Would Browns trade down to draft Derek Carr?
April 22, 2014Jesus Aguilar continues to destroy baseballs in Columbus
April 22, 2014John Axford has the credentials. He’s a former All-Star and Rolaids Relief Man Award winner. He’s endeared himself to fans by letting the masses choose his entrance music and his mustache is the envy of all facial hair enthusiasts. Most importantly: He’s closing games. For a team whose closer imploded at the end of the 2013 season, that’s the only thing that counts.
Cleveland fans know the front office loves reclamation projects as much as TBS loves airing reruns of the Big Bang Theory. That’s why it’s never a surprise to see a pitcher come to the Indians whose star once shined bright for another team. Last season it was Scott Kazmir; this year, it’s Axford. The season is just 19 games young, but so far the experiment’s been a success. Axford is 7-of-8 in save situations, with a 3.12 ERA.
Everyone wants to see Axford regain the form of 2011, when he slammed the door on 46 saves and a 1.95 ERA for the Brewers. Call it nitpicking, but I can’t help be a little apprehensive about his future fortunes. I’m not saying Axford can’t be effective, but I’m skeptical he can be that dominant if he continues to issue walks.
It’s a small sample, but in 8.2 innings Axford’s posting 7.27 BB/9. During his dominant 2011 season, his BB/9 ratio was 3.1. In 2012, Axford converted 35 of 44 attempts, but his BB/9 jumped to 5.1 He also saw his ERA rise by almost three runs from the previous season.
Axford pitched 54.2 innings for the Brewers last season before being traded to the Cardinals, but did improve his BB/9 ratio (3.8). Of course, he ended up hooking up with St. Louis, and got it together enough to pitch in the World Series. The bottom line is that Axford is getting the job done right now, but I’ve heard Rick Manning tell me enough times how walks will come back to haunt you. Axford may not be Perez, but Tribe fans could be in store for the roller coaster rides CP came to be known for.
• Adding to my bullpen assessments, Tribe relievers are pitching well, considering some of the holes the starting rotation has dug in the early going. I wasn’t surprised to see Indians’ relievers logged 60 innings through the team’s first 18 games. I was surprised to see that total is tied for seventh in the American League, so the Indians’ aren’t the only club calling the cavalry.
The bullpen has a 2.63 ERA while holding opponents to a .205 average. This is strong because I thought Vinnie Pestano was really going to have to regain his Bullpen Mafia form to make the pen a true threat. Instead, Pestano was demoted and the likes of Cody Allen, Josh Outman, Marc Rzepczynski, and Scott Atchinson have picked up the slack.
Allen’s career continues to trend upward as he hadn’t allowed an earned run in 11 appearances spanning 8.2 innings. He’s also fanned 13 batters in that time. Outman and Rzepczynski give Francona left-handed options, while Atchinson has been pegged for just one run in seven appearances.
• As Atchinson, 38, continues to produce, I still find myself saying, “Who is this guy, and why does he look like my old Little League coach.”
Atchinson has logged a lot of minor-league a miles in his career since being drafted in 1999. His first significant time at the Major League level came in 2004 with the Mariners. In 2007 he played in 22 games for the Giants, but then played in Japan for two seasons. Atchinson returned to the states and found a home pitching for Francona and the Red Sox in 2010. He played for the Mets last season and appeared in 50 games.
• Offensively, the lineup has struggled, and that’s being nice. Entering the Kansas City series April 21, clutch-hitting was almost non-existent as the Tribe was batting .209 with runners in scoring position (13th in the American League). The Indians were second-to-last in the AL (.143) when batting with RISP and two outs.
The top of the order isn’t setting a good example with Nick Swisher (.197) Jason Kipnis (.246) and Carlos Santana (.145) all struggling. According to a recent story from Jordan Bastian of MLB.com, Francona won’t be making any permanent changes, but the manager looked like a genius when he gave Santana the night off and inserted Lonnie Chisenhall into the clean-up spot against Jeremy Guthrie Monday night.
The “Chiz Kid” embraced batting in the No. 4 spot and went 2-4 with a double.
• Speaking of Chisenhall, the 25-year-old is finally having big-league success. The sample is still small, but this what is what we’ve been waiting for. His line reads .448/.484/.621. His OPS is 1.105. He does his best against righties and has faced right-handers almost exclusively, save for one at-bat. This was the Indians plan heading into the season and thus far, it’s working.
