Reminiscing With Roger: The Tribe’s Keith Hernandez
April 10, 2015An Ode to Opening Day
April 10, 2015After the first three games of the season, one can see pretty quickly why the Cleveland Indians have been picked by some as a serious contender: Pitching, and plenty of it. Three starts and three impressive performances — and the starting pitcher who was least impressive pitched a no-hitter over his six innings. This is not to confuse the Astros offense with that of the Tigers, but nine Cleveland pitchers worked in this series and so far, seven of them have a goose egg for an ERA and the eighth won the Cy Young last year. Astros hitters are surely glad to say goodbye to those nine guys, especially Evan Gattis, who went 0-11 and struck out eight times. Ouch.
The Indians couldn’t do much against up-and-coming lefty Dallas Keuchel, who shut out the Tribe over seven innings. Throwing a southpaw against the Indians this year will, evidently, be a preferred strategy. Got a promising lefty in the farm system? OK, bring him up for a start against the Indians. But Keuchel would seem to be coming into his own as an exceptional pitcher, so we can only hope Indians hitters won’t be helpless against every left-hander. At any rate, for those who create lists of reasons to prefer baseball over football, they can add this to the list: Having trouble beating the Steelers with Ben Roethlisberger as the quarterback? Not to worry. Tomorrow we play them again and they’ll have a different QB. Don’t you wish.
Speaking of lefties, they say that left-handed hitting catchers are a hot commodity in baseball. Well, not with the Indians, not this year. This year they must be thrilled to have both Gomes and Perez available for duty, not just as catchers but as right-handed hitters. Yesterday, Gomes batted sixth as the DH while Perez caught and batted ninth. If such an arrangement continues to bear fruit, the Tribe might have to add a third catcher to the roster to avoid losing their DH in the event of injury to the catcher. Perez showed promise last year, hitting .271 with some power. Yesterday he went 2-4 with an RBI single and a solo home run while Gomes went 1-4 and scored with a sly slide around catcher, Hank Conger. On that play at the plate, by the way, I couldn’t help but wonder if Conger’s awkward looking play had anything to do with the new rules that prohibit catchers from blocking the plate. Oh, muscle memory, where art thou?
Misc observations after three games while trying to avoid over-generalizations:
- The Indians have had hardly any turnover from last year’s roster so, for now, they can stake their claim to the Cleveland franchise of continuity.
- No errors yet in three games, which might have something to do with the fact that it’s pretty difficult to commit an error on a strikeout. Thirty-six of the 81 Astro outs (44 percent) were whiffs.
- Good for Francona that he brought in Hagadone yesterday in the ninth to get him “back on the horse” after his rough outing on Wednesday. This is a manager who knows the baseball season is ten times longer than the football season.
- Cody Allen: Wow! And only 26 years old. Such a different feel from the days of Borowski, Wickman and even Perez. Maybe the older-unflappable-guy-closer concept has finally been discredited.
- Still can’t believe what we got in return for Esmil Rogers: Gomes and Mike Aviles.
- Great to see Kipnis hitting with power to left field. Is he back?
- Jose Ramirez (born in 1992) … my goodness, you mean to tell me it’s going to get better with Francisco Lindor (born in 1993)?
- The TV and radio guys are all back as well. Tom Hamilton’s stand-up routine (from a seated position) is gaining in frequency and intensity. Easy does it, Tom. Rick Manning offers his usual solid, prescient analysis and Matt Underwood continues to misuse the words “literally” (“the ball was literally behind the catcher’s foot”) and “bullseye” (“The pitch … bullseye, on the outside corner”).
This weekend, it’s the Tigers for three games. Well, given the forecast, we hope it’s three games.
Two years ago, as my son and I were walking along on our approach to Progressive Field for an Indians-Tigers game, I noticed two Tiger fans walking behind us, so I tried to engage them in a little baseball talk. Their initial topic of conversation was how the Tigers were going to destroy the pathetic Indians … you know, the chest beating thing. But we just laughed and, refusing to take the bait, ended up having a nice chat with them. As a reward for our being civilized ambassadors for Cleveland, we ended up with seats right next to another Tiger fan. The result, another great visit. One of the more enjoyable sports spectator experiences I’ve ever had. So, Tiger fans? Welcome back to Cleveland. Just remember, Miguel Cabrera is not the umpire. The umpire is the umpire.
6 Comments
“Great to see Kipnis hitting with power to left field. Is he back?”
I highly recommend this piece by August Fagerstrom and the hole in Kipnis’s swing. The long short of it: Kipnis driving the ball to left field is a very good thing.
http://bastian.mlblogs.com/2015/04/06/introducing-august-fagerstrom-and-addressing-kipnis-swing/
A win is a win and all, but I think the Astros are a perfect match up for us. Bring on the Tigers.
Indians pitching is really really good and/or Astros hitting is really really bad. Somewhere in the middle I’m guessing the truth lies. It’s only three games annually pitching always seems to dominate hitting just look at all of the shutouts recorded so far this season. We’ll see how long the pitching can carry this team I just hope for their sakes the offense warms up sooner rather then later. I won’t mention the third leg of the teepee because so far so good, ssssshhhhhh!
I always pay attention to the “player to be named later” in the indians trades. It has been crazy. We sold high on Rogers. I am with you on that one.
what we can’t have 1.3 HRs a game all season?
Great stuff. And yeah, we don’t have any official errors, but I imagine anytime he hears someone say that we don’t have any errors Lonnie looks around sheepishly and buys Scrabble another beer.
Sure..