Tagged: Cleveland Indians
Rearranging
So my New Year’s Resolution this year is too start writing again. I am going to try to schedule it into my day so I can get back into the habit of writing. I apologize for the long absence but I just got busy and eventually I got out of the habit of posting anything.
You may have noticed that m title changed. I decided that I will probably talk about the St. Louis Cardinals enough for them to get a mention in my title. I will always love St. Louis so why not talk about them too?
Indians
The Indians have not done too much this off season. They lost a player and gained a player in the Rule 5 and have only made a few other moves, including signing Anthony Reyes to a minor league deal after non-tendering him.
Probably their most significant so far has been trading Kelly Shoppach to the Rays for a PTNBL. This leaves the catcher position to Lou Marson, who seems like he could be a very solid player until Santana is ready. I liked Marson a lot from what I saw at the end of 2009.
Cardinals
The Cardinals have had a much more exciting Hot Stove season. They lost Mark DeRosa to the Giants, which made me sad but is probably best for both parties. They signed Brad Penny which is fine with me, just fine. They lost Troy Glaus to the Braves (most likely) which is another move that I approve of. They are currently pursuing Matt Holliday who has reportedly refused their first offer.
Here is what I want from this offseason for the Cardinals:
1) Matt Holliday- for a reasonable price. With Scott Boras as an agent that may be asking too much. However the market for him does not appear to be too large but you never know what may happen.
2) John Smoltz- I just like him a lot.
3) No more Rick Ankiel- He has a great story but I think it’s time he go somewhere else. I wish him well wherever that is.
Tigers
The football Tigers lost a heartbreaker to Georgia Tech, solidifying my hatred for the Yellow Jackets. They went on to the Music City Bowl which was obviously a much worse bowl than they deserved and is a prime example of how the bowl system is screwed up and beat Kentucky. Although they looked terrible doing it. I got to go and it was a lot of fun. It was very cold though. It even started flurrying which prompted cries of “Snow!” from the Clemson fans and no reaction from the Kentucky fans. I will miss CJ Spiller next year and I hope the NFL sees how much better he is than the College Football world gives him credit for and he goes with a very early pick in the Draft.
The basketball Tigers lost a heartbreaker to Illinois during Finals week. I was there and it was terrible watching the Illini climb back into the game after Clemson led by 20 points at one time. I don’t have very high hopes for this team this year; they just don’t seem as smart as they did last year.
Stuff you expected me to mention…
Grady’s pictures- I haven’t seen them and I don’t plan on it. It was stupid for him to put them on the Internet if he didn’t want anyone to see them. That is my only comment.
Picture of the Day
Lou Marson- What’s not to like?
Breathe
I thought today I would try to explain my feelings about the Victor Martinez trade. As I mentioned before I am mostly over the disappointment but it still makes me very sad sometimes. Victor really was the heart and soul of this team. He was the type of player who would have accepted a paycut to stay with the Indians forever. And his dedication showed in how he played. Earlier this season he did somethings that I did now agree with but I forgave him and by the time the Trade (as I call it) happened I had pretty much forgotten. The surprising about this trade for me was that Victor was not even one of my top three favorite players on the Indians but I was devastated when they traded him. I mean devastated. I cried as hard as I cry at the end of Finding Neverland. I made a Victor playlist on iTunes. I figured when I could get through the playlist without tearing up I would be mostly over it. That took until about the middle of August and I still can’t watch the interview Victor gave the day he left. And his son’s hopeful question the morning of the Trade still chokes me up: “Daddy are we still Indians?” One song on that playlist in particular describes my feelings pretty well.
Breathe- Taylor Swift (by the way, Kanye is a jerk, okay moving on)
I see your face in my mind as I drive away
Cause none of us thought it was gonna end that way
People are people and sometimes we change our minds
But it’s killing me to see you go after all this time
I don’t think anyone could have told you that Victor would be traded this year when the year started. But as the season got worse and it became clearer and clearer that the Indians were not going to the playoffs this year the Front Office realized that this was probably the best time to trade their aging catcher and get something really good for him. Especially with Carlos Santana in the minors Victor did not really have a place with this team in the future for what he deserved to be paid.
Music starts playing lie the end of a sad movie
It’s the kind of ending you don’t really want to see
Cause it’s tragedy and it’ll only bring you down
Now I don’t what to be without you around.
At first it was very hard to imagine what the team would be without Victor. He embodied this team, it took a long time for me to accept that he was gone and not coming back.
And we know it’s never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You’re the only thing I know like the back of my hand
I do not think the Front Office would tell you it was easy for them to make this trade and I do not think that would a PR lie either. Victor meant a lot to the organization as a whole and trading him was probably ne of the hardest moves Shapiro has had to make.
