Tag: The Tigers

Tribe Still Surviving at the Quarter Pole

Tonight, the Cleveland Indians will play their 40th game of the season, which obviously means the campaign is one-quarter over.

Suddenly, it’s not early anymore, but there is still plenty of season remaining.

The Tribe sits at 18-21 on the season, and with the jumbled American League, they are still in the thick of it for a post-season spot, although the Tigers seem to be running away (again!) with the Central Division.

Eleven of the 15 teams in the AL sit within three games of the .500 mark, an incredible number considering the number of games played so far. Only Oakland and Detroit are more than three games over the break-even mark.

Cleveland’s pitching is holding its own, ranking in the top half of the league (7th) in ERA, despite the struggles of their #1 starter, Justin Masterson, and having to sit down the closer that started the season, John Axford.

Masterson hasn’t pitched poorly (2-2, 4.31 ERA), but he certainly hasn’t pitched as well as he did last season. He’s had several outings thus far where he has been dominating early, only to lose it completely.

Yesterday was one of those games, with the big right-hander retiring the first nine Blue Jays, but then giving up five runs in the next 2-1/3 innings.

Axford has struck out 16 hitters in 15-2/3 innings, but he’s walked 13 and allowed three home runs. Putting hitters on via walk and giving up bombs isn’t a way for a closer to stay a closer for long.

The bigger issue for Terry Francona’s club is the offense, which sits at 12th in the league in runs scored, 13th in batting average, and 12th in OPS. All of those ranks are in the bottom third of the AL.

While no one outside of Michael Brantley has been consistently good so far, the biggest culprits for the offensive ineptitude would be Carlos Santana, Nick Swisher, and Ryan Raburn.

Thank goodness, Santana has continued to draw walks (he’s second in the AL with 32), because otherwise he would be a total disaster. He’s hitting just .152 for the season with 4 HR and 11 RBI. His OPS is under 600 (597) for the season.

Francona is a very patient manager, but it will be tough to keep the switch-hitter in the clean up spot much longer.

As bad as Santana’s OPS is with his batting average at .152, Swisher’s isn’t much better at 618.

The Tribe’s big free agent acquisition a year ago, the first baseman is languishing at .204, 2 HR, and 15 RBI. That’s a pace to hit less than 10 dingers and knock in about 60 runs for the season.

The weird stat though, is that those RBIs ranked third on the team, behind Brantley and David Murphy. That’s how much everyone else as struggled as well.

Swisher has been terrible vs. lefties, hitting just .156 against southpaws. The Tribe has struggled against left-handed starters all season, and this is just one reason.

Another reason is the production of Raburn, hitting just .176 with a 433 OPS. He did a great job of hitting southpaws last season, one of the reasons for the team’s success vs. lefties. He batted .308 and slugged over .600 in 2013.
This year, Raburn’s just 7 for 40 against those pitchers and has just two extra base hits on the season. It’s reminiscent of his horrible 2012 season, which led to his release by the Tigers.

He’s pretty much only been used against left-handers this season, whereas last year, he got more at-bats against righties. Maybe he just needs some more playing time to get going.

Despite all that has gone wrong with the offense, including the injury to all-star Jason Kipnis, it really is remarkable the Indians aren’t buried in terms of contention.

Still, the bats have to pick up over the long haul or the burden on the starting pitching and bullpen will be too much for the staff to handle over the last 75% of the season.

MW

Tribe Needs Five Players to Come Through in 2014

The Cleveland Indians will open their season less than a week from today and they are pretty much the same team that lost the wild card game against Tampa, 4-0.

The question is will that be enough again this season?

A lot probably depends on the other teams in the Central Division.

The Tigers seems to not be as strong as they were last season, losing Prince Fielder, Jhonny Peralta, and Doug Fister, plus they have suffered a rash of injuries in spring training.

However, they still have Justin Verlander, Max Sherzer, and Anibal Sanchez at the top of their rotation, perhaps the best 1-2-3 combination in the major leagues.

The Royals stayed in the race until the middle of September and their young core of talent is starting to mature. They’ve also added 2B Omar Infante, leadoff hitter Nori Aoki from Milwaukee, and starting pitcher Jason Vargas.

If ever Kansas City is going to make the leap into the playoffs, this looks to be the season.

While the Royals were adding to the roster, the Indians lost two starting pitchers from last year’s squad, Ubaldo Jimenez and Scott Kazmir, who the Tribe is trying to replace from within.

We don’t think the Indians will win 92 games again this season, but we also see them in contention because we don’t believe any team in the Central will win more than 90 games.

It will be a three team race with the White Sox hanging around the fringe, with the Tigers, Indians, and Royals all winning between 84 and 88 games.

For the Tribe, their success depends on better seasons from their two big free agent signings a year ago, Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn, and a free agent to be at the end of this season in Asdrubal Cabrera.

All three had down years in ’13, and an adjustment to their career averages would certainly help the offense that finished 4th in the league in runs scored. They will need the extra production because it is doubtful that Ryan Raburn will duplicate what he did last year.

Last year, the Indians jumped into contention because of their pitching which finished the year 7th in team ERA as new pitching coach Mickey Calloway performed magic with his young starters and also salvaged Jimenez’ career.

The front office is asking Calloway to do it again, putting more pressure on him to duplicate the success Corey Kluber had last season, and to bring along fireballing phenom Danny Salazar, and making him a successful starter for an entire season.

Because if the Tribe wants to get back to the post-season this fall, the starting pitching needs to be better than it was last summer. And that means Kluber and Salazar have to perform at a high level.

Justin Masterson will give Terry Francona 200 innings as usual. Carlos Carrasco, if he indeed starts the year in the rotation, is the wild card, capable of winning 10 or more games, but he could also be in the bullpen by May.

The Indians need Kluber and Salazar to be consistent; giving the ballclub quality starts throughout the season. If they can, Cleveland will contend.

If they can’t the organization will be scrambling for replacements. Josh Tomlin looks like the 2011 version of himself, but is Trevor Bauer ready to take a regular turn in the rotation?

They would be the next pitchers up.

The key to whether or not this will be a fun summer at Progressive Field depends the how the Tribe’s young starters will perform. In what should be a competitive division, that could make all the difference.

KM