Indians Make Decisions on Three Club Options

Cleveland’s Chris Antonetti shared with the media on Wednesday that the Indians will pick up the team option on right-hander Corey Kluber, bringing him back for the 2020 season.

In addition, the 2020 team options for second baseman Jason Kipnis and reliever Dan Otero will be declined, making the pair free agents. Read More

Atchison Joins Cleveland Coaching Staff as Bullpen Coach

The Cleveland Indians formally announced on Thursday afternoon that former Tribe reliever Scott Atchison had been hired as the bullpen coach on manager Terry Francona‘s staff for the 2018 season.

The coaching shakeup in Cleveland found some resolution with the … Read More

April Counts

They say it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

Bologna.

For the past three seasons, the Cleveland Indians have finished just fine. From May to September, they have been one of baseball’s best teams. They have been the team that makes people say, “Nobody would want to play them in October”. Yet, the team has only one Wild Card Game loss to show for it.

And it’s that pesky “start” that’s the problem.

Since Manager Terry Francona was hired prior to the 2013 season, the Indians have shot themselves in the foot right out of the gate three out of three times. It took a miraculous run in 2013 with a ten game winning streak to finish the season just for the Indians to squeak out one game of “playoff baseball” (the quotes are for you, Kenny Lofton). Over the past two years, however, there has been no ten game winning streak and the Indians April swoon has proved too much to overcome. Read More

The Old Man and the Z

He was an old man who pitched alone on a mound in the Major Leagues and he had gone sixty-nine games without looking like himself. In the first twenty-four games results had been with him. But after fifty days without a hold the team’s front office had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the team had gone at their orders in another direction which threw several good relievers the first week.

The old man was Scott Atchison, and this is the baseball equivalent of Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 novella, The Old Man and the Sea, in the event that this reference went over your head. It would have been just as relevant to link to another Hemingway work, A Farewell to Arms. Read More

Roster Transition to Challenge Even Francona this Summer

Through 62 games, the Indians season has not gone the way most have expected.

So far the Indians have played well below their own, and many national pundits, expectations. The team was expected to compete for a division title or World Series crown, instead they got off to an atrocious 10-19 start and have fallen as far as 9.5 games off the first place pace. Cleveland has buried themselves in the standings through poor defense and inconsistent hitting.

But in the last month the Indians have slowly started to climb out of their early season deficit. This morning they’re 29-33 and 6.5 games in back of first place. They’ve climbed as close as five games to the top spot in the standings before giving a game and a half back this week. Unfortunately, the Indians will likely spend the entire summer trying to make up for their early season struggles.

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Cabrera Crushes Kluber to Take Weekend Series; Tigers 8, Indians 1

The Tigers took a 2-0 lead before rain delayed the game for 1 hour and 51 minutes, and eventually beat the Indians, 8-1, on Sunday.

Miguel Cabrera homered off Cy Young winner Corey Kluber, and JD Martinez greeted Scott Atchison … Read More

Baserunning Mistakes, Cabrera’s Big Day Give Tigers Series Win; Tigers 8, Indians 6

Did the Tribe Win Last Night? No. The Tigers scored twice in the first and never trailed, beating the Indians 8-6 on Sunday afternoon in the rubber match of the three game series.

In his second start since being hit in the jaw by a line drive in a game against the Chicago White Sox on April 14, Carlos Carrasco pitched 4.1 innings, allowing five runs on nine hits. He walked two, struck out five, and found himself pitching out of jams all afternoon.

Ryan Raburn remained hot at the plate for the Tribe, going 2-4 with a double, run scored, and RBI. However, he was also thrown out at third base twice on plays that could have changed the outcome of the game.

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No Hitter Spoiled in Ninth, but Tribe Still Wins; Indians 5, Astros 1

Did the Tribe Win Last Night? Yes! Trevor Bauer, Kyle Crockett and Scott Atchison took a combined no hitter through eight innings, but the no-no was broken up as Jed Lowrie socked a solo homerun off of Nick Hagadone with one out in the ninth. Bauer worked six scoreless and hitless innings and struck out a career high 11 batters, but threw 111 pitches before being pulled in the top of the seventh. Bauer struggled with control for the first two innings and fired 54 of those 111 bullets early, removing any chance of a complete game in his first start of the season.

After taking a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning, the Indians batters kept tacking on runs as their relatively quiet bats for the first two games of the season awoke against the Astros rookie pitcher Asher Wojciechowski, who made his first Major League start. Read More

Atchison, Aging Well, Will Again be Key Bullpen Arm in 2015

The time-line for most Major League Baseball players typically involves being a rookie in their early 20s, hitting their stride in their mid 20s, having their peak years in their late 20s and early 30s, declining in their mid 30s and retiring – if lucky enough – in their late 30s.

Cleveland Indians relief pitcher Scott Atchison is far from your typical baseball player, at least where age is concerned. Read More

Tribe Bullpen Promising, but Has Much to Prove

In the past couple of weeks it has been reported that the Cleveland Indians may be interested in adding one more proven arm to their bullpen. Such a move would certainly be helpful, and perhaps even necessary. However, standing pat with where the bullpen is right now may not hurt, either.

The trouble with projecting a team’s bullpen is that so many relievers go through up and down seasons. A lot of them are inconsistent. Other than closers and top-notch relief pitchers, many hardly ever have consecutive good or great years. It is why there are still a lot of known relievers on the open market teams tend to shy away from giving a lot of money or years to relief pitching.

As for the Tribe, the team has a number of worthy arms, in-house, to round out a potentially formidable relief corps. The bullpen was a strength for Cleveland last year. However, other than closer Cody Allen and setup man Bryan Shaw, there are not a lot of long track records among the players who will report to Arizona with a shot to be a part of the Indians Opening Day bullpen. Read More

Chasing Detroit

Today continues DTTWLN’s three week examination of the Indians’ 2014 season and where it fell short of the playoff expectations established last winter. The staff will examine where the season went wrong and the challenges the front office faces to make the Indians contenders in 2015.

A few years ago, everyone was quoting the line that closed the viral “Cleveland Tourism Video”: “At least we’re not Detroit — We’re not Detroit!”

Economically? Sure, that’s a plus. But this season, when it came to baseball?

Cleveland did not have bragging rights. Read More

Bolstering the Bullpen

Today continues DTTWLN’s three week examination of the Indians’ 2014 season and where it fell short of the playoff expectations established last winter. The staff will examine where the season went wrong and the challenges the front office faces to make the Indians contenders in 2015.

Despite all their struggles this season, the Indians had one thing working for them — their bullpen. Even when starting pitchers were shaky to start the season, there was always hope that the Indians’ relief pitchers would be able to enter the game and finish the task that had been started for them, as they boasted strong performances throughout the season.

There was juggling in the bullpen, to be sure, as pitchers who were once part of the starting rotation made their way to the later innings once they were shown to not be as strong in the early half of games. Terry Francona, it was proven, thrives on a deep bullpen, and this season was no different. Read More