The Cleveland Indians tried to fool us by knocking off Boston the last two games of a four game series, and then winning the first two games against the Washington Nationals last weekend. That made four straight wins. Maybe adding Carlos Santana would somewhat salvage this hopeless season?
Since then, the Tribe has lost six of seven to the Nationals, Mets, and the horrible Pittsburgh Pirates mostly by playing awful defense. That goes along with an offense that ranks near the bottom of the American League, and a pitching staff that ranks the same.
Hitting, pitching, and defense…this team is terrible at all of them.
Shouldn’t there be something Manny Acta can hang his hat on?
Last Sunday (in the Steven Strasburg game), Trevor Crowe took a bad route to a ball hit to centerfield to turn a 4-1 deficit into 6-1. In the first game of the Mets’ series, the Tribe parlayed bad glove work into a five run inning, when New York hit just two balls out of the infield, and one of those was Ike Davis’ two run homer.
In the past week, opponents have scored from second base twice, TWICE!, on infield hits to Jason Donald at shortstop. Donald should be playing 2B with Anderson Hernandez at SS, and Luis Valbuena being sent to Columbus to regain his confidence.
At first base, Russell Branyan is showing that perhaps a statue would be better defensively at the position. In the Met series, he charged on a bunt in front of the plate that Santana easily fielded, and yesterday missed a throw from Justin Masterson that wasn’t even in the dirt.
When you don’t have a pitching staff that has a lot of swing and miss capabilities, you better be good defensively, and the Cleveland Indians aren’t. Yes, Asdrubal Cabrera and Grady Sizemore are both good gloves and are out of the lineup, but doesn’t the organization have replacements that can make the basic plays?
And speaking of not having power arms in the rotation, did anybody check out Aaron Laffey’s outing Saturday night for Columbus? Laffey, who may replace David Huff as a starter this weekend against Cincinnati, walked seven in 5-1/3 innings against Pawtucket. When you don’t have overpowering stuff, you must throw strikes. This continues to elude the southpaw, who should not be the alternative for Huff. Make him get in the strike zone consistently before he gets promoted.
Call up Carlos Carrasco instead or even Josh Tomlin. Tomlin would require being added to the 40 man roster, while perhaps Carrasco’s up and down performance in AAA is due to being bored since he’s been at that level for a year and a half.
Tomlin deserves the promotion more.
However, it’s not going to make a difference who pitches unless a better defensive club is behind him.
KM
Cleveland Sports Perspective 