A little baseball and a little basketball on tap today as the Tribe splits in Texas and a rumor involving the Cavaliers is out there as the NBA Finals start last night and the draft is less than three weeks away—

Indians.  We have been vehement is saying the main problem with this baseball team has been the offense, but the bullpen is most definitely the runner up.  Yesterday, there was a report that Rafael Betancourt was suffering from some back stiffness, which is why Jensen Lewis did not go back to Buffalo right away.  After last night’s performance against the Rangers, don’t be surprised if the right-hander goes on the disabled list before tonight’s series opener against Detroit.

It would be nice if the Tribe would call up a lefty reliever if they have to make a move today.  Rich Rundles is 5-2 with a 3.42 ERA and hitters are batting just .213 against him at Buffalo.  And he’s a southpaw, which the Indians need unless they are interested in seeing Rafael Perez’s arm fall off from overuse at some point in August or September.  Perez has pitched in almost half of the Tribe’s games, and he has not been used as a situational lefty, just facing one batter. 

Of course, you may remember Cleveland had a second left-hander in the bullpen.  His name was Craig Breslow, and he is now with the division rival Minnesota Twins, meaning the Indians will see him when they return home next week.  This next part is even crazier, they are actually using him, and if you watch Minnesota box scores, he is pitching all right.  This is the biggest problem with Eric Wedge, his refusal to use his entire 25-man roster.  They are here, and the owners are paying them, so the manager might as well find a way to use them.

Cavaliers.  There is an internet rumor saying the Indiana Pacers want to rid themselves of F/C Jermaine O’Neal’s bloated contract, and the Cavaliers are interested.  If true, the Cavs would give up the expiring contracts of Wally Szczerbiak and Eric Snow for O’Neal and the Pacers’ first round pick, the 11^th choice overall.  The key word here obviously is “if”. 

That deal should be made in a heartbeat.  Yes, O’Neal is 30 years old, and he has the knees of a 45-year-old man, and his contract is outrageous.  However, the Cavaliers are giving up nothing in the trade.  Snow will never play again, and Szczerbiak was a poor fit with this team despite his track record as a great shooter.  He never showed that ability here on a consistent basis. 

What makes the deal a good one is the inclusion of a second first round draft pick.  GM Danny Ferry would have two of the top 20 picks in the draft, which would allow him to bring in some young talent.  It would also put him in position to trade the two picks and move into an area where the elite players are, perhaps the top five picks.  As for the veteran, even though he seemingly gets injured walking down the street, he does have the ability to block shots, and might be able to stay healthy with reduced playing time.

Ferry has to do something, and getting another pick in the first round would be something that would be difficult to pass up.

KM/JK

Please don’t leap to conclusions that the hitting woes of the Cleveland Indians are starting to dissipate.  It’s a combination of the Texas Rangers’ poor pitching staff, and their launching pad of a ballpark.  If the Tribe continues to hit during the last two games of the series and during the weekend wrap around series in Detroit, then we will admit there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Until then, color me unconvinced that anything is different.

Most new school baseball thinking is all about OPS, the addition of a player’s on-base percentage and slugging percentage.  These people dismiss strikeouts as just another out.  That’s ridiculous thinking.  There are many times were putting the bat on the ball leads to a run.  For example, early in a game, putting the ball on the ground with a runner on third can result in scoring the run.  Striking out or popping up are wasted at bats.  Look at last night’s game in the third inning; the Tribe had the bases loaded with one out, only to see Ryan Garko pop up and Jhonny Peralta whiff.

Knowledge of the strike zone is one of the Indians’ biggest problems.  They consistently swing at pitches out of the zone, particularly those up.  That’s the reason for all of the pop ups and lazy fly balls.  Not being able to differentiate a ball from a strike is also the reason some of the Tribe’s young hitters do not develop, as they should.  Let’s take the case of Mr. Peralta.

