The on the field performance was more than enough to raise this fan's blood to a boil. How's about we start with Jairo Asencio? It's DFA time for sure. With the Clippers bullpen performing at such a high level (Chris Ray and Frank Herrmann come to mind as big league options), it's certainly time to cut our losses with a player who is clearly the Matt LaPorta of middle relief. Speaking of LaPorta, he's not up yet and, with the rash of injuries, that is quite telling.
Prior to Shelley Duncan's 9th inning bomb (his 1st in 24 games) the Tribe received exactly 0 hits from the 4 through 9 spots. Hmm, I wonder why? Carlos Santana, swinging from his shoe tops once again, is mired in a 3-for-25 (.120) slump since his 11th inning walkoff on the 17th. Jose Lopez had put together a 10 game hitting streak (.353), yet responded to a game in the 5 hole with a solid 0-for-4. 6-7-8-9 should have been marked as automatic outs. The high water mark for their batting averages is .216 and that's from Casey Kotchman! Johnny Damon's 1-for-4 raised his mark to .162. It's easy respect the guy's career and the good natured self deprecation that he's put forth, but it's much more likely that the guy is flat out done. How many balls does he have to muscle out to the warning track before we accept that he has no more gas in the tank?
And why was this mockery of a Major League line-up on the field last night? Well, unless we count Juan Diaz (which we won't), the Indians will play with just 2 reserves on the South Side. Travis Hafner did not travel with the team as he is trying to work through both inflammation of his right meniscus & the sore shin that he fouled a ball off of Wednesday. One might be concerned that Pronk will land on the disabled list, but, apparently, the Tribe doesn't use the DL foor position players, else it certainly would been used for Jack Hannahan, who has missed 12 (!) days with a lower back strain. Shin Soo Choo missed a week earlier in the season, then followed that up with a 5-for-27 (.185) performance in his next 8 games. Maybe the team could have benefited from a healthy body in his absence. Should we worry that Asdrubal Cabrera, pulled from Friday's game with tight left hamstring will get DL'ed? Hell, no, but we might want to keep an eye out for Derek Lowe playing left field in between starts.
If only the Indians could use the 7-day concussion disabled list for all of their injuries. Carlos Santana, removed from the 8th inning of yesterday's game, became the first Indian to utilize the new offering from MLB. Luke Carlin's contract was purchased from AAA Columbus to fill the spot and Raffy Perez was transferred to the 60-day DL to open up the roster spot.
That brings up the debacle this afternoon. After the 2-for-23 effort on Friday, the 4 through 9 spots somehow managed to do even worse on Saturday. While Jason Kipnis homered twice and Michael Brantley drove in 3 with a double. A stretch that featured Lopez in the cleanup position, Kotchman batting 5th, 3 guys batting under .200 and Cap'n Jack for the first time in a fortnight recorded a 2-for-22 line with no saving grace long ball. Maybe we should discuss why Juan Diaz is up rather than Jason Donald. While JD suffered through an abysmal stretch during his Major League time earlier this season, he is, at least, a bona fide big leaguer. Diaz, on the other hand, is, quite simply, not. The rationale communicated from the brass is that Diaz will only be up for the White Sox series and the organization didn't want to arrest Donald's development by interrupting his everyday playing time. What? And... What?! Jason is a 27 year old with 143 games of MLB experience. If he still needs time to grow into the backup infielder that he has always projected as, they should probably just take him out to the back field and shoot him. Even more so, how do you rationalize recalling someone with such potential to embarrass the team? It's actually easy, just say something like "Oh, he'll only play in an emergency situation." Well, guess what, here's your freakin' emergency. Not only has the man failed to put a ball in play so far, he looked like a goon at shortstop in committing two run scoring errors in the 7th (to hell with the official scorer, you can't give Kotchman an error when he's on his stomach). I find myself wistful for the days of Luis Valbuena.Given the momentum established by the sweep of the Tigers and the season high 8 games over .500, the first two days in Chicago have been just about as bad as they could get. Both games were obviously losses, but it was the manner with which the club was dominated that I find particularly troubling. Lowe was tattooed, annihilated today and, frankly, I'm shocked that woManny left him out there as long as he did. What am I saying? There is no level of idiocy from the skipper that is anything less than expected anymore. Everyone keep patting his back for sliding Choo into the 1 hole, but remember that it was mismanagement that gave away these two games to a horrible ChiSox squad that is now just a game and a half back. I just can't get over how bad our boys have looked.
A new winning streak starts tomorrow.
Roll Tribe.
Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment