Location: Cleveland, Ohio | Ballpark: Progressive Field (43,545) | Spring Training: Goodyear, Ariz. (inagural season)
Owner: Lawrence Dolan | GM: Mark Shapiro | Manager: Manny Acta | World Championships: 2
Season in seven words: "You can only trade so many Cys." ... Hero: Shin-Soo Choo finally figured out how to hit lefties a little bit. Watch out, league ... Loserhead: GM Mark Shapiro, as much as all of us writer types love the guy. How hard can it be to assemble a marginal relief corps? Even the Nationals managed to accomplish this in the season's second half ... Key need: Just a little patience. Yeah, yeah ... Prognosis: How many times must a team rebuild before they admit they might be going about their business ineffectively? That's not a Blowin' in the Wind-type rhetorical query. I'm genuinely curious.
09/29/2009
27
28
Outside of alleging false imprisonment or hiring a skywriter to publicly trumpet their displeasure, there's not much more the Indians players can do to try and get Eric Wedge fired ... Mark Shapiro won't come out of this unscarred either, no matter how much most Indian fans believe (as I do) that he's a bright guy who will have the Indians back in contention before too long. Two consecutive years of salary-dump trades weigh on the soul.
09/22/2009
28
23
Yes, Matt "The Door" LaPorta has feral, earthquaking power. Thing is, the guy never walks; he's drawn eight free passes in 161 plate appearances. Given his inability to play passable defense anywhere on the diamond, this could eventually doom him to pinch-hitting purgatory. ... If Fausto Carmona were a colt, he'd be taken behind the barn and euthanized. If he were a truck, he'd be taken behind the barn and euthanized. See where I'm going with this? Whoever's in charge of minding the guy's pitching mechanics has a wonderful sense of humor.
09/15/2009
23
22
Not that anybody's counting, but Asdrubal Cabrera has notched 48 extra-base hits this season, compared to David Wright's 46 and Derek Jeter's 45. Wait -- I guess that means somebody is counting. Anyway.
09/08/2009
22
19
The Indians organization can't be pleased that they'll be paying Kerry Wood $10 million next season to set up for a budget closer. ... That budget closer, of course, will be Chris Perez, who has strung together a neat 21-inning scoreless streak. He's walked only five guys during it, thereby addressing the one monstrous flaw in his game. ... I'm glad the Indians have shut down Grady Sizemore for the season and hustled him into elbow surgery. That'll give us media folk extra time to fine-tune our Grady-Grady-how-we-love-thee-Grady psalms and epistles prior to spring training.
09/01/2009
19
17
And now Jason Knapp, one of the key pieces obtained in the Cliff Lee sell-off, is getting an MRI on his sore shoulder. When it rains, it pours. ... Literally, in some cases. The most interesting part of the Indians' week was the flooded dugout on Saturday night, which added Jacques Cousteau/Clive Cussler intrigue to a dour Indians-Orioles matchup. Here's hoping nobody attempted to skin and filet the increasingly tuna-shaped Travis Hafner.
08/25/2009
17
20
The whole "this is a smart organization suffering from a hard-luck streak" argument went down the drain when the team resisted calling up Matt "The Door" LaPorta, instead allotting his at-bats to placeholders like Trevor Crowe and Chris Gimenez. If I'm an Indians fan -– and thankfully, I have no such masochistic streak –- I've long stopped caring about the caliber of prospects the team has received in recent dump deals and am calling for some heads.
08/18/2009
20
20
Just when we all stopped caring, the Indians have put together a 16-12 record since the All-Star break. Credit the bullpen, which has approached basic competence for the first time in 32 months. ... Justin Masterson's twitchy, slingy delivery might give pitching coaches nightmares, but it is didactic for anyone who aspires to do the Hokey-Pokey. That's what it's all about.
08/11/2009
20
22
Forget their better-than-okay record since unloading Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez, and forget the gaggle of top prospects they've accumulated. This quote, from team president Paul Dolan, is Cleveland baseball in a depressing nutshell: "If every four or five years we get a shot at making it to the World Series, which we did in 2007, and maybe contend in another one of those years, that's about as good as it gets for a team in our market." If that's the case, well, then why bother?
08/04/2009
22
21
Reloading is boring. As well as the Indians have done with their restocking-the-pantry deals of the last two summers, I can't imagine fans will line up to witness the awkwardness-and-acne adolescence of the 2009 and 2010 clubs ... Much more interesting to me is the Andy "A-Mart" Marte vs. Matt "The Door" LaPorta battle for playing time. The Lapsed Prospect vs. The New Chosen One! Get Vince McMahon Jr. on the case, pronto.
Preseason Power Rankings
Date
Ranking
Previous
02/16/2009
9
-
I know every baseball writer is supposed to love love love the Indians because they go about their business rationally and with deep, abiding respect for numbers, and I know we're supposed to be doing backflips about their chances in '09 because of their undermanned second-half surge last season. And yeah, I'm mostly drinking the Kool-Aid, owing to their placement in the weak AL Central. I just can't get too enthused about a team with platoon candidates at both outfield corners (insert could've-used-Abreu-or-Dunn blurb here) and a rotation that stacks question marks Fausto Carmona, Carl Pavano, Anthony Reyes and Jeremy Sowers behind primo drop-off candidate Cliff Lee.