First, it has been historically proven that most major league players hit their peak between the ages of 27 and 29.  Notice, the word used here is most.  There are exceptions to the rule.  In 2005, at the age of 23, Peralta hit .292 with 24 home runs and 78 RBI’s.  He had OPS of .886, an excellent figure, especially for a young player.  That season, the Tribe SS struck out 128 times in 504 at bats.  Unfortunately, Peralta’s inability to learn the strike zone has caused this to be his best season thus far.  He should be getting better until he hits 29 years old, and he is now 26.

However, the shortstop’s strikeouts continue to rise as he fanned 152 times in 2006, and 146 times last season, without an appreciable increase in walks.  This year, he is on pace for another 140 Ski’s.  Watching the games, anyone can see than the way to get him out is with fastballs up and in, or breaking balls low and away.  His strike zone judgment has not progressed to the point where he can take those pitches, and work himself into favorable hitters’ counts. 

No one wants to hear this, but Grady Sizemore is another Indian whose best year occurred at age 23, and although he is a very productive player, and his walks have increased, he still hasn’t improved his knowledge of the strike zone.  This team will continue to struggle at the plate until they can lay off the high fastball out of the zone, and the low and away breaking pitch.  Whose fault is it that this hasn’t changed?  That’s for you to decide.  However, isn’t that what the batting coach is supposed to teach?

KM

What happens when a team that has lost 10 out of its last 12 games plays a team that has lost 11 in a row?  We are about to find out tonight when the struggling Cleveland Indians start a three game series against the Kansas City Royals.  Don’t be surprised if all of the games are scoreless going into the 12^th inning because of the offensive ineptness of the two teams.  The Tribe needs to start a turnaround right away, but you have to believe the Royals are due for a win.

Do you think any team would replace a player who is hitting .240 with one who is batting .290?  Understand there are other things that go along with this; such as is the .240 guy hit for power versus the .290 hitter who is a slappy?  What we are talking about here are similar players, one hitting 50 points higher than the other.  In that case, most people would make the change to pick up the extra hits.  Not the Indians, however.  Let’s say Josh Barfield would conservatively hit .230 if he were called up to the big club.  That would be a 50-point jump over what Asdrubal Cabrera is currently hitting.

Yes, Cabrera is an outstanding defensive player.  He has made several highlight reel plays in the first third of the season.  However, no matter how good defensively you are, you can’t play everyday in the major leagues batting .180.  No one saves his team that many runs to make up for that horrible batting average, particularly when the alternative is a pretty good defender in Barfield.  This is not to say Barfield is the cure for the Tribe’s offensive woes, but he wouldn’t hurt the team.

Travis Hafner received a cortisone shot to help his aching shoulder, and if he can go tonight, he’ll be back in the lineup.  Any chance the Tribe can cure its woeful hitting attack rides on Pronk’s ability to resemble the player he was in 2005 and 2006.  Also, Ryan Garko is important as well.  Eric Wedge needs to put him back in the lineup on an everyday basis to get him going.  Michael Aubrey hit two homers in his brief time here, but he doesn’t look like the solution in the short term.  He should go back to Buffalo to play everyday.

Unless Hafner has to go on the disabled list, the guess here is Aubrey goes back when Shin-Soo Choo gets activated early next week.  Choo probably takes David Dellucci’s at bats against right-handers in a platoon with Franklin Gutierrez, that is, as long as Ben Francisco keeps hitting.  It would be nice if the team could find a way to drop Grady Sizemore in the order, but that’s not going to happen.

Since the front office asked Sizemore to be more selective in the leadoff spot, he’s hasn’t hit as well.  He raised his walk total to over 100 last season, but his extra base hit total dropped as well.  Perhaps he’s better suited to hitting down in the order where he can swing freely and drive the ball consistently.  Guys who can get 100 extra base hits in a year are far more valuable than guys that walk that many times.

MW

The Cleveland Indians snatched defeat from the jaws of a possible victory with more terrible situational hitting on Wednesday, as the Tribe had the tying and winning runs on base in the ninth inning with one out, and failed to score.  This has been a recurring theme with this ballclub, as they had an opportunity to bail out the bullpen, but failed to do so, and the Indians are now 5-1/2 games behind the front running White Sox after a 6-5 loss to the White Sox.