• Everything you need to know about Jason Giambi being on the roster can be explained by that dramatic homer he blasted into right field at the end of last season.
His overall numbers will look awful on their face, but at 43, Giambi shouldn’t be posting world-beater stats. His best strength is his power and his bat still packs a punch.
Giambi hit nine homers with the Indians last year in 216 plate appearances, but as Sports Illustrated pointed out, five of those mooonshots came in the eighth or ninth inning; two of them tied the score, and two were walkoffs, including the aforementioned season changer that propelled the Tribe into the Wild Card round.
• I’m convinced we saw a career year when Asdrubal Cabrera hit 25 homers and drove in 92 runs in 2011. Cabrera hasn’t come close to duplicating those numbers, and judging by his latest start, it’s a reach to think he can attain those numbers again.
Playing in his contract year, Cabrera’s been awful in the early going (.217/.299/.362). For his career, Cabrera’s April’s slash reads .264/.335/.402, which resembles his overall career line of .271/.334/.412. FanGraphs is projecting Cabrera to hit around .250 while hitting 12-16 homers and driving in somewhere between 57-70 runs. After watching Cabrera the past two seasons, these projections might be spot on.
• Through 19 games, the Tribe stands at 9-10. Through 19 games last season, the club stood at 8-11. Let the marathon begin.
***
Nick Dudukovich is a Dayton-area freelance writer who covers the Cincinnati Reds for suburban weeklies. He spent three years of his writing career with the Cincinnatti Enquirer, maintaining a beat of 17 schools, writing feature and hard news stories, maintaining a blog at Cincinnati.com, photographing events, producing in and appearing in weekly video chats, and was the Cincinnati correspondent for the Ohio High School Kickoff Show, which airs on SportsTime Ohio. Follow him on Twitter at @DukeofNick
55 Comments
Nice to see Atchison get some love, he has been unbelievable and so far. All of Antonetti’s free agents (Ax, Murph, Atch) are really helping this team, hopefully they stay hot.
Asdrubal really pounded the ball yesterday and he’s been swinging a much hotter stick as of late. But as always, Asdrubal needs to find a bit of consistency, some days he looks like our best hitter and others, he’s got 3 k’s on balls in the dirt.
We should really be rooting for Asdrubal to have a good year statistically. It would be awesome if he mashes this year, helping us to the playoffs and allowing us to tag him with a QO. (This is another reason it makes little sense to promote Lindor this year)
Swisher may need to play more RF or DH soon. His defense at 1st yesterday was horrible, even though he wasn’t charged with an error.
The bullpen is the MVPs of this team so far without a doubt. Also nice to see Chisenhall finally having some extended success. Lets hope it continues. Santana back at 1B and Swisher some day(s) off, he’s overdue for a break.
I’m not sure there are any better options defensively at 1B. And I think this is a point against the “defense never slumps” idea. Sometimes you can have a tough night in the field. Swisher has generally been a fine defensive 1B for his career and last year.
Swisher has been a negative WAR guy defensively (both f/g & b-r) his entire career (every single season). That is not all at 1B and they are not terrible numbers (so he doesn’t kill you), but he hasn’t been good.
unless you meant fine as in adequate?
I wouldn’t tag Asdrubal with the QO because I’d be really worried he’d accept it and there’s no way he’s worth $14 million a year, even if he repeated his career year of 2011.
Lonnie Baseball is unleashed (well, as a platoon guy, but we’ll take what we can get).
He’s been slightly on the plus side as a 1B. And yes, fine as in closer to adequate than great.
A 120 OPS+, 5 WAR player is easily worth $14M in today’s MLB.
ok, then we agree. initially read “fine defensive 1B” as a term like one would talk of Will Clark, then realized you may have meant it as okay as I typed my response.
swisher looked like a fat tee-ball player at first last night – holding his glove in the air and making no attempt at all to move off the bag to actually catch the ball. pathetic.
Yea who knows Francona batted him clean-up yesterday because of his past successes against Guthrie and it panned out. I’d like to see Chiz at 3B and Santana at 1B with Swisher either benched or at DH.
