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Tribe’s first half offense - God awful but getting better
(First part of a three-part mid-season review by Tribe Report writers James Pete, Ron Vallo and Brian La Shier)
I could sum up the Tribe’s first-half offense with one five-letter word. S-U-C-K-S !!
But since you came to this Web site for info, I assume you are looking for a little more than that.
So here goes.
For much of the first half of the season, the Indians’ offense was just plain dreadful. The team was last in the league in hitting - with a team BA in the low .230’s. Those are 1968-like (Year of the Pitcher) numbers.
Watching the Tribe bat for most of the first half of the season was painful to the eyes - and the nose (the stink made it all the way through to my TV set).
Making it even tougher to watch was the fact that the Tribe had a stretch of games in late April and early May where the starting pitchers were throwing like it was 1968, but they could never get more three games above .500.
In a stretch from April 18 to May 15, Indians pitchers gave up three or fewer runs in 20 of 25 games - 7 of which were shutouts. The team was 22-19 at the end of that stretch - the high-water mark of the season.
With its low-.230’s BA, the Tribe was last in the league in hitting and also at, or near, the bottom in runs scored for most of the first half.
Hobbled by injuries to, and ineffectiveness of, the three-hole and clean-up hitters - Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner respectively - most of the rest of the hitters (term used loosely) in the Indians’ lineup uderpeformed. (Ryan Garko, David Dellucci, Franklin Gutierrez you know we’re talking about you.)
Others - Grady Sizemore, Casey Blake and Jhonny Peralta - are performing at about expected levels .
Jamey Carroll is about the only Tribesman who is performing better than expected simply because he is now an everyday player, something no one had imagined during spring training.
No one really could say with any certainty they knew what Ben Francisco and Shin-Soo Choo would do. Choo started out hot after returning from Tommy John surgery but has been a bit of a disappointment after the hot start.
Ben Francisco is having a solid first full season and was on fire heading into the break.
But, the Tribe’s offense has gone from unbearably bad to about average in recent weeks.
In the past 30 days the team has hit a more-respectable .263 and the team BA is now at .248 - still last in the league but lot’s better than the low .230’s and just behind 13th-place Oakland at .250.
The turning point seems to have come in a series in Texas at the beginning of June, when the high winds and hot temperatures helped both teams propel balls out of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington . Since the first game of that series, in which the Tribe scored 35 runs in three games, Cleveland has averaged 5.08 runs a game in 36 games. That’s up from 4.03 average in the first 56 games of the year.
While the Texas series seems to be the jumping off point for the offense, some folks point to the insertion of Peralta into the clean-up spot as the a catalyst. But that doesn’t seem to have been the difference, at least for the team overall. The Tribe is averaging 4.9 runs a game in the 17 games since Peralta was put into the No. 4 hole, virtually the same as their output since that memorable series in Texas.
The change has done Peralta a world of good though. He’s hit an even .300 in those 17 games, with four homers, 11 runs scored and 14 RBIs.
To me, the key to the Tribe’s offensive surge-ette has been the decision to correct two serious mistakes.
Hafner last appeared in a game on May 25, and Martinez on June 11 - both roughly around the time the offense started to pick up. It seems clear to me that the long-overdue decisions to put two hurting and hampered players on the DL instead of the middle of the lineup has made all the difference.
How can a team expect to score runs with their No. 3 hitter (Martinez: hamstring and elbow surgery) and No. 4 hitter (Hafner: shoulder) unable to swing a bat anywhere close to normal and making weak outs in the middle of the order? Of all the mistakes the Tribe deep thinkers have made this year, allowing these two to try to play through debilitating injuries was the biggest.
Other reasons for the offensive brownout in the first half include:
- The regression of Garko who at .237 is hitting nearly 40 points below his lifetime average
- The utter failure of Gutierrez, who is hitting only .215 with three homers and is now riding the bench
- The failure of the David Dellucci/Jason Michaels platoon (Dellucci .226; Michaels DFA’d)
- Literally no contribution from Asdrubal Cabrera (hit .184 before being sent to Buffalo in June)
On the other side of the ledger, the brights spot in the first-half were:
- Blake, who has hit so well in the clutch that he has 51 RBI on only 82 hits
- Sizemore - has 21 SB’s and a league-leading 22 homers, making a 30-30 season very likely
- Francisco - .288, 8 HRs, 34 RBIs and 816 OPS
Kelly Shoppach is not exactly ripping it up, but he is hitting about .250 with a little bit power in his first full-time role, which are typical starting-catcher numbers.