And I can’t breathe without you
But I have to
Breathe without you but I have to
Never wanted this never want to see you hurt
Every little bump in the road I tried to swerve
But people are people and sometimes it doesn’t work out
Nothing we say is going to save us from the fallout
Victor’s interview upon leaving was very sad and emotional. I have not watched it but I know he was very upset about leaving, so upset he was fighting back tears. Unfortunately he could not stay in Cleveland.
And we know it’s never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You’re the only thing I know like the back of my hand
It’s two AM feeling like I just lost a friend
I hope you know it’s not easy, easy for me.
It’s two AM feeling like I just lost a friend
I hope you know it’s not easy, easy for me.
Changes
So I lied last time. I did not stay back. I have been awfully busy and it has been hard to get back into the habit of writing entries. I promise I will try to do better.
Since I’ve been gone Grady has had two surgeries that will keep him out for the rest of the season. Personally I think this should have happened a long time ago because I don’t know what good it was doing to have him keep playing. I know it was not hurtung but it was not necessarily helping. Ocassionally it may have helped the Indians win a game or two but I do not think anyone thought that the Indians had a chance at the playoffs even in July.
Which brings us to July and the month of trades. The Cliff Lee trade was tough and I was sad but the Victor Martinez was awful. I was in a baseball depression for probably about a month. Sometimes I still have relapses and seeing him in a Red Sox uniform is still tough. I think the last series between the Red Sox and Indians will be very difficult for me to watch. I would not rule out tears. However I love Justin Masterson. He may not have been very impressive in a few of his starts but I have seen some real potential and he is a great guy off the field.
New in my life: I have decided to stay an Early Childhood Education major. I know some of you were excited about hearing college students shout “Melissa” at college football games but I went to what I thought would be my last ever education class and remembered why I loved Early Childhoos so much. So I am back on track to be a kindergarten/first grade teacher in the inner city. Right now I would like that city to be Cleveland but I would not mind back home in St. Louis or maybe Boston. But even though I don’t like the cold I have decided that I could not live in the south, I think I fit in more in the north. I still love the south though, I just think I will be ready for all four seasons again when I graduate.
Here’s a video for everyone’s enjoyment about my second favorite team and secodn favorite player:
There’s a red moon rising on the Cuyahoga River…
I have been taking a small break from blogging recently as you could all probably tell. With work and class and the Indians being uninspiring I have not had much to say and not much time to say it.
Since my last entry I have found a new favorite ballpark… Progressive (Jacobs) Field in Cleveland! I finally got to go to Cleveland and see an Indians home game. Two actually. They won two of three against the Cardinals and that was the end of any salvageable season as we know it. I have said before I do not give up on teams easily but I really do think it is over for the Indians this year. My new goal is to finish above Kansas City in the standings.
Grady should be back tomorrow according to him and A-Cab is on his way to what will probably be a short rehab assignment in Columbus so things are looking up in that department. However, the bullpen and starting rotation is just too bad to have any hope for a division winning team this year. Cliff Lee has been looking like his Cy Young self but the bullpen still manages to blow seven run leads when he’s pitching which will not get him any more wins. Pavano apparently was suffering from some soreness so they gave him a little rest after two rough starts and we will see how he is on Wednesday. David Huff has been passable, Jeremy Sowers is fine until the fifth inning usually, and Tomo Ohka has been surprisingly good. But the bullpen cannot hold any leads their starters may give them. They manage to find new ways to lose every day and they are incredibly frustrating to watch. I am hoping that the returns of Grady and A-Cab make this team a little more bearable to watch.
So after that downer of a paragraph here are the pictures of my trip to Cleveland!
This is me in my new A-Cab shirt in front of the Grady picture at the Jake.
It was a good trip and I clearly chose a good time to see them before they completely fell apart against the Brewers.
It may be raining, but there’s a rainbow above you…
So it’s been awhile. I apologize. I’ve been pretty busy with work and the online class I’m taking this summer.
The Indians have been taking me on an emotional roller coaster again. They lost the series in Minnesota and then won the series in Chicago complete with a three-hit complete game shutout from Carl Pavano. Pavano has been amazing recently and I love it.
Fausto Carmona, however, has not been amazing unless you mean amazingly bad. He has been sent to rookie ball in Arizona after the Minnesota series to work things out down there. I really hope he figures it out and makes it back up sometime. I do not think we will be seeing him in the near future, or even this season, however.
Another starter who has been getting better and better every start is David Huff who is up in the Majors for the first time in his career and just got his first Major League victory on Sunday.
The bullpen is still concerning me. They have managed to get out of bad situations with minimal damage recently but for the most part they have put themselves in those situations. It is so bad that when we are leading 8-4 and Kerry Wood walks someone with two outs I assume that the other team just won the game.
