at first base, but Shapiro decided to sign Russell Branyan as a free agent. Branyan is a left-handed bat that adds nothing to this offense except an occasional home run and a boatload of strikeouts.
The last three guys in the batting order on most nights are Luis Valbuena, Lou Marson, and now Jason Donald. Donald will be excluded from this example because he was just brought up. The other two guys have OPS of under 600! A good number is 800. Both players have slugging percentages of less than .253, which is a mediocre batting average.
Unfortunately for Shapiro, he doesn’t have anyone to play instead of Valbuena, except 40-year old Mark Grudzielanek, who has NO extra base hits on the season.
Marson can be replaced by hot prospect Carlos Santana, who hopefully will be on the major league roster soon.
Compound this with another player who is consistently in the middle of the batting order in Jhonny Peralta, who has a slugging percentage of less than .400. Peralta has shown beyond any doubt that the success early in his career (2005 and 2007) is not the norm, and he is nothing but an average big leaguer at best.
So, with the injuries to Asdrubal Cabrera and Grady Sizemore, who wasn’t hitting when he was in the lineup, it spells a batting order with more holes in it than a sieve.
The only productive regular players are Shin-Soo Choo, Kearns, and Travis Hafner, who even though he’s nothing like the hitter he was in 2004-06, is still putting up decent numbers at .275/.394/.420. And Kearns right now is hitting over .400 on balls put in play, which will not continue.
You can make the case that Santana will be the third or fourth best hitter on the team when he comes up.
Donald and Trevor Crowe are young players that the organization are trying to find out about, and Valbuena’s season last year puts him in that category too, although a trip back to AAA to get his confidence back might be helpful, especially for a team who is always talking about the mental aspects of having success.
That leaves Branyan and Peralta and why are they continuing to be put in the lineup. The management is being fooled by the occasional bursts of offense.
If this franchise has any hope for the future it comes from developing young players and trying different things.
However, we should know by now that the real agenda for the Cleveland Indians isn’t winning. We don’t know what it is for sure, but it probably has something to do with money.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 