Peralta, another Tribesman tearing it up heading into the break, is having his typical season overall - spurts of greatness and periods where he looks like he’s never grabbed a bat in his life. That usually amounts to roughly 20 homers a year and a .260-or-so average. That seems to be where he is heading this year as well, with his .257 average and 15 dingers at the break.
Carroll is at .267, has taken over as the starter at 2B and plays an intelligent game. He’s able to bunt, move a runner and slap a single when you need it, which is just what you want in the No. 2 hole.
While the offense seems to be hitting its stride as the teams take a three-day break, it’s hard to say what to expect the rest of the way
Were Hafner’s hitting woes a result of his shoulder injury, as seems likely? Or were they just a continuation of the deterioration that Pronk had started to show throughout most of last season? Will we even see Hafner - whose shoulder is at about 50% - again in ‘08.
Will Victor get his power back with his elbow repaired and his hammy rested? He didn’t hit a single homer prior to his injury.
The team’s second- and third-highest RBI men, Blake (51) and Peralta (45), are also the most-often-mentioned players in trade rumors, with the deadline looming.
Cabrera - now ripping up Triple-A - is likely to come back up in the second half. Will he resemble the confident, competent creative hitter of last year or the early-season disaster we saw this year?
Will we see the newly acquired Matt LaPorta? What can we expect from him given he’s never played above Double-A and has the weight of fan expectations on his shoulders as the key piece in the CC Sabathia trade?
Unfortunately the answers to those questions won’t matter much for the rest of this season. But they will make a big difference in the planning for ‘09, as the Tribe and its fans wait - once again - for next year.
(note to nit-pickers: The stats in this article are through Friday night’s games and do not include Saturday or Sunday due to edit time requirements .)
This entry was posted
on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Casey Blake, Franklin Gutierrez, Kelly Shoppach, Asdrubal Cabrera, Ben Francisco, Shin-Soo Choo, Jamey Carroll, Jason Michaels, Matt LaPorta, Travis Hafner, Cleveland Indians, David Dellucci, Ryan Garko, Jhonny Peralta, C.C. Sabathia, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore, Tribe Report.
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13 Responses to “Tribe’s first half offense - God awful but getting better”
July 15th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Are you kidding me, man?
I don’t even have the stats in front of me and I can see mistakes all over the place.
Sizemore has 23 HRs
Cabrera hit .184 before being sent down.
Peralta has 16 homers, 48 RBI
If you are going to write an artice on the first half of the season, let’s wait until it is actually over before you go writing this crap.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:00 am
John, read the whole article man. He said at the bottom that the stats don’t include saturday and sundays games which account for Sizemore and Peralta’s numbers, and honestly, when your that far below the mendoza line who really cares about .005 percent.
That being said, I am very interested in how the Tribe does in the second half. I have been plugging moving Casey Blake for awhile, but I am starting to change my tune a little bit. Casey is a vetern presence on a very young inexperienced team, and is such a great clubhouse guy. I really do think the Tribe can contend next year, and they may just need a guy like Casey to do it. Maybe they can ship him out with the understanding that we will resign him in the offseason (Like we did with C.C. right?????)
Also, we really need to start getting these young guys up to see what they can do. Marte needs to be playing everyday. LaPorta needs to come up eventually as do Hodges, and some of the other Akron bruisers. I also think that Shapiro and the Indians brass need to commit to keeping Adam Miller in the bullpen once he gets healthy, and bring him up to see what he can do in that role. Hopefully they can make a run at respectability and build up some much needed confidence in their younger players.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Joh:
Thanks for the kind words. SOme of us have real jobs that often get in the way of our Internet activities. Hence the need to pre-write sometimes. Check out the note to nit-pickers on the bottom. Oh, and please do continue to comment.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:08 am
I think any questions with this team matter for this team, mainly, for manager Eric Wedge. If this team drops off the planet and dies…so does Wedge. If the Rays sweep was real, and not indicative of the Rays collapsing, then there’s hope to at least get some momentum for next year (of course, one game from the World Series would indicate momentum, right?).
Offensively this club does need help…but there’s a lot of growth from within that can be done. Add LaPorta and Hodges at some point in 2009, and you have something.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Good job Ron; nothing like keen insights to take the sting out of this dismal calamity of a 1st half.
