Should we fear Andy Dalton?
November 5, 2015PFF: No seriously, the Browns offensive line is really good
November 5, 2015The Kansas City Royals are your 2015 World Series champions. The beat the New York Mets in the Fall Classic, four games to one, in large part because they were able to rough up an excellent New York pitching staff. The Mets finished the regular season with the fourth-best ERA in the majors and racked up 1,337 strikeouts, good for 10th in MLB. The Royals took Games 1 and 2, games started by New York’s superb duo of Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey, and went on to average 5.4 runs in the five-game series.
Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore credited the Cleveland Indians pitching staff with preparing his team to play the Mets. Moore’s comment was included in a piece by Anthony Castrovince for Sports on Earth. Castrovince ranked the Indians seventh in his offseason urgency index, a ranking of teams who need to have productive winters in order to be contenders next fall.
The bit about the Tribe:
In the afterglow of the Royals’ championship clinch, general manager Dayton Moore, unprompted, said this: “[The Indians] prepared us for this [Mets] pitching staff. They’ve got one of the best in the game. They’re going to be coming soon.”
The sooner, the better, because the Indians, after two straight seasons of winning records that fell short of October qualification, need to capitalize on their window with Terry Francona, Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley and the controllable starting staff led by Corey Kluber. A lot of people liked this club going into ’15, but Cleveland responded with the worst team efficiency, per the Bill James Handbook, in the AL. We know they aren’t going to be big spenders this winter, but they did free up some cash (right around $8 million) by trading off Michael Bourn, Nick Swisher, David Murphy and Marc Rzepczynski this past summer. And there is hope that the arrival of a minority investor would give them at least a little more wiggle room than they’ve had, to date.
But the big question here is whether the Indians will parlay any of their pitching into some offensive support, especially in center field.
With the Indians slated to bring back the bulk of their pitching staff, led by starters Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and Danny Salazar, they’ll be among the teams trying to knock off the Royals, who had them by 13.5 games in the AL Central once the final out in the regular season was made.
9 Comments
Mind games! I just wish Indians offense, defense, base running had as well.
cant wait to see this on chris antonetti and mark shapiro’s bios in the media guides. they cant figure out how to win, so they will take any sort of accolade they can find.
love the tribe but cannot stand the front office organization
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What a kick in the nuts
I watched at least half the games last year, and this was a different team after they called up Urshela and Lindor. Then they got even better after the trades. I don’t understand why people are down on them. They waited to bring the kids up to save a contract year, and the way Lindor looks, that is going to be a brilliant move down the road. Letting Raburn loose was a no brainer.
They are one big bat in the 4 slot away from being a really tough team to beat.
big bat in the middle of the order is as elusive as a #1 starter during the tribe’s glory days of the 90s. especially now that roids are less prevalent.
Agreed. 17 might be their year. Bautista and Encarnacion are in option years.
They were definitely a lot more fun to watch. It was especially fun watching Chisenhall play amazing defense in RF. It’s too bad they weren’t that team earlier in the year. (although I can’t totally blame them – hindsight is always 20/20 and I don’t think even the most optimistic among us would have expected Lindor to perform at near MVP levels right out of the gate at the age of 20)