A Good Week: This Week In Tribe Baseball
May 6, 2021Cavs Tank Watch: Less than a week to go with a lot still to be decided
May 11, 2021I have two kids, aged two and one, and my wife and I follow this course called “Big Little Feelings“. It can be a bit crunchy, but it is centered around letting your child experience their feelings in a safe and controlled environment.1First you okay the feeling, you make them feel comfortable by saying you feel that way sometimes too and then correct the behavior if need be. It’s healthy to feel anger, just not act out on it and hit things. It’s okay to be sad and have a cry. I bring all this up not to try and teach you how to be a different parent, but because over the weekend, Indians fans had a duality of feelings that were seemingly in conflict with one another, and it’s okay to feel both of them.
Friday’s started with Tribe fans feeling themselves; Cleveland was riding a five-game win streak that put them first place in their division with the other competitors having myriad issues: the White Sox are walking wounded, the Twins have bullpen issues and can’t win shorter or longer games than nine innings, the Royals seem like imposters and Cleveland just swept them out of their own stadium…and the Tigers are the Tigers. Then came Wade Miley and a bevy of changeups, the Kryptonite to Cleveland’s up-and-down bats, and the lineup was no-hit for the second time in 32 games.
The rollercoaster season climbed new heights again on Saturday, however, never letting us feel comfortable for a second, as the Tribe wiped the floor with Luis Castillo and put a nine spot on the scoreboard, with six different players knocking in runs, scoring seven different players. It was a full lineup win, unusual in that it wasn’t carried on the broad shoulders of Franmil Reyes or knocked around by the bowling ball Jose Ramirez.
Twitter, take the hellscape of a website that it is for what it is, can sometimes be a diving rod of feelings of the general public,2 and man was it torn. Do we celebrate the fact that this year’s team, holes and all, not meant for competition and more for finding out who will comprise the next core, was in first place? Or must we instead bemoan the fact that two journeymen left-handed starters in Carlos Rodon and Wade Flipping Miley went the distance and no-hit the same team, 20 games apart from each other mind you, a team that boasts lefty killers like Jordan Luplow and the aforementioned behemoth Reyes? Can it really be both?
The answer is yes, you can feel both those feelings, and that’s okay. It’s okay to be excited about this roster, its growth and hope and intrigue, and ceiling, and still be disappointed in its ability. This season was meant to be one of discovery while still knocking on the window of opportunity, a difficult balance that seems unnecessary if you want to play financial ledger detective and dig into the Dolan’s pocketbooks for receipts of how much they actually make. Personally, this is the camp I’m in. I’m tired of seeing players like Jesus Aguilar take off elsewhere and realize that we never gave the player the runway to develop because we were in the midst of a contention window that necessitated veteran players like Carlos Santana, Edwin Encarnacion, Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley, and others to fill the major league lineup, choking out the precious at-bats needed for those prospects. This year was not meant to be a season where the team is in contention, and while that is a blow to fans that pay to come to watch them win, it’s also vital for future contention years.
That being said, it’s also okay to be upset about the state of the franchise you’re a fan of, to want to go out and sign Albert Pujols just so we don’t have to see more Jake Bauers or Yu Chang at-bats. I said to someone this weekend that I am willing to forego this year of playoffs and the random outcome generator that is the playoffs to have a better sense of where our roster is in 2022, but my feelings would be different if I was 20 or even 10 years older than I am now and the years I have to watch the club are dwindling. But both of those feelings, excitement about the future and dread about this year’s ball club, are okay and right and totally valid. It’s okay to be angry, Tribe fans. It’s okay to be excited. We all have big feelings.