Early Weekend Six-Pack (2/24/2011)

Rumor has it some folks are going to play something like a baseball game somewhere in Arizona today...excellent.

1. Twitter has way more than 150 characters

Here is a sampling of some recent Tribe twitter accounts, something the team seems to embracing, particularly with the younger players:

• Jensen Lewis (JLEWFifty) "I do miss seeing former Cavalier Mark Price dominate the 3 pt contest. As a pure a shooter as there ever was!"
• Drew Pomeranz (DrewPomeranz) "Saw a little kid chasing a tumbleweed bigger than him today...pretty strange"
• Chris Perez (ChrisPerez54) "It's like a cast reunion on here....where's Jake, Cerrano?"
• Manny Acta (Mactriber_11) "Song of the day: Blame it on the rain... By Milly Vanilly. The rain almost ruined our workout, but things turned out fine."
• Lonnie Chisenhall (TheChizKid) "First scrimmage tomorrow..feels like I never missed a beat..Cleveland is young and talented!!"
• Cole Cook (C_M_Cook) "I love the 5 hour energy commercials where they try to make coffee seem like a burden"

2. Know your knee

For no particular reason (n.b. this picture exaggerates the size of the patellar surface of the femur, the shadowed groove the patella is resting above).

via www.athleticadvisor.com

3. Mitch Talbot - Goodyear man of mystery

Is there an important member of the 2011 Tribe less talked about than Mitch Talbot?  You may recall that Talbot, the return for Kelly Shoppach, was right behind Fausto as the rotation ERA leader all the way through July last season.  I'm going to have a longer piece coming up on Mitch next week, but for now I'll just note that he has one of the more diverse repertoires of pitches on the team, mixing in three different fastballs (2-seam, 4-seam, cutter) with a slider and change.  An example of what those pitches do, courtesy of his complete game victory April 16th last season (data from brooksbaseball.net):

Also, from Fangraphs, his H-break/V-break scatterplot for the season:

4. 40 man turnover

There was a considerable amount of turnover in the Tribe's 40-man roster last season between trades, acquisitions, and promotions.  In theory, the Indians roster may be fairly stable until late in the season this year.  There will be a few adjustments when camp breaks related to the backup catcher (possibly), bullpen (possibly) and reserve position spots (possibly)...but nothing too dramatic.  And then, looking at the current 40-man, you see pretty much all of the obvious injury replacements are already rostered.  Some combination of Tomlin, Gomez, Kluber, McAllister fill out the rotation needs.  Carrera and Weglarz are in place as centerfield and corner outfield replacements.  The bullpen should be served by Pestano, Todd and Judy.  Of course there will be promotions (Putnam and Stowell, Alex White, Phelps/Kipnis/Chisenhall)...but the Indians roster could be pretty stable until those guys are ready.

5. Santana and Sizemore

The recent LGT predictions thread produced some interesting data to analyze.  One comparison is how our readers, consciously or unconsciously, view Santana and Sizemore's relative significance for the team's offense and success.  Obviously they both have substantial importance, but the results tallied at the moment would suggest we as a group feel Sizemore is a little more significant for the offense, while Santana is a little more important in shaping our final win tally:

6. Games are soon...

Here's last year's spring opener game thread...enjoy