Tribe fans had to laugh---or otherwise strongly react---upon reading this morning's Plain Dealer, in which beat writer Paul Hoynes, alluding to the manager, wrote "he wasn't ready to drop Hafner out of the No. 3 spot in the lineup."
Travis, the club's struggling DH, is second on the club with 12 runs scored and with 15 rbi, but no one has had more ABs either. More telling, perhaps, is that cleanup hitter Victor Martinez has but nine rbi with his club-high .366 BA and 26 hits---despite being 8th in ABs. He's also scored but five times.
Clearly, this is not a successful batting order, though its inefficiency should not be placed entirely upon Hafner, who has immediately preceded Victor virtually all season long. Without doubt, the table has not been properly set for Martinez this season.
A legitimate flaw with the on-hand personnel is no one appears to have a prototype 3-hole skill set: a high average, above-average speed, extra-base power, reliable consistency and a handsome OBP. Travis may be situated there by default; but that is not reason enough to persist with the ploy.
I wish they'd listened when I'd recommended they be the outfit to allow Josh Hamilton his comeback two winters ago. Now with Texas, Josh is, by the way, at .333 (third in AL) with a league-leading 27 rbi (Casey Blake leads the Tribe with 18) and 35 hits, second only to Dustin Pedroia's 36.
Were it to be that aberration events---such as Blake's six rbi evening in Minnesota or Franklin Gutierrez' two healthy nights of run production---could be sticken from the roll, team numbers from top-to-bottom would be even more atrocious. More revealing is SS Jhonny Peralta's having but ten rbi with his club-leading 5 home runs.
This has not been an opportunistic attack, contrasted, interestingly, by what the Yanks did in their one inning of offense last night. Hoynes quotes Wedge: "They definitely capitalized."
Meanwhile, the Tribe got four straight singles to start the previous half inning---that's a run home, the bases juiced with no one out and the meat of the order coming up---and came away with a single additional run, that on a soft sacrifice fly by Hafner.
Yuch!
Fairly recently, this site criticized the state's largest newspaper for seemingly avoiding the display of the team's statistics, as if it were conspiring to conceal the team's ineptitude beyond what is apparent during any viewing. Since that practice has since been conspicuously discontinued---though it is probably more coincidence than any indication that this writer has any influence whatsoever---it is nonetheless recommended those stats begin to reflect OBP and BA with RISP. Then it would become even more apparent that this is a troubled lineup further handicapped by an ill-conceived batting order.
Reigning MLB executive of the year, Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro, needs to get busy about addressing the talent deficiencies this organization has, as the component parts are simply not assembled here. Though such an insinuation is more easily said than done, it is not as if they manifested only this month, or that this assessment is one of recent vintage that possibly caught him by surprise.
This is the same bunch that nearly disappeared in the heat of last summer, with runs nearly as rare as August snowmen. The same bunch that wilted during the stretch of previous seasons, as well. And the identical essential core that failed to close on a 3-1 playoff lead in the ALCS last October. That they are boring fans to death again this year is neither accident nor coincidence.
Though it will reflexively be reminded it was good enough to get to all those places, the whole story may be that it overachieved to get there, at which times its enduring flaws simply caught up with them. Maybe, too, the players themselves clinched-up knowing they were surprising even themselves, quite aware they were doing what they were doing with little more than mirrors.
This team is at least one bat away from complete. And that addition would still ignore what it lacks where defensive range, team speed and situational hitting are concerned, particularly with its tendency to K at the least favorable times.
Maybe I'm over-reacting. Maybe I'm just frustrated. But tell me where I'm wrong. This assemblage has inherent flaws, with its batting order just symptomatic of them.
Here's a wild thought. Now that Frank Thomas is back in Oak to assume the everyday DH job he foolishly turned his back on after an outstanding 2006 there, Mike Sweeney is expendable. A notoriously positionless RH bat, Sweeney has always hit well in Cleveland and was nearly signed last winter by San Diego to---believe it or not---try LF. The A's are playing without Eric Chavez at 3b, as he is again out with back troubles, now on the 60-day DL. They are also employing the lumbering Jack Cust in LF, someone who could (minimally) use a RH platoon partner. Why not give them Jason Michaels and Andy Marte for the former KC slugger?
Sweeney won't solve all the team's offensive problems, but he is someone able to absorb some of the run-producing burden currently overwhelming too many Indians. He'd thicken the "meat" and complement the efforts of Victor and Travis and Ryan much moreso than are those being dispatced to acquire him. Let him see if his offense could become contagious. And let David Dellucci job-share with Gutierrez, outfield D be damned.
It's not a perfect solution, but what can you expect for J-Mike and Marte. (It's not as if we could reverse the deals involving Milton Bradley, Brandon Phillips and Kevin Kouzmanoff, after all. Imagine where we might be if we still had them.) Let's at least try something different having a decent shot at altering this defective formula, eh?
Wedgie may not be "ready," but this guy is.
Read the complete post at http://www.xanga.com/MALeonard/654638799/wedge-reportedly-not-ready.html