There is a story, maybe qualifying as an urban legend, that says that, back in the day, Indiana's not so good (at the time) football team came into Ohio Stadium to play the Buckeyes. Indiana proceeded to take the first drive down the field for a touchdown, giving them a 7-0 lead. The legend goes that, during the TV timeout, Indiana took a team picture with the scoreboard in the backdrop showing the score. I think they lost like 49-7 but, for that instant, the scoreboard showed they were ahead.
Now, I don't know if that is a true story but one school of thought says that we should all take our cameras right now and take a picture of the AL Central standings. Why? Because the Indians are in first place AND they are beginning a stretch against 18 teams that are either in first place right now or are teams that the prognosticators say have a great chance of making the playoffs. The next stretch against the White Sox, Reds, Twins and Yankees will give us a better, albeit not complete, picture of where the Indians will be this season.
But, for right now, we are in first place after the Twins and White Sox blew their games today.
But so much for scoreboard watching. Everyone can put away their camera phones now, not to be taking pictures of the AL Central standings again until at least May 3rd.
So what about this weekend and the state of the Indians? Here are my thoughts:
1. The starting pitching looks rock solid. Although Logan Allen scuffles he has good results. We will find out more about Triston McKenzie tomorrow against the White Sox but he can be electric if he just controls that electric fastball.
2. The bullpen looks good enough. I don't see one guy I can say is a weak link right now. Trevor Stephan scuffled yesterday in the 9th but, remember, he is the 26th player on the team and will be used to do mopup innings so his growing pains should not be THAT problematic. Everyone makes it interesting, including our 3 backend guys. But we appear to be in bend-but-not-break mode.
3. The lineup...ah, the lineup. There is a likelihood that this team will be among the league leaders (in a bad way) of team LOB this year. But they are showing signs that they will hit some with runners in scoring position AND produce some power, enough to score sufficient runs to give the pitchers enough to work with.
The lineup with Rosario in CF and Luplow in RF and Change at 1B against LHP looks solid. That lineup does not contain Bauers, Gamel or Hedges. That lineup scored 11 runs on Saturday. The lineup on Sunday included Jake Bauers (but not Ben Gamel) but the Gamel-Bauer duo is still 1-2021 (not ABs, the year, at least for right now) but the players not named Bauer and Hedges hit the ball well and in the clutch, enough to give us a 5-2 win without the need for a HR. That doesn't even count about 6 balls they hit right on the nose but right at infielders and outfielders, including one inning where they hit 3 line drives to Detroit's outfielders.
The lineup looks solid enough to win.
But, being a tinkering kind of guy, here are some thoughts:
1. Bring Bradley up now and send down Naylor. Put Luplow in RF all the time and make Bauers a backup OFer. I would like to see us add Bradley's bat to the lineup, Naylor can come back up once we make a decision about Bauers and Bradley gets to start at 1B, adding some power and not really doing much negatively. Naylor might also come back up if we tire of Gamel. Bottom line is that it should be Bradley time and this stretch would be a good time to see what he has. If he struggles, we send him back down and run the Bauers experiment to completion.
2. Let's use the bullpen more. Yeah, it would be nice to see our starters go 7 innings every game but I am for them going 6 and allowing the bullpen to cover the last 3 innings. Also, I think we limit McKenzie to 4 inning starts (much like an opener) and piggyback Quantrill for 2-3 innings. If we need to eat innings in a blowout loss (or win) we give those innings to Stephan and don't waste any of our other relievers in those situations unless we absolutely have to. I think this helps save those starters for later in the year and the hitting seems to be coming around enough to allow for a LITTLE run scoring against the bullpen.
3. As far as the batting order, I like what Tito is doing (I like it because I proposed something like it). The alternating L-R thing looks good although I am surprised that Gimenez was hitting leadoff instead of second. All I can figure is that Tito sees Hernandez putting too much pressure on himself as a leadoff hitter and wants to give the kid a chance at the top of the order and let Hernandez relax. Seems to have worked the last couple of days so let's let me maestro wave his baton. If Bradley comes up he slides into Naylor's position in the order to offer a little protection to Reyes (more than Naylor has been providing, at least).
All-in-all, we should be 6-2 at this point but 5-3 is not terrible. Now, let's hope the next 18 games show that this team still has another gear it can shift into as it starts playing against the big boys.
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