Going through this, here's something that I've kind of found really funny, especially with the Browns first game on Thursday night and the preseason starting for football.
When this Indians season started, there was little care, perhaps even some disdain towards the team. Yeah they were active in the offseason and whatever, but there were a lot of fans dis-interested and still in that "prove it to me first" mentality. But now with the recent surge, a lot have come back and even the ones who were still around were getting excited. Heck, I'm excited, how could you not be the way the team has been playing?
But, a large portion of people getting excited were jumping from "well whatever, another year another losing season for the Tribe" to playoffs, to World Series. Maybe not saying World Series, but reading comments after his series ended in a total failure, there are people who were saying "The Indians can't hang with the big boys" as if they were expected to all a long.
This team was not very good last year. They were very flawed. They had talent and drive that showed at times, but largely a team that needed fixed in many areas. They got fixed in many areas, but they're still very much a work in progress. They went from a non-contender to a hopeful contender and are still there.
They need more pieces to compete with a team like Detroit, who just has more talent right now. It isn't unreasonable to expect competitiveness, which they were in each of these games except the last one, but it is a little unreasonable to expect a four game sweep and utter domination of the rest of the schedule en route to the World Series.
Which I think a lot of fans were hanging their hats on, and that's a shame, because it feels as if this sweep has almost diminished what is happening in Cleveland with this baseball team.
This is not about wins and losses. People keep saying this is a big series and I think people get lost in their response. Obviously, Francona and the players are going to say "every game is a big series" and "there's more games after to play as well" as your typical cliche responses.
The non-waiver trade deadline has come and gone and Indians General Manager Chris Antonetti was only able to make one minor move, acquiring Marc Rzepczynski from the St. Louis Cardinals. The Indians had some holes, but the exorbitant asking prices at the trade deadline were prohibitive, so Antonetti took a gamble on a left handed reliever nicknamed “Scrabble”. For what it’s worth, the tiles required to make up his name, Rzepczynski, combine to be worth 40 points. Of course, there is only one Z tile in Scrabble, but it would seem obvious why the nickname fits. In any event, like most of Chris Antonetti’s recent deals, this one is not short-sighted, nor is it costly. Because of Antonetti’s recent track record with deals of this type, we should give him the benefit of the doubt.
Several things can happen at this point. The Indians can sweep the Detroit Tigers and take over first place in the AL Central division. That is highly unlikely. The Tigers can sweep the Indians and put the Indians seven games out. That too would seem unlikely the way the Indians are playing. Each team has to win a game in this series.
Tris Speaker loved him. Along with Detroit’s Ty Cobb, the Red Sox center fielder had become one of the biggest stars in baseball in the years immediately preceding the Babe Ruth era.