The ballclub parlayed an error and a walk by Grady Sizemore to put runners on first and second with no one out in the bottom of the ninth.  A bunt moved the runners to second and third, where Ben Francisco and Victor Martinez stranded them on harmless, infield pop ups.  The former came on the first pitch.  So much for the patience the team is always preaching. 

Of course, the relief corps didn’t help either.  After Jhonny Peralta’s two-run homer in the sixth gave Cleveland a 5-3 lead, the bullpen couldn’t hold it, and Rafael Betancourt was the culprit.  An error by seldom used Andy Marte and a single set up the inning for the Sox, and a sacrifice moved the tying runs into scoring position.  Unlike the Tribe in the ninth, the Pale Hose knocked in the runs with back-to-back doubles off of Betancourt, and gave Chicago a lead they would never relinquish.

Betancourt has been hot and cold this season after a tremendous season in 2007.  His inconsistency is the biggest problem in the bullpen and here’s hoping Eric Wedge’s stubbornness doesn’t get in the way.  After a third of the season, it is obvious that Masa Kobayashi has been more effective and consistent than Betancourt, and their roles should be flip-flopped.  Yes, Kobayashi gave up a homer to Adam Dunn to cost the team a win against Cincinnati, but overall he has done the better job.

Peralta’s dinger was his 11^th of the season, and raised his RBI total to 19 on the season.  The shortstop is threatening to rival Brook Jacoby’s epic 1987 season of 32 homers and 69 RBI’s.  It is very unusual to hit that many home runs and drive in less than 80 runs.  At his current pace, Peralta will hit 33 HR’s with 60 RBI’s.  He is developing into an all or nothing offensive player, on par with guys like Russell Branyan.  The Tribe needs more from Peralta.

Baseball Prospectus.com noted today that the Indians’ starting rotation is on pace to be one of the top five American League rotations in the last 50 years, joining the ’61 Orioles, ’63 and ’64 White Sox, and the 1980 Oakland A’s.  The bad news here is that none of these teams made the post-season.  The point is this ballclub is wasting some historic starting pitching by bullpen and offensive failures.  GM Mark Shapiro and Wedge need to stop hoping it will turn around and do something to make it change direction.

KM

The Cleveland Indians under the Mark Shapiro regime are very good at evaluating pitchers, both amateur talent in the high school and college ranks and other teams’ minor leaguers.  This differs greatly from the John Hart era, where the Tribe was loaded with hitting prospects.  Which way is better?  That is up for debate, however, if you have one without the other is spells a struggling ballclub, not a consistent winner. 

For the most part, the Tribe’s sterling pitching staff is made up of a mixture of talent developed by the Cleveland farm system.  C.C. Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, Aaron Laffey, Jeremy Sowers, Rafael Perez, and Jensen Lewis were signed originally by the team and are mainstays in the organization.  Guys like Cliff Lee, Jake Westbrook, Rafael Betancourt, and Tom Mastny were acquired while they were in the minor leagues in another organization and developed by the Indians.  Only Paul Byrd and Joe Borowski were established major leaguers, and Masa Kobayashi was signed out of Japan.

The Indians have unparalleled depth in pitching in the organization, but it does them no good if they cannot convert it into some offensive firepower.  Even the Minnesota Twins traded a guy like Matt Garza to get an every day player in Delmon Young.  At this point, Shapiro needs to explore the possibility of exchanging some of this pitching depth to get a bat.  If you look at the hitting acquired during Shapiro’s tenure, you have to be discouraged.

We all know that Grady Sizemore was picked up in the famous Bartolo Colon trade.  Ryan Garko and Ben Francisco were drafted out of college, while Jhonny Peralta and Victor Martinez were signed as free agents and grew up in the organization.  Travis Hafner was acquired from Texas for Einar Diaz, and Franklin Gutierrez came in the Milton Bradley deal.  You can see that under the current front office, the Indians have yet to draft a real impact hitter.  Michael Aubrey was a first round pick, but injury problems cost him.  Trevor Crowe might be a decent major league player some day, but he is more of a lead off hitter type.  Last year’s top choice, Beau Mills, might have the best chance of being an impact bat. 

