Week one of the new baseball season has come and gone, and it is always funny to hear fans go crazy about one week of a 26 week season.
If the same results happened in late June, no one would think anything of it. This would apply to being shutout on back-to-back nights, which happened to the Cleveland Indians this week.
Because of the extremely small sample size, results in the first week are greatly magnified. No one really thinks (at least we hope not) that Jason Kipnis and Asdrubal Cabrera will hit .100 for the season, yet there they are, struggling at the onset of the new campaign.
On the other hand, let us get supporters ready for the reality that Justin Masterson will not win every one of his starts in 2013.
Still, one thing that could be a trend for the Tribe is the streaky nature of their offense, mostly because of the contact issues of many of the hitters in their everyday lineup. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the hitting had a few instances where they have problems scoring, just like they did in the first two games of the Tampa Bay series.
And the reason for that is they have a lot of all or nothing hitters. The trade-off to this is they will have streaks where they probably bludgeon their opponents as well, just like they did on Sunday afternoon in a 13-0 win.
It’s still better than last year, when the Indians had one of the worst offenses in baseball and had several hitters in their lineup where the opposing pitcher could relax during a game.
The other weakness that raised its ugly head was the starting pitching, which provided three or four (depending on how you feel about Zack McAllister’s outing on Friday night) good starts and three bad ones, most notably Brett Myers start in game three and Ubaldo Jimenez’ start in yesterday’s home opener.
That the worrisome thing about this year’s Indians, can the starters give them a chance to win on a night in, night out basis. That didn’t happen in Myers start, and it didn’t happen against New York.
Many fans and media members are concerned about Myers, who didn’t have a good spring and then pitched home run derby, Canadian style. But Myers has been better than Jimenez in the time period that has occurred since the latter was traded here in 2011.
Jimenez looked very good in his first start, but that’s exactly the thing that ticks people off most. In his second start, he was back to the Ubaldo we saw last season: unable to throw strikes consistently, his velocity down, and a lack of concentration that resulted in a stolen base by Chris Stewart, the Yankee catcher who had such a big jump he went in standing.
McAllister gave manager Terry Francona a good start, but he again gave up runs after his defense let him down, allowing two insurance runs in what was a 2-0 game after an error by 3B Mike Aviles. Francona said the big right-hander tries too hard to pick up his defense when miscues happen and that could be the cause of his problems allowing unearned runs.
Trevor Bauer had trouble locating his fastball in his start, walking seven in five innings, but he showed his stuff was good, allowing just three runs. If he can throw strikes with the heater, he could help before the year is out.
No overreactions here, just observations. However, nothing that happened in the first week should change any preconceived notions about the Cleveland Indians.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 