It's time to face the truth...and make some changes...now!

 I am getting tired of reading (and writing) about:

• How Dolan is cheap
• How the Indians trade away their ML hitters 
• How they don't bring in free agents who can hit

While all of those things may be true, it isn't the root of the Indians' hitting problems.  Not even close.

The root of the Indians' hitting problems is the lack of quality hitting coaches at the major league level.

Frankly, in my opinion, these guys suck and should be replaced.  

Let's look at our young hitters:

• Chang: .179 ML average before this year,  .188 this year
• Bauers: .201 in TB, .226 in Cleveland before this year: .180 this spring and ;129 this year
• Daniel Johnson: 1-12 last year, didn't get out of ST this year
• Bradley Zimmer: .241, .226, .162 and didn't make it out of ST this year.   Every spring he seems to have a new batting stance.
• Bobby Bradley: .178 last year and no improvement this year
• Josh Naylor: He has been here about a year and his power has totally disappeared as has his plate discipline.  

Plus now they have Nolan Jones under their control, and his prospect status keeps declining compared to prospects in other systems.  Plus he still can't hit lefties.

Finally, look at all our major league hitters.  None of the younger guys are making improvements or are even able to maintain their production from past years with other organizations.  

Who is the one hitter in the minors everyone is talking about: Owen Miller, who was trained by the Padres and who we haven't had a chance to mess up yet.

Compare that to Aaron Civale.   He worked with our ASSISTANT pitching coach, Ruben Niebla over the winter and remade his whole delivery.  Plus Brian Shaw has remade his whole delivery.   Obviously a lot of this was done before he came back to the Indians but the Indians have helped him maintain his recent success.  Plus, look at the stats for Karinchak, Maton, Wittgren (until this year), the work they are doing with the starting pitchers and the work with the minor league pitchers, especially the relievers and the emergence of Clase.

How many of those pitchers are not making any progress?  Close to zero.

How many are regressing?  Again, close to zero.

It is simply not possible that EVERY hitting prospect we have sucks and every young major league hitter we have is incapble of improving while almost every pitching prospect is improving and ML pitchers are, mostly, getting better, some at a startling rate.

While it may not be obvious to anyone else it is really obvious to me.    While the ownership has not helped us by not spending enough on hitting and the FO has hurt the hitting by showing an incapability to bring in good hitters while trading good pitching, the true reason that this team is losing is because the hitting coaches can't turn decent major league prospects into even mediocre ML hitters and can't help our experienced hitters avoid long slumps.

You can't fire all the players so you fire the coach or manager responsible for their failure.   Fire our hitting coaches and bring in someone good.

And, DFA Bauers and bring up Bradley.   I don't care that he is not hitting well at the alternate site.   That shouldn't matter.   Just like it didn't matter that he outhit Bauers in ST.    It is time for a change and it is time to give Bradley the bulk of the at bats for the rest of the season to see what we have.