Tag: SS Francisco Lindor

Tribe Facing A Much More Famous Foe

Tonight’s the night!

Post-season baseball returns to Cleveland for the first time since the 2013 wild card game against Tampa Bay, and the Indians are in the American League Division Series for the first time since 2007.

Even though the Tribe has home field advantage as a result of having a better record during the regular season than their opponents, the Boston Red Sox, they are a decided underdog, particularly on a national basis.

Part of that is the loss of 2/5ths of Terry Francona’s starting rotation, with Carlos Carrasco down with a broken hand and Danny Salazar has a strain in his forearm.  Neither will pitch in this series, and the hope is Salazar may be able to participate before the month ends.

The other part of this, is let’s face it, the Red Sox are jammed down the nation’s throat because it seems every matchup they have against the Yankees is televised across the universe.

Are you aware that David Ortiz is going to retire?  If you aren’t, you could possibly be the most sheltered person on earth.  Thank goodness, if the Indians can eliminate the Sox, we won’t have to hear about this anymore.

Of course, we are sure that one of the network’s covering post-season baseball will hire him as a “guest” analyst for the rest of the playoffs and World Series.

Even MLB Network has Pedro Martinez and Kevin Millar working for them.  And it doesn’t take much for them to start reminiscing about 2004 and breaking “The Curse of the Bambino”.

That team was managed by the same guy who is in the home dugout tonight at Progressive Field.  His name is Francona.

For most people around the country, Terry Francona is the most recognizable name among the Cleveland Indians.  He’s put up four consecutive winning seasons and has made the playoffs twice with the Tribe, but his players don’t have the same “name” factor as the skipper.

We are sure much of the hype in the series will be about Tito coming back to Boston and that Mike Napoli will be playing against the same team he won a World Series with in 2013.

But this will be the network viewing audience’s first look at Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Jason Kipnis, and for that matter, Corey Kluber, who won the AL Cy Young Award in 2014.

Most of the nation’s baseball fans probably couldn’t pick these guys out of a lineup.

Besides Ortiz, Boston has former MVP Dustin Pedroia, and a bunch of young players who have been covered since arriving in the bigs:  Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr. (JBJ for those not in the know), and Xander Bogaerts.

No wonder, most experts don’t give the Tribe much of a chance, although they cover this with the caveat that you can’t possibly pick Cleveland without Carrasco and Salazar.

We are happy that most national guys are seeing how good Andrew Miller is, with several baseball media people calling him, not the Orioles’ Zack Britton, the best reliever in the game.  Of course, Miller pitched in both New York and Boston, so he’s got that going for him.

Would we be shocked if the Tribe didn’t advance?  No, as we wrote the other day, they are facing an uphill climb.

But this is baseball.  Hopefully, the Cleveland Indians will give the national media some new baseball players to talk about…guys like “Frankie”, “Kip”, “Josey”, and the “Klubot”.

KM

The Time for Lindor is Next Monday

Next week the major league baseball rosters can expand to 40 active players, and the Cleveland Indians will be faced with a very difficult decision, one we think they will make a mistake with.

Their prized prospect, SS Francisco Lindor, could be called up to the big leagues, but we think the Tribe will pass on that at this time and will cite having to add him to the 40 man roster and that he wouldn’t receive enough playing time to justify the move.

In our opinion, the real reason is the Indians do not want to start the service clock on the prized prospect by calling him up now.  They are also hoping that Lindor struggles a little in spring training next year, so they can justify not bringing him up until the time has passed so he doesn’t receive a full year service in 2015.

We believe that is shortsighted thinking, and Lindor should make his MLB debut on Monday afternoon against the Tigers at Progressive Field.  Why?  Because he makes the Tribe better right now.

In 121 games combined at Akron and Columbus, the switch-hitter is hitting .278 with 10 HR and 60 RBI, stealing 28 bases.  He has had contact issues at AAA, striking out 31 times in 144 at bats, walking just six times.

However, up until his time at Columbus, he has had a very good strikeout to walk ratio.

Defensively, Lindor is rated as an excellent defender and could combine with Jose Ramirez to field a dynamic duo with the glove up the middle for the rest of the year and going forward.

Could Lindor be ruined by coming up to the bigs and failing?  Of course, anything is possible, but the folks at Baseball Prospectus feel the 20-year-old’s make up is off the charts.

Look at his progress at AAA. He’s hitting .278 in the state capital, but to get there he overcame a slow start.

As for playing time, we have a perfect solution.

Right now, Chris Dickerson is still receiving an inordinate amount of at bats with the Tribe, and Terry Francona could easily move the current DH, Zach Walters to RF, and give Jason Kipnis some DH at bats (before moving his to another spot), in order to give Lindor some at bats.

Therefore, the question would be could Lindor do more with the bat than Dickerson, who has hit .179 since the All Star Game. Based on that figure, we are pretty sure he could.

He and Ramirez would also add some much-needed speed to the Cleveland lineup.

As for the service time issue, do what Tampa Bay did with Evan Longoria and Houston did with Jonathan Singleton.  That would be signing him to a long-term deal right away to take him out of the arbitration process and a little beyond.  He would have to be interested if offered a 8-10 year deal before playing a month in the major leagues.

The added bonus would be finding out if he can play in the big leagues now, allowing the team to make the appropriate plans in the winter.  We don’t doubt he can, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure.

It will also create some buzz around town too.  Baseball fans have been waiting for the shortstop to arrive and it may put a few extra people in the seats at Progressive Field with Lindor’s debut.

The guess here is the Tribe will take the safe route with one of the game’s best prospects.  That’s the path they normally take.

KM