1. While I may be overdramatizing this, the Cavs win yesterday was huge for the Cleveland sports scene. Why? Well, last fall the Indians fell on their faces in the first round of the playoff in a series they were heavily favored in. It was disappointing. Then we had the Browns.....and then the Browns draft. I am not saying the Cavs will go beyond this round (who knows?) but the fact that they made it TO the second round is a good thing and I think it helps shake off the failures last year by the other Cleveland sports teams and makes the Indians' failure last year seem more like an aberration and less like a trend. Maybe you disagree but this is my thought.
2. Baseball is such a hard game to predict. Adam Plutko looked like more than a AAAA player after last year. A guy who was good in the low minors but hit his ceiling with only a ML cup of coffee. Now it looks like he will be getting a Thursday start against Toronto. Shades of Ryan Merritt a couple of years ago against Toronto in the playoffs or, digging back to older history, Tom Mastny in the 2007 playoffs pitching an unlikely 10th inning goose egg against the heart of the Red Sox or While both those guys appear to have hit their ceiling in their career, we will see about Plutko. I hope he comes on strong. What a plus that would be for our starting pitching depth.
At the same time what is there to say about Tomlin and Kipnis? Fortunately we have the luxury of playing in a weak division so we can keep going with these guys who are stinking it up. I just hope they can return to good results soon as they appear, at least to me, to be costing us a lot of games so far.
3. Look at the Akron rotation. Except for Sean Brady who is posting a pedestrian borderline prospect season so far, the rest of the guys look great. Akron's pitching does, indeed, look special so far with as many as 8 or 9 of the guys having some chance to pitch in the majors and absolutely NO minor league journeyman players. These guys are all homegrown.
4. I predict that we will have the BEST crop of kids, both talent and statistically, coming out of our rookie ball (NY-Penn, AZL and DSL) that we have had in quite a few years. I can see maybe 10-12 of our top 30 prospects next year coming from these leagues. The statistics may, in fact, be eye-popping for some of these players, something that we don't see a lot of in our DSL affiliate, specifically.
5. To reiterate what I said at the beginning of the year we are short one right-handed hitting outfielder and one steady setup man (to replace Bryan Shaw). Imagine where we would be without Brantley coming back as strong as he has!
6. The rubber will hit the road soon for Yonder Alonso. What do I mean by that? Last year he added power. That power appears to be remaining this year but will the league make it so tough on him that he turns all Russell Branyan on us? Don't think it is that out of the question. As the weather warms up we will have the answer to that....probably by the middle of July at the latest but maybe sooner.
7. Finally, and this is an observation made on an incredibly small sample size, it is a little disheartening to watch the Indians, in games they fall behind early, just fold appear to fold up the tents after about the 6th inning. In the last two games of the Seattle series they were outscored 6-0 in the last two innings. I would like to see a little more fight, similar to the way the Mariners fought back on Friday night against Kluber/Allen. Frankly, I think this is part of Tito's the season is a marathon approach. He says to the media how important winning games is but if you pull the plug mentally in the middle of a game you fall way behind on, how will you EVER learn how to come back when you need to (say, in the playoffs). I truly believe this is an environment or a way of thinking that is creeping into the clubhouse and I would like to see it stopped. Again, just my opinion but teams who are successful have to learn to scrap back in games like this instead of being outscored by an opposition who knows they already have the game won and likely have taken their foot off the accelerator.
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