Posts Tagged ‘Kansas City Royals’
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Sox Head West, Offense Goes SouthMay 30th, 2008
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Superman has his Kryptonite. Spider-Man has his forever-conflicting sense of responsibility. And the oh-so-close-to-being-immortal Achilles had that pesky heel thing.
But the fatal weakness for the Red Sox thus far this season has been quite simple—with no intergalactic travel required. Because just outside the friendly nooks and crannies of Fenway Park, the mighty Boston lineup tends to morph from a run-producing powerhouse into the motley crew that made up the anemic offense of the painfully awful ‘62 Mets.
OK, a bit of an exaggeration, for sure. After all, the Sox, despite a recent run-scoring outage, still maintain the second best road OPS in the American League. But with Boston dropping 10 of their last 12 away from the Fens—and averaging only 3.5 runs in the process—the team needs to take the nearest exit ramp off this road to perdition.
After the first six contests of a ten game trip—a West Coast swing through Oakland and Seattle before heading back east to square off against Baltimore this weekend—the Sox find themselves with only a single etch in the win column. Read more
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Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe … It Is For LesterMay 21st, 2008
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Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a down-on-your-luck screenwriter languishing away in the bottomless depths of the unjust Hollywood caste system. You’re miserable, depressed, and desperately trying to regain the talent and sanity you once had—if you ever truly had it at all.
But then, an epiphany hits you in the dead of the night like a surge of untapped creative energy. You can’t sleep. You have to write. Because the idea stuck in your brain that has launched into ceaseless jumping jacks won’t let you do anything else.
And then, in the midst of this artistic euphoria, let’s say you draft up this amazing baseball narrative about a top-notch pitching prospect that debuts at age 22 only to find out mere months later that he has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
With his career derailed in the immediate future, a long, hard road back to good health, let alone the big leagues, now awaits the young athlete—the perfect inspirational plot-line.
So, if you were writing this script, you’d then wonder how to end it. Sure, he’d battle back from cancer and certainly win his first start back in the majors, but how would you cap off the script, ensuring that no eyes were dry when the credits started to roll.
Would you have him winning the World Series clincher just ten months after completing radiation treatment?
Or would you have him tossing a no-hitter for the film’s final climax?
Well, against better judgment, you decide to have the protagonist accomplish both feats. But hey, you’re excited, and you can’t wait to pitch your yarn to the motion picture bigwigs … plus, you really want to quit working as a used-car salesman in Santa Monica.
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Indians Shoot Up the Standings, Tigers WatchMay 16th, 2008
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Don’t look now, but finally there is a team taking control of the American League Central. Unfortunately for Tigers fans, it’s not your team.
The Cleveland Indians have recovered from their first month’s struggles, taking reign over what many expected to be baseball’s most competitve division. Much press has been devoted to the remarkable string of games the Indians rotation has put together, not surrendering an earned run in 48 1/3 consecutive innings. Cliff Lee has forgotten he’s Cliff Lee, C.C. Sabathia has shrugged off his horrendous beginning, and Fausto Carmona has given up more than three runs in a start just once. This leads to the obvious question, why can’t Tiger hurlers overachieve?
Appearing to be destined to disappoint, Detroit starting pitching looks both inexperienced and old. Wild, ineffective, and wildly ineffective would also sum the group up. Kenny “The Gambler” Rogers is now called The Gambler because every time he takes the mound, he is gambling not giving up three runs in the first inning. Speaking of giving up a boatload of runs early, Nate Robertson has put together one good start in eight games. Jeremy Bonderman has not grown out of his first inning troubles, but is earning a hefty $8.5 million this year. And Dontrelle Willis cannot fairly be judged because of injuries, though his first start was unique and unimpressive—five innings of one-hit, seven walk baseball. That leaves Justin Verlander, the supposed ace of the staff. He is two-for-nine in quality starts and has mysteriously lost five miles per hour on his fastball.
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Indians score 15 in rout…April 24th, 2008
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… but only needed 2 to win.
I hate to be picky, but after losing their last two games by scores of 2-1 and 3-0 to the Twins, it would have been nice to see some of those 15 runs spread out a little more evenly.
I last talked about how I was worried that this 2008 team would become the 2005 team incarnate, but maybe I spoke too soon. What if they are more like the 2006 Indians team?
In 2006, the Indians finished 78-84. Seemingly, they were an underachieving squad, as many pundits picked the team to win the Wild Card, or at the very least compete with around 85-90 wins. In hindsight, many national columnists stated that they were merely victims of bad luck, as their run differential for the season was +88, meaning they scored 88 more runs during the season than they gave up. Of course, bad luck was easy to cite, because according to their Pythagorean Expectation, the Indians should have finished with around 89 wins.
