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Two teams will be meeting in Cleveland this weekend.
One team came into the season with high expectations. They have some of the league’s best young pitching and are the consensus pick to win in a so-so division with three good teams and two rebuilding ones. But their flaws have been exposed this month. The hitting is spotty. They’re fair to middling at catching and throwing. The manager, a baseball lifer named Terry, is good with players but not exactly at the leading edge of sabermetrics. So far, they’re not exactly burning up the season and fans are starting to worry, even if the sample size is small.
The other team, of course, is the Mets.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your 2016 dopplegangers, the Cleveland Indians.
Fun fact – Since 2000, the Indians are the only team in MLB to have three different Cy Young Award winners (CC Sabathia 2007, Cliff Lee 2008, Corey Kluber 2014).
At catcher, Yan Gomes is the first Brazilian-born player in the major leagues. His father-in-law is Atlee Hammaker, an old Giant pitcher who had a couple of great seasons and is mainly remembered now for having a funny name. Yan, who also has a funny name, is probably the best catcher you’ve never heard of. 2014 has been his only full healthy year as a starter; he won the job by default in mid-2013 and was injured for a good part of 2015. And he was one of the best in the game in 2014; threw out about 35% of runners while OPSing .785. He had a crappy 2015 which Indians fans are chalking up to him being rushed back from a sprained MCL, which I guess is to catchers what a strained lat is to pitchers.
First base used to belong to Carlos Santana, who has heard all the “Evil Ways” jokes already. A meh, on-basey, good but not great power guy. Switch hitter, better from the right side. So bad defensively that the Indians got Mike Napoli as an upgrade, and Santana is now the DH.
Mike Napoli, at 1B, is also meh. I guess he fields better than Carlos Santana.
At second base, there’s the former superprospect Jason Kipnis. Did he meet the outrageously high expectations Indians fans had for him as a rookie? No, but he combines Murphyesque offensive dependability and decent middle infield pop with at least OK defense. And he’s a true member of the Tribe, sort of.
At shortstop, 22-year-old Francisco Lindor is easily the best position player on the team, and the occasional heavy breathing media report has him as the best shortstop in baseball. Bats third. Has great range. .835 OPS last year and lost a close ROY vote to fellow shortstop Carlos Correa. Indians fans I know have been talking about this guy for two years or so. Then again, I’ve only seen him play live once – as an Akron Rubber Duck – and in four at bats, he popped up three times and got an infield hit. So he can be stopped.
At third base, Lonnie Chisenhall is on the DL because of complications related to terminal mediocrity. Covering for him is our old friend and Good Clubhouse Guy Juan Uribe. Good Clubhouse Guy is, of course, a kind way of saying “he sucks, but somebody’s got to play third base”.
Left field? Why, it’s Marlon Byrd! When the Mets got him in 2013, my reaction was, “Hey…he’s still in baseball?” And, whaddya know, it’s now three years later, and there he is, still in baseball. The Indians are paying him a million bucks to not embarrass the team in left field and maybe hit the odd home run in a tight spot. Funny game, this.
A platoon is keeping centerfield warm until the poor man’s Andrew McCutchen, Michael Brantley, returns from November shoulder surgery in a week or two. Vs. lefties, we’ll see the very fast and otherwise not-very-good-at-baseball Rajai Davis. I checked his similarity scores on bbref just for fun, and my suspicion was confirmed. The most similar player to Rajai Davis, in the entire history of baseball, is Roger F. Cedeno. Nuff said.
Vs. righties, we get the talented young Tyler Naquin. Naquin hit his way into the major leagues with a .400-ish Cactus League BA. The Indians haven’t seen many righties yet (with three weather related cancellations so far this season, they haven’t seen many lefties, either), so Naquin has only four ABs so far in his short career.
Right field is patrolled by Collin Cowgill. I was going to say something more about this, but I start laughing uncontrollably every time I return to this graf.
Yeah. We’re sweeping this series.
Starting pitching -
Schedulers and weather gods have been good to us, and we’re drawing the back end of the rotation. We face Cody Anderson on Friday and Josh Tomlin on Saturday before going up against 2014 Cy Young winner Corey Kluber on Sunday. All are righthanded, so De Aza may get some starts as DeH instead of Flores.
I googled Cody Anderson, and all I found was that he showed up to spring training in the best shape of his life.. Also, according to Wikipedia, he’s an American professional baseball pitcher for the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball (MLB).
Josh Tomlin hasn’t pitched yet this season. He’s made a six year career out of being that guy you hope the other team has to start because their pitching staff is jammed up. Despite all expectations, had a decent 2015. We’ll do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Corey Kluber’s 2014 Cy Young award was not a fluke. Just putting that out there. Fastball is 95 mph, which was considered to be fast back when we were kids. It’s still not half bad. But his main weapon is an unhittable curve. Yes, he led the AL in losses last year, but that was mostly due to bad luck and crappy run support (3.3 runs per game). He’s off to a Harveyesque start this year (0-2, 4.85). Have you given up on Harvey? Don’t kount out Kluber.
On the other hand, his career April ERA (3 1/2 seasons, natch) is 4.03. So maybe we can think about kounting him out after all.
Bullpen –
As part of the welcoming program instituted for the RNC this summer, Cleveland has gone with a bullpen that leans almost exclusively right. Its sole lefty is forgettable ex-National Ross Detwiler, who has had one (bad) appearance this season.
If the Indians get a lead in the 9th, they’ll go to Cody Allen, who strikes me as a garden variety good closer, though (naturally) somebody somewhere has come up with a metric that shows him as “elite”. I think that means that he gets to board early on flights to Kansas City. Other bullpenners include the well-named Jeff Manship and odd man out of the rotation Trevor Bauer, who flew a drone into the US Cellular scoreboard last week.
Injuries – Brantley, Chisenhall
Players who have traded in Schaefer for Great Lakes – The aforementioned Uribe, Cowgill, and Byrd are batting a combined .067 (3 for 45) so far this season. Anthony Recker, that handsome devil, is currently breaking hearts at the Indians’ AAA affiliate in Columbus.
Mets with Indian ancestry – Colon, when he was thin. Cabrera, when he was fast.
Fun trivia question: Name the three players with statues outside Progressive Field.
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