Written by Brian McPeek

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Yawn. Anyone else getting as tired and bored as I am of these big Central Division battles for first place between the Indians and Royals? I mean, how many times are we going to have to watch these two teams fight it out for the division lead as they will this week in Kansas City?

You might want to get used to it folks. The Royals are stockpiling young talent in their minor league system and the Indians approach of procuring young, powerful arms is starting to take hold as well. Detroit and Chicago will still likley be heard from this season and Minnesota is always lurking, but what once was a desolate division and an afterthought in terms of baseball’s best is now a force to be reckoned with and a division that’s likely to come down to the wire this season and for years to come.

 

Who Are These ^&%$&*^ Guys?

I spent the better part of the weekend at the 300-level of Progressive Field. Friday night was in the press box (which really should affectionately be known as ‘The Tomb’) and Saturday in the Social Suite with Tribe writers Paul Cousineau, Adam Burke and Al Ciamiachella.

On Friday a walk-up crowd of 5,500+ watched the Indians ball-bat Zach Britton and on Saturday it was Jeremy Guthrie’s turn to watch his sub-1.00 ERA balloon after the Indians’ bats were finished with him. The Indians offense put up 8 runs each game and the Tribe won another series with little drama. What’s becoming their calling card however is their own pitching dominance.

Justin Masterson continued his early season brilliance Friday night. He gave up a run in 7 innings and pushed his record to 3-0 on the season. Think that’s a fluke? Well, if you do I’d challenge to go back to August and September of last season before Masterson was moved to the bullpen to limit his innings. His last eight starts should dispel any notion that these last three starts are a fluke. Something clearly started to click late last season for the 6’6”, 250lber acquired in the Victor Martinez trade with Boston.

What it looks like to me is that Masterson has learned to replicate his delivery which allows him to stay down in the zone consistently. And his stuff is nasty when it’s down in the zone as nothing he throws stays straight. He’s still far better statistically against right-handed hitters but his numbers against lefties are much better than they were a year or ago or even historically in terms of his brief career. Left-handers aren't walking against Masterson (a 9-1 K/BB ration against LH) and they’re not driving the ball against him either (slugging .341 with an OPS of .630).

Don’t discount for a second the confidence-factor either. When you’re as big and powerful as Masterson and your stuff is starting to carry the day your belief that you can go out there and make pitches has to grow with every outing. Especially when the end results match those beliefs.

On the way home from the park Friday night I thought WTAM’s Bob Frantz had a great question for fans to chew on: given Masterson’s last eight outings and Nick Hagadone’s success in the minors, is your hatred and anger over the Victor Martinez trade subsiding and/or giving way to appreciation for the deal?  There is some buzz that Hagadone, a hard-throwing lefty who touches 98mph, will be here in Cleveland before the season is over.

So is the Victor deal more palatable given the power arms the Indians acquired and the fact that Victor is now in Detroit and not even with the Saaawx?

On Saturday it was another 26 yr-old in Josh Tomlin who stifled the Orioles. Tomlin wasn't masterful by any means but he battled hard for 6 innings and gave up just two runs. The fact he didn't have his best stuff and labored hard while surrendering those two runs is a good sign though. Tomlin saw his ERA ‘rise’ to 2.75 on the season but he dramatized again the importance of grinding through six innings and turning the game over to an improved (okay, I’ll say it, dominating thus far) bullpen and getting out of the way.

With Tony Sipp, Rafael Perez and Chris Perez having not yielded a run yet on the season the Indians have virtually shortened their games to six or seven inning games and they haven’t been beaten when taking a lead into the 8^th inning. Again, that kind of numerical dominance isn’t sustainable but the overriding effectiveness of the 2011 pen is.

The bottom line is it’s fun to be at the ball park again (much more fun in the Social Suite than in the press box, by the way). Friday night’s crowd was lively and into the ballgame. It was a party atmosphere despite the cold temperatures and the winds that gusted in at 30+mph all night. Saturday’s crowd was only 10,000 but steady rains all day before the game killed any chance of a big walk-up crowd showing up.

If the Indians keep winning the people will come back. When they do show up they’ll see a team that’s fun to watch play right now and that might be growing up right in front of them.

And if you get the opportunity to hit the Social Suite (and you can apply on line) take that opportunity. There's no food or drink included but it's a great view and a great way to take in a game. The Indians are also all over the social media phenomenon and we were visited on multiple occasions by Rob Campbell and Curtis Danburg who checked in to make sure all was well. With the Indians playing like this all was definitely well and the Tribe's hospitality was appreciated.

Better Yet…

It’s worth noting that this hot start by the Tribe is coming without them getting much in the way of production from key players in the lineup. Carlos Santana has struggled for a week, Grady Sizemore hadn't played until Sunday, Matt LaPorta had been inconsistent and Shin-Soo Choo entered the weekend hitting at about a .200 clip. Hell, after Friday night Asdrubal Cabrera led the club in HRs and led the major leagues in RBI. He and Michael Brantley have really paced the Indians during the first couple weeks.

The point is the big boys in the lineup (with the exception of Travis Hafner who, knock on wood, looks healthy for the first time in years) haven’t contributed much and the Indians are still scoring runs and getting leads.

Calculated Risk

I’m not really sure there’s much to the fact Sizemore was activated Sunday and plugged right back into the leadoff spot as well as back into CF. This a Gold Glove-winning player and an offensive dynamo when he’s healthy and his entire career has been spent in the upper third of the order. I don’t read much into the fact that Brantley sat Sunday while Sizemore got the start. It was more of a convenient way to give Brantley his weekly rest and reinserting Grady.