The real reason the Indians underachieved: poor record in one-run games (18-26), coupled with inconsistent offense and pitching. Rather than researching how often the Indians had “inconsistent offense and pitching” in 2006, I decided to take the easy route and find a small sample size that summed up the entire season: April 14-20, 2006. The Indians played a four game series on the road against Detroit, followed by a three game series on the road against Baltimore. During the two series, they managed to win 7-2, 10-2, and 15-1, and lose 5-1, 1-0, 18-9, and 9-4, for a record of 3-4. Total runs scored: 46. Total runs given up: 38. Pythagorean Expectation: 4-3 record. Sure, it’s an incredibly small sample size, but believe me when I say it’s dead on.
This year, we may be looking at a similar situation. Before the 15-1 win against the Royals, the Indians Pythagorean Expectation was 8 wins; instead, they had an ever-so-slightly-unlucky 7 wins. Not bad. However, after the offensive explosion yesterday, their Pythagorean expectation changed to 10, which would not only put the Indians at exactly .500, but probably into second place in the division. Instead, they are sitting on an 8-12 record for 4th in the division.
Sure, it’s early, and I’m probably cherry-picking from a small sample size, but it’s not unreasonable to see that an unfortunate pattern may be developing: close losses, some blowouts wins, inconsistency (sorry, hate to sound like Joe Morgan), and a lot of mediocrity. In other words, good numbers on paper, but nothing to show for it. Based on what we’ve seen so far, here’s what I think will happen:
The Indians offense will be good. Seriously, how could they not? With Sizemore at the top of the lineup, Dellucci playing out of his mind, Hafner, um, taking lots of walks when he isn’t grounding out weakly to first (actually, he’s been hitting a lot more opposite-field line drives lately, which is a really good sign), Victor just sitting back and ripping opposite-field singles, Peralta eventually rounding back to a .270 hitter with 25 homers, Garko having a ridiculously good eye with two strikes, Asdrubal keeping the clubhouse loose with his anal-bead necklace, Gutierrez heating up with the weather, and Blake, um, well he had a good night against the Royals. The point is, the Indians hitters will have their stats at the end of the year, and the offense will be among the tops in the league. (In fact, after last night’s win, they improved four spots in team slugging in the American League, three spots in runs, two spots in OBP, and one in OPS. Their batting average jumped 11 points, but they still suck in that department.)
The Starters will be really good. Despite CC’s struggles, the Indians currently lead the AL in quality starts with 13. If CC can build off of his strong start against the Royals (6 innings, 11 k’s, no runs, only 4 hits, of which like 3 of them were bloop singles), the Tribe staff will be the best in the league. Forget the 1-2 punch of CC and Carmona; throw in the revived Cliff Lee, and the Indians 1-2-3 is as good as any in years. Plus, Westbrook is off to a strong start, and provided he can bounce back from his left intercostal strain (whatever that is?), well, the Indians (warning: super-vague prediction alert) will win a lot of games.
The bullpen won’t be really good. We saw it against the Twins in the extra-innings loss on April 20th: with Betancourt as the closer, the bullpen is in trouble. (To recap, it was tied 1-1 after nine innings and the Indians lost the game in the 10th when Rafael Perez, who had already pitched 2 innings, gave up the winning hit with two men on). Forget for a moment that all three studs from last year’s bullpen are struggling, which is already tough enough to deal with. Moving Betancourt to the closer role puts a lot more pressure on the guys beneath him. If Joe Borowski were still pitching, Betancourt would have been in the game for the tenth inning, instead of a gassed Perez. Unfortunately, Wedge was “saving” Betancourt until the Indians could take a lead. Never mind that they gave up a run and lost the game before they could take said lead, the real problem here is the best reliever the Indians have was sitting on the bench during the most important time of the game. If Borowski doesn’t come back and Betancourt stays as the closer, I can see the Indians blowing a lot more games just like this.
What does this all mean? Well, it means pretty much what I’ve already said: blowout wins from great starting pitching and contagious hitting will be separated by close losses caused by a depleted bullpen and inconsistent hitting (and also Paul Byrd, who seems to be one of those guys who pitch just well enough to lose). In other words: not good.
Hopefully, the 15-1 win against the Royals is a sign that the 2008 Indians are back and ready for a strong season. If not, prepare for the worst: 2006 all over again.
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It’s Still Early… Right?April 10th, 2008
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It’s still early, but the intensity doesn’t seem the same as it was last year for the Cleveland Indians. Wait, what?
The truth is, the postseason is intense. Every pitch, every swing, every ground ball: every play matters. Whether it’s a first pitch strike to the number eight hitter with two out and up by three (huge strike, don’t want to fall behind to a hitter like number eight), or a ten pitch at bat followed by a strikeout (at least we extended the pitch count), the postseason is unmatched in terms of every-everything matters.
We all saw what happened to the Indians after they took a 3-1 series lead against the Red Sox last postseason. We are also seeing the Indians get off to a 4-5 start in 2008. Is it time to panic? Read more