As for building on the Rays - the Tribe caught them at the right time. This is an incredibly talented young club - who suffered it’s first viral offensive slump - their RSP for the series was a sick abberation. It snowballed when they gave the Tribe a couple of games with poor defense.
But that is Maddens issue.
As a Tribe fan my biggest worry is that Wedge manages this team back to a spoiler respectiblity and we get stuck with him.
I am absolutely convinced Eric Wedge is not a Big Leauge manager. Like Hargrove he fits the Cleveland ownership committment to ‘developing’ a skipper.
Ever since Jacobs & Hart ressurrected the franchise Cleveland ownership has remained averse to hiring a seasoned manager. It’s become the ‘formula’.
Is it really a necessary small market compromise ownership has to live with?
Look they hired Buck Showalter last year as ’senior advisor’. Showalter is a perfect fit, right here right now for this club.
A lot of folks really downgraded Showalter to ‘been there, didn’t do it’ status after his managing Texas. Yet he did his time comming up through the Yankee organization - and arguably Torre won his 1st ring with a team Showalter built.
The Same senario played out in Arizona - only he took over a new franchise - and his bona fide’s have been born out with what blossomed into a solid development track record.
Bob Bremley walked onto his team and then won a ring.
He’s got over 20 years at the big leauge level - and a lot of contacts to build a staff - besides having an itch to prove he can take a team all the way.
Even if he is a poor answer - am I alone in tiring of ownership fielding the ultimate ‘yes men’ weak managers?
July 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I’m not a wedge supporter at all, but I’d say he’s the furthest thing from a “yes man” weak manager. In fact, I’d say quite the opposite. He came in as green as a dollar bill and somehow bowled over the front office into letting him make key decisions (Bradley, Phillips, he wasn’t a fan of Omar and didn’t want Kenny back) based on what his “model” of a team should be — a bunch of “guys who respect the game” nonsense. He didn’t like anyone who was bigger than him (Omar didn’t need to answer to anyone, Kenny, same thing) or who showed any sort of temper or attitude that (gasp!) caused any disruptions to his hand-picked group of “good guys.” If you can honestly say you cared that Albert and Eddie Murray were colossal pricks in the 90s, then maybe this theory isn’t for you. I, for one, wouldn’t have cared if Albert had chased down those kids with a tank on Halloween so long as he kept going 50/50.
I have really digressed here. The point is, Shapiro and the suits seem to have bought into Wedge’s philosophy hook line and sinker. and while I still subscribe to the theory that a good or bad manager only “wins” or “loses” a handful of games a year for a team, I think the problem isn’t that Wedgie is weak, I think it’s that he’s as stubborn as our President, and, at least in terms of this baseball team, has been given just about as much power.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:14 am
I’m not one to complain about the coaches and front office because the people that win and lose games (mostly) are the players, but in the Indians organization there are some exceptions. Nobody can argue that Shapiro and Wedge are usually on the same page and that they are good friends too, but that might end up being a problem. I am in no way looking to get rid of Wedge, the man brought us to within an out of the Series, but what I am saying is that this team could get complacent with just being average because what ramifications are there? Is Shapiro going to fire Wedge? No. And then that feeling could trickle down to the players. What type of threat does Peralta have to maybe not play hard every day? None.
This team plays hard, most of the time, and you can’t fault them for that, but if around the days of August we are still 15 under .500 or so, we could see people quitting on the team and that’s when Wedge comes to fault and Shapiro needs to do something.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:16 am
isn’t it funny how, after a passage of time, exaggerations somehow turn into some sort of twisted reality? Kind of like Babe Ruth’s called shot, or my dad’s uphill treks through the snow to school as a child …
We did not come within “one out” of the world series last year. We did not come within “a couple innings” of the world series last year. One could say that we came within “one game” of the world series and that certainly wouldn’t be wrong, but it’s definitely a great example of polishing a turd. We went up 3-1 and proceeded to get our doors blown in, not playing particularly well in any of the remaining three games.
Kinda like how Jose Mesa didn’t “lose” game 7 in 1997, he’s just an easier target than unassuming ol’ Tony Fernandez or Chuck Nagy (sorry, I argue this point about once a year. This seemed like as good an opportunity as any). Or how John Elway didn’t “beat” the Browns with “the drive,” and how Earnest Byner wasn’t scampering toward a game winning touchdown with 1:12 left against the Broncos the next season (and if he did actually tie the game up, didn’t we learn the previous year that 1:12 was more than enough time?)
