FIRE Shelton!

You are of course correct. If you can remember back for the last coupla years we – like every other team – have gone through similar offensive black-outs before. What’s struck me most about the Shapiro-era Indians is their resiliency. Lose a starter of two to injury? Just reach down into the minors for a dominate right hander like Fausto Carmona. Your anointed second baseman stinking it up? Just call up Buffalo and have ‘em send the kid with the funny name that you swindled Bavasi outta.

This is kinda like havin the flu. No fun what so ever, but just ride it out – this too shall pass.

Right now, I see a triangle of trust—Raffie L, Raffie R and Masa. They need at least one more, and have to have other guys they at least are willing to use occasionally in non-mop up situations.

What’s the scoop on Rich Bauer, at AAA—the PD drew my attention this morning to the fact that he’d actually been pitching pretty well. I looked over his career numbers and he looks like he was a mediocre middle relief guy for the Orioles for a number of years, then had a pretty good year for Texas in 06, then the minors last year (horrible in the Int’l League, good in the PCL). Is he someone they’re likely to try if they give up on one of their end of the bullpen bench guys? They’d have to make a spot on the roster for him, of course.

I know we hate the offense right now.

Yeah, but a lot of us hated it last October, too. And what have they done in the meantime? When you’re as weak on the corners as we are, I don’t think you just “ride it out.” We’re closing in on the 40-game evaluation point that the FO is always talking about. I hope they do something this time, even if it means dipping into our starting pitching depth (which is awesome, I’ll grant you).

As for Bauer, he has good stuff, but he’s always walked too many guys. Still, maybe it would be worth bringing him up if it meant letting Jensen get “stretched out” in AAA. Let him start a couple of games, maybe. Sometimes that works.

Good write-up. I agree overall, but I’m leery about getting too excited about things like K rates. Lee’s abnormally high rate doesn’t necessarily make up for Carmona’s low one. It’s just a problem of averages, i.e. if we have two guys with astronomical K rates and three with abysmal ones, our average will still be good, but we’re still more likely to lose 3 out of 5 days. Similarly, there’s no reason to be too concerned about the increase in BB rates as it’s mostly the doing of one outlier (Carmona) that’s brining up the average.

Our record sucks. We’ve been inconsistent. I’m a little sick of watching Hafner’s at-bats right now. However, when you think about it, this month is basically the same as we played in July last year—we were 12-14 that month, our bats were stinking it up, and it was frustrating but we were able to take it in the context of the season as a whole. When you have a month like that in April, it’s a little easier to flip out about it because there’s no greater context in which to take it. But I don’t really think this is a .450 team, the same way I don’t really think Detroit is a .450 team, or Florida is a .580 team.

Who knows what it’ll take, but I think most of these guys have it in them to break out & go on a tear & we can look back at this month & remember how we were all predicting the demise of the Indians & laugh.

(end irrational optimism)

Recommended.

i said something to this effect last year during the offensive swoon, but this is huge for me – that pitching be the solid piece. if we were scrambling to find servicable starters or one injury away from a melt-down in the rotation and we were scoring runs in droves right now, i’d be a lot more worried. i feel like the offense is easier to turn around than pitching – particularly starting pitching. so, while it would be great to have all cylanders firing. i prefer the starters be okay. then the bullpen. then the offense. so if we’re stuck with something sucking, i just assume it be the offense. becasue despite how bad they suck, we still are in games. we could easily have won the last three. if our starters suck and we run into a good starting pitcher games can get out of reach fast.

Every season is a unique snowflake. Kind of silly to compare one to another.

But yes, if this offense can heat up a bit, we can easily reel off a 19 win month like we did in May of last year. That’s what good pitching 1-5 can give you.

The key is going to be Dellucci/Carroll producing in the 2 hole and one of our bottom feeders (Gootz, Blake, Shoppach) to get hot (hitting +.300 over a period of time).

Shallow analysis warning:

I went by ESPN and looked at the ML top-50 in slugging. Not a single Tribesman. Pat Burrell is near the top of the list. Come on people, the freedom train is leaving the station.

Meanwhile, they’ve won 7 of 10, including starts by starters #6 and #7. We’re gonna be OK.