True. The advanced defensive stats have shown that there is a rather huge amount of variance in a players defense year-to-year.
not a big fan of Swish, but I think letting it breathe as we are doing is fine. with his start though, I think Lonnie deserves to start against all RHP until he proves otherwise (either 3B or DH).
note: Lonnie has reached base in all 10 games in which he has appeared.
.600 BABIP, but he has been swinging the bat well. 36% line drive rate will give you a pretty good BABIP. Neither are sustainable though. But still, it’s positive. It’d be nice if he has figured it out.
I really don’t get too excited or worried about any of this. Sorry.
Sample size, BABIP, etc. etc. etc. I know we want to read the tea leaves, but there really isn’t any point. The only thing I care about at this point of the year is player health. And everyone seems fine with the exception of Bourn. Hopefully he’s just getting up to speed.
Basically, call me June 1st.
This is basically where I am. I remember being pretty annoyed with this team early last season as well.
There will be plenty to overreact to in any 20 game stretch.
If you can find anyone who thinks he’ll end up with a .455/.486/.636 slash line, then you found a crazy person. Definitely room for some regression with him still being a useful MLB hitter.
One 1B had a positive dWar on Fangraphs last year.
They (and I think B-R too) make positional adjustments to those numbers.
So it doesn’t mean that all 1B are terrible at playing first. It means that the defensive value provided by the best 1B is less than the defensive value of a below average CF (or whatever relation to whatever position).
Well if you don’t sit Swisher then at least move him down in the lineup. I never liked him in the second spot anyways.
no complaints here. Swish at 6 and Asdrubal at 9 are fine by me.
Asdrubal Ugh Cabrera every time I watch him I’m taking it personally. To think I defended this guy now I just wanna see someone else at SS. C’mon Francisco Lindor!!!!
True. I’m more excited about Chiz’s approach and the contact that he has made than the resulting hits. If he keeps doing what he has done, he should be fine.
ah, misread the term. I thought the numbers were adjusted to the position to level-set across other positions. If makes more sense to do it the way you describe (which I can see is how they do it now). Thanks.
Santana at 3b sure helped Chisenhall to bad it’s hurt Santana.
DEEP BREATH…. It has been 19 games.
But I know what you mean, there’s something about ACab that makes him easy to hate on.
19 games
the good thing is that this year almost the entire AL is hovering around .500, so we are basically getting a reset to the season for as long as that continues.
That’s a mistake I’ve made a couple of times. I get why they do it, but it’s also annoying cause you have to know the basic positional values to look at a guy’s numbers and know what they really mean.
19 + 2 seasons you mean.
He was pretty darn good in 2012.
I can’t afford to wait it’s bad enough the Sox are struggling too!
Good lord 19 + 1 season, better?
.350-.360 OBPs are usually pretty good players to bat second.
Yea well he’s at .279 with a .197 batting average RIGHT NOW.
He wouldn’t be the first guy to have a bad season and then rebound.
NINETEEN!
Listen Steve oh wait I got confused for a moment.
OY VEY!
Every game counts even in April!
Yeah, it’s more meaningful, but stinks for the quick analysis.
What can I say, we’re both logical.
Nobody said they didn’t! But 19 games are not a good indicator for future performance!
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070802000211/memoryalpha/en/images/2/27/Spock,_2267.jpg
I’m more like Kirk anyways now where is Uhura???
You and your boy Steve better hope last year was a fluke so far 2014 isn’t helping, bro!
Overall, let us all hope that 2013 was no fluke for the team.
I expect ACab to be better than 2013 and worse than 2012. So like .260/.330/.410. Not awful, not great, but valuable.
I was speaking to Swisher but as far as drubal goes, hard to be worse then last year so he should be able to step over that bar!
You never know. The stats folks can justify any value and talk themselves into anything—missing the obvious, which is that ACab is plain not worth it. I don’t suspect it will be a problem as no way Antonetti is going to tag him, but if he did, someone should take away his car keys.
Agreed Steve. I could see how he wouldn’t be worth it after 2013, but if he repeated 2011??? There wouldn’t even be a question, you offer the QO.
It really aggravates me, because the stat nerds are going to say he didn’t make any errors or his dWAR is still good, but Swisher doesn’t pass the eye test in my book.
He has good range and makes good plays at balls hit his way, but he misses a lot more throws than the average first baseman. You’re description sums it up perfectly.