It all looked great on Sunday as Sizemore homered and doubled as the Indians swept the Orioles out of Cleveland following their 4-2 win.

Brantley clearly has a spot in the starting lineup on a regular basis. That spot will likely be in left field and somewhere in the bottom third of the order but that’s not an indictment of Brantley as much as it is a tip of the cap to Sizemore and his veteran status.

It makes the Indians a better team if Sizemore is healthy. It gives them more range in LF (although the arms in CF and LF will be woefully weak) and it gives them a nice PH option in Austin Kearns. It’s going to cost Travis Buck or Shelley Duncan a job with the Indians (most likely Buck who still has a minor league option to his name) but I think the organization and fans will survive that loss.

What concerns me is whether Sizemore ever fully regains the form that made him one of the most exciting players in baseball prior to 2009. Micro-fracture surgery is no joke and Sizemore’s return to prominence is anything but guaranteed. I think Brantley’s pedigree as the son of a former major league player and his maturity will allow him to deal just fine with the change in duties and if he’s required to move back to the leadoff spot and to CF he’ll make it successfully. Brantley is only 23 years old but he carries himself like a 10-year veteran.

I’m far more worried about Sizemore than I am about Brantley.

Observations

__   You guys have it good if you’re following The Cleveland Fan/STO writers in terms of your Indians coverage. I understand how it happens but for many of the guys in the writing corps and who cover the Tribe as their job it’s exactly that: a job. I mean these guys grind it out every day. They make their own travel arrangements, they show up every day to get their quotes and they do so with the knowledge that they’re in many ways dinosaurs who are toiling in a dying business or at least one that’s radically evolving.

I watched guys on Friday night filling out their fantasy lineups, checking email and doing almost everything other than really digging into the ballgame. I actually heard a conversation that revolved around  the amount of a Giant Eagle discount that was available to one scribe’s family and whether it was advisable to use it now or save it. They looked up when a pitching change occurred and they went back to grinding out their notes and a column after that. You should know that a lot of what you read from many of them is nothing more than them copying and pasting notes and stats the Indians provide them, almost verbatim.

There are guys that do their due diligence. A guy like Dennis Manoloff is a professional who puts in the time and makes the effort. There are many of those guys too. Jordan Bastian and Anthony Castrovince put in the time and make the effort to produce quality stuff. I have a great deal of respect for those guys.

But damn. There are some people up there who look like they’d rather be anywhere else doing anything else. And maybe they would.

But guys like Adam Burke, Nino Colla and Paul Cousineau do this for you because it’s a passion. It shows in their work and you should understand the difference going forward. Doing it because you want to instead of because you have to is clear when you read it.

Anyway, some actual baseball-related observations:

• Maybe the light ultimately goes on and stays on for Matt LaPorta but he still spooks me. You talk about a guy who’s all upper body when he swings, well, LaPorta is that guy. I don’t know if the hip injury he suffered last year is the reason but he doesn’t use the lower half at all when he swings the bat. I think that makes him susceptible to the soft stuff on the outer half of the plate. He’s going to have to show me he can adjust to and handle that pitch before I’m convinced he’s a value in the lineup. More accurately, he's going to have to show opposing pitchers that he can handle that pitch and drive some the other way.

• Lou Marson looks like a different hitter this season. I was a bit puzzled when Marson made the club out of spring training thinking it’d be great if went to Columbus and got regular ABs. But Friday night he a couple balls very hard including a big single in the Indians half of the 3^rd inning that signaled the beginning of the end for young Zach Britton. I was merciless on Marson last year but as a backup catcher he’s fine. If he’s going to contribute occasionally with the bat that’s even better.

•  The bloom might be wearing off on the Jack Hannahan offensive rose but damn, that dude can pick it at 3b.

•  When I saw LaPorta, Marson and Adam Everett as the 7-9 guys in the lineup Friday night I had flashbacks to the 80’s and some really bad Indians lineups. But those guys were instrumental in that win and were a combined 5-11 with five runs scored and an RBI.

• Holy Hafner- It was literally 20 seconds after I tweeted that it would take a driver and 6-iron to hit a ball out to right field Friday night that Hafner went with the more traditional choice of weapon in a wooden bat and hit a ball 400 feet right into the teeth of a 30-mph wind and out of the park. Good call by me. I showed I was no fluke on Saturday when I announced that Josh Tomlin would be hard pressed to find an easier out than O’s backup catcher Jake Fox. Fox looked stunningly pathetic and defensive in an at-bat where he fell behind 0-2 immediately. I made it known that not knocking the bat out of Fox’s hand might be more difficult than getting him out. That’s when he hit a ball half way up the bleachers in LCF off Tomlin.

I’m that good.

The Long Civic Nightmare is…Over?

The Cavaliers season mercifully ended this past week but it looks like the pain of being a Cavalier fan may extend into July.

The NBA draft is in late June and you have to wonder what kind of talent the Cavaliers are likely able to add in a draft thin on difference makers.

Many experts are of the opinion that the Cavs are high on UConn guard Kemba Walker. Walker led UConn to a national title but excuse me if his pro prospects leave me feeling a bit ill and bring to mind Seton Hall guard John Morton. Morton parlayed a deep NCAA tournament run into an early round selection by the Cavs. Morton was underwhelming to say the least as an NBA player.

I think Walker can have a decent career as a scorer off the bench and in the right system but his defense is not his strong suit and his height (MAYBE 6’0”) will make it difficult for him to play the two-guard in the NBA. I only mention that because his ball-handling skills will make it tough for him to play the point.

Hello DaJuan Wagner?

 

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