In actuality, in my brief time on this planet, all 31 years, the only time I remember a Cleveland sports team actually having defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in a HIGH STAKES postseason game was Jordan over Ehlo. Not to say the other events weren’t a dagger in the back at the time, but I think we’ve all grown a bit too attached to the “long-suffering Cleveland sports fan” label. If we can’t be winners, we might as well be the best at losing in heartbreaking fashion, right? The problem is, sometimes we get our facts messed up.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I did not mean an out, I meant a game. And Jose Mesa could have closed out the game and won the World Series for us. I don’t care if you are 31 or 13 you sound like a moron saying you’d rather be a losing like we have. I’d rather be God-awful, with no hope, like a Pirates fan or something, then getting so close and having our hearts crushed. That’s just dumb.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Just relax, man. No one’s saying they’d rather lose. At least I’m not. I only picked that moment to pounce because so much of the criticism of this team this year has been centered around people over-stating what happened at the end of last year. Be it “one out” or “a couple innings” or what have you … it’s not as if we had a clinching game in the palm of our hand and had it snatched away as a lot of the hyperbole bandied about by Tribe fans on forums such as these would have you believe.
Yes, Mesa could’ve closed the door in 1997. He didn’t get it done. This is true. But check out how that inning played out. Two singles, one of them a blooper, mind you, and a sac fly. It’s not exactly the Borowski-circa-2008 implosions that fans would have you believe some 11 years on — and it’s certainly not worthy of the piss-and-vinegar hatred of Mesa that has only seemed to grow with each passing year. It’s so absurd to argue this point all these seasons later — even though I brought it up — but pinning the game 7 loss on Jose Mesa is just representative of everything that is wrong with us as Cleveland sports fans. The same people who use “Jose Mesa” as a metaphor for the city’s sports heartbreaks (you’ve heard them: “We’ve had ‘The Drive,’ ‘The Fumble,’ ‘The Shot,’ ‘Jose Mesa…’”) are the people who want to pin last year’s playoff loss on Joel Skinner. They’re completely missing the point.
And I’ll take the shot that I sound like a moron at 31. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let you say I was a moron when I was 13. You’re talking to the Eisenhower Middle School 7th Grade Spelling Champion, bro.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
damn you Edgar Renteria and Craig Counsel!!!!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Gotta respond after a great A-star game; JB the Bush comparison is perfect. Wedge is the perpetual developmental manager - which translates to the Bush - aka the minors.
In the minors you don’t have to compete with ego maniacs with high pressure agents - Bradley and Phillips providing good examples. He needs to herd cats; Boys to men.
At the 5 yr mark Wedge is rare company JB. He is one of 7 mgrs with that much tenure. The others?
M. Sciocia - Angels
R. Gardinhire - Twins
B. Cox - Braves
T. La Russa - Cards
All the above but Gardinhire have a W.S. ring or two - two are among the most winning in MLB history. Why include Gardinhire in this group?
Look at the last two.
C. Hurddle & N. Yost - check their track record. Hurddle has one team that caught fire and then got swept in the series.
Yost didn’t finish better than 5th until an ugly collapse in the race last year. We’ll see what he does w/C.C.
Management matters. I don’t believe Wedge ever got Shapiro or Dolan to ‘buy into’ anything. The ‘team’ concept is a total top down condition of employment in Cleveland - that is why in my view he is the ‘yes man’ of the moment.
The ownership doesn’t want to be challenged - the Gm doesn’t want to be challenged - either by professional seasoned ball players or by a professional seasoned manager.
So they develop their managers ‘in house’ - they did it with Hargrove and now with Wedge. Of course he was ‘green as a ..’ - they manage at just about every level in the minors - ‘grow with the boys’ - then on to the show. It’s the formula. The guy is an employee - whose been well paid considering his record.
My point is when do you try something different?
July 16th, 2008 at 6:33 am
2009 seems like a good place to start …
I get what you’re saying, man. The front office and Wedge do certainly seem to be in lock-step, so it’s hard to see which came first the chicken or the egg. But the way things have played out over the last few years, it seems to me that Wedge has had way too much power in personnel matters. After Phillips, even Shapiro admitted as much publicly, saying that the buck should stop with him and that that hadn’t always been the case. He said that in response to a question about letting Phillips go.
Either way, it’s silly to talk about … it doesn’t appear that the team is anywhere close to making a change. I think Wedge is in a Tribe uni in 2009. Se we might as well stay used to him…
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