A player like Akron 3B Wes Hodges might turn into a solid major leaguer some day, and Josh Rodriguez could be a player who provides a good on base percentage with some pop.  At AAA, Shin-Soo Choo showed he could be a starter at the MLB level, but he is hardly a perennial all-star to be.  There simply isn’t a big bat in the organization, nor have the Indians ever really drafted or signed one outside of Martinez.  The best hope might be Kinston OF Nick Weglarz who combines power and a keen batting eye, but he’s in at least a year away.

The organizational philosophy of stockpiling pitchers is a sound one, but some of that depth has to be moved to get some hitting.  With the pitching currently on the major league roster, the time to make a move is right now.  This is not to say the Tribe should do what Detroit did and gut their farm system, but there is enough pitching to deal one or two hurlers and still maintain depth.  Shapiro has done a great job as GM, but he seems reluctant to make moves like this since the Brandon Phillips fiasco.  The time for a move is now, here’s hoping the Tribe has the guts to make one.

KM

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

A disappointed LeBron James left the court without shaking hands with the players who ended his dream of going back to the NBA Finals.  He left the playing surface alone, ironic in that he competed in the contest pretty much without any help from his teammates.  Sure, Delonte West played hard, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas is always a constant, but the rest of the Cavaliers abandoned their leader.  The result was the end of the season for the wine and gold, as the lost Game 7 to the Boston Celtics, 97-92 yesterday.

James put on a show for the ages, scoring almost half of the Cavs’ points (45), and getting almost half of the team’s assists (6 out of the 13 that Cleveland had).  James sat out just a minute and twelve seconds of the contest, in which his teammates were outscored 5-0.  Those five points just happen to be the difference in the game.  It’s an indictment on the entire team that LBJ can’t even sit out a minute of such an important game without drastic consequences.  Of course, his coach didn’t help in that regard, either.

This has been alluded to the entire series, but why didn’t Devin Brown play more in this series.  Mike Brown gave (the proper choice, because they weren’t earned) Sasha Pavlovic 35 minutes of playing time in the most important game of the season.  He played more minutes than Ilgauskas.  The only Cavs who played more were James and West, who played hard the entire game.  Pavlovic hit three of his eight shots, including a three pointer, but contributed just three rebounds and an assist.  Devin Brown contributed in so many ways during the regular season, playing defense, passing, rebounding, and scoring.  It is difficult to understand why he rusted on the bench during this series. 

Also, the staff is at fault for not establishing Ilgauskas early in each of the last three games.  Z is a rhythm player, and getting him going early is important to the team.  That didn’t happen in Games 5, 6, and 7.

The mega-trade Danny Ferry made at the deadline wasn’t a success because the Cavs didn’t return to The Finals, but Delonte West might just be a contributor on the next Cleveland team to get that far.  West was arguably the only other Cavalier who didn’t let the game seven pressure get to him.  He scored 15 points and had five assists, but more importantly was willing to take the shot.  At his size, he could wind up being the starting two guard if the team acquires a point guard, or he could stay at the point with an entire training camp in Cleveland under his belt.  

Ferry probably wishes that Ben Wallace could have made as much of a contribution for the Cavs in yesterday’s game as P.J. Brown did for the Celtics.  The veteran hit all four of his shots from the floor, scoring 10 points and grabbing six boards.  Wallace did play solid defense on Kevin Garnett, but his inability to play offensively hamstrings the team.  Late in the fourth quarter, Wallace got the ball in the post with single coverage, and didn’t even attempt an offensive move.  In 29 minutes, he scored three points and had four rebounds.  It wasn’t enough.  The Celts’ Brown also delivered two hard fouls down the stretch, something Wallace never gave the wine and gold.

Joe Smith did a nice job, but I’m sure Coach Brown didn’t want him guarding Garnett late in the game.  Wally Szczerbiak picked a poor time to play a simply awful game.  The bottom line is LeBron James didn’t get enough help from his teammates and his coaches.  As a result, the Cavaliers are going home for the summer.  Hopefully, the front office will not be taking a summer vacation.

JK