Cleveland Indians’ manager Terry Francona has a public persona that is all about being a player’s manager.
He seems to run a loose ship, letting the players play and very, very rarely takes one of his guys to task in the media. We assume that he does discuss mistakes with his squad privately, and we only say that because we are not in the locker room.
In reading the book about his tenure in Boston, Francona is very protective of his players, and depends on veterans to help police the locker room, something he doesn’t seem to have right now with the Indians.
Jason Giambi fulfilled that role in the clubhouse the last two seasons.
However, we have seen several things over the past few weeks that makes it appear Francona may need to get tougher with his troops at least privately. And some of these mistakes, most in fact, were done by veterans.
Francona has been publicly critical of Carlos Santana’s defense at first base recently, and when asked why Chris Johnson was getting most of the time at first instead of Santana, Tito replied that he told the player he needed to be the best defensive player at that position to be out there.
It is no secret that Santana has been subpar defensively all year.
We understand that the Tribe has had a disappointing season, and we are in the “dog days” of the season, but we have seen other mental errors by older players that should be addressed, particularly with young players like Francisco Lindor and Giovanny Urshela being on the roster.
It doesn’t seem like a good example is being set.
While many alluded to the horrible call on the double play ball in Saturday’s game, and it was a complete joke, no one is discussing the base running by Jason Kipnis.
Kipnis was on third after Lindor’s single moved him there with one out.
Why wasn’t Kipnis running on the ball Michael Brantley hit to first base in that situation? You have to at least get a run if the Yankees were going to turn two on the play.
Brantley beat the play at first, so there were still first and third with two out. It was a bad baserunning mistake.
Perhaps not as bad as the one the next day by Mike Aviles, who tagged up on a fly ball to left by Carlos Santana and didn’t slide to try to elude a tag on the throw to the plate. We aren’t sure Aviles would have been safe had he went to the ground on the play, but he certainly would have had a better chance.
With the Tribe struggling to score runs all year, these are glaring mistakes, and they are mental errors, not physical ones.
Then we have yesterday’s game in which apparently the Indians forgot that Cubs’ starter Jon Lester doesn’t like to throw to first with a runner on.
Cleveland didn’t have many base runners, they had just six hits and a walk on the day, but they didn’t attempt a stolen base until Lester left, and he was replaced by former Indian farmhand Hector Rondon.
Again, we don’t know what happened in the clubhouse, but we hope Francona addressed these blunders with his ballclub.
It’s one thing to have a poor record, it’s another to appear to be going through the motions.
KM
Cleveland Sports Perspective 