Next up the Indians have the Royals who are in the midst of a bit of a free fall. The Royals have lost nine of their last ten and are now only a half game ahead of the Indians in the standings. Whoever loses this series is in last place in the AL Central. This is a key series for the Tribe. I am to the point where if they lose this series I may say the season’s over for them. They need to beat the struggling Royals. A sweep would be great but I’ll take two out of three. The pitching matchup for tonight is Bannister and Lee. If Cliff can pitch like he has been recently and the offense can score runs for him like last time we should win this game. However the offense seems to not care that much when Cliff pitches and decide that he can win even if they do not score. They have been scoring a little more recently so hopefully they can keep that up. Wednesday’s matchup is Meche versus Pavano. As I said Carl has been pitching very well recently and he leads the team in wins with six. Again we should probably win this game on paper but as everyone knows things do not always turn out that way especially for the Indians. Thursday is when Carmona’s spot in the rotation would come up normally but because of the offday mlb.com is saying that Sowers is the likely pitcher for Thursday night’s game against Grienke. Grienke was far from impressive his last outing but maybe that was just a fluke. If it was the Indians need to do their best to work Grienke hard. Sowers has been much better recently and hopefully he can continue that. He does not have an easy opponent to try to continue that with though. Overall this series is very interesting and very important for both teams.
Every word you say, say something sweet…
The Indians stomped the Twins last night. Amazingly the Indians scored runs behind Cliff Lee. Not just some runs though: ten runs. TEN RUNS. They only needed two. Then Kerry Wood would have gotten a rare save opportunity but, hey, we won and everyone else in teh AL Central lost. It was good day for the Tribe. Also Asdrubal Cabrera’s shoulder injury is not as bad as originally thought and he will probably be back in 2-4 weeks. A very good day for the Tribe.
Also Cliff Lee and Carlos Gomez got into it again. Early in the game Carlos Gomez bunted with two strikes and it went foul so he was out. This was a stupid move on his part and he looked a little bit like a fool and a bit cocky too. Cliff Lee did not like this move so later when Gomez flew out he said something to him. Rick Manning and Jim Rosenhaus (filling in for Matt Underwood, more on that later) thought he said something like “Should have bunted.” Carlos Gomez did not like that so he charged the mound when Cliff Lee’s back was turned (low) and Victor martinez, being awesome as usual, ran interference. The benches semi-cleared shortly and it seemed over.
The next inning Ryan Garko was hit by a pitch in the first at bat. I do not think this was intentional. Then one batter later Kelly Shoppach gets hit. Still not intentional in my opinion. The umpire agreed with me and did not issue any warnings or anything. Later Kelly Shoppach was hit again. I still do not think this was intentional I just like the fact that we have something we are good at. We are now leading the Majors in hit by pitches at 39. Kelly Shoppach leads the league with ten. We call him the Ball Magnet.
Matt Underwood, the Indians play-by-play announcer is back in Cleveland with his mom who is very ill. So please keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
My Baby is Hurt
That’s right everyone Grady is officially too hurt to play at all. He was placed on the fifteen day DL this morning. I am very sad but I hope he gets better soon. The Indians say that the MRI they did revealed no structural damage so that is good but with their track record on injuries and what they reveal I can only be so hopeful. This news kind of killed my day. The poor Indians cannot catch a break this year. Please get better Grady. I will be waiting.
Carl Pavano
Carl Pavano has been absolutely amazing recently. He leads the team with five wins and would have had number six today if the Indians’ bullpen had not reverted back to its old ways. Today for example he pitched 7 1/3 innings walking no one and striking out four. He gave up seven hits and three runs. That is less than a hit per inning pitched. He did not give anyone a free trip on base and when Wedge took him out he was not happy about it. I love how he is pitching and competing right now. The other night STO did an interview with him and it was probably one of the best interviews STO has ever done. I am really liking him more and more as the season goes on. I love it even more when he dominates the Yankees.
Pictures:
1) Cleveland Plain Dealer
Between the Lines
Last night’s game is not really worth recapping. It was probably one of the most boring games I have ever seen. Usually the Indians winning or losing has no bearing on whether or not I find he game entertaining so I really don’t know why this game was so boring. Basically same old story for poor Cliff. He could not catch a break and the Tribe decided that last night was not an important night to score runs so we lost 3-1.
This is the pose Grady uses when he is disappointed or sad. So like all this year.
Time to tell me the truth, to burden your mouth for what you say
No pieces of paper in the way…
My memory is cruel, the queen of attention to details
Defending intentions if he fails, until now.
He told me her name, it sounded familiar in a way
And I could have sworn I heard him say it
Ten thousand times, Oh if only I had been listening
Leave unsaid unspoken, Eyes wide shut unopened
You and me, always between the lines.
-Sara Bareilles
What I am really concerned about is Grady’s “sore” elbow. Apparently it has been bothering him all year and only when he throws. All year? Really. They could have put him on the DL so much earlier and he maybe would have been back and all better by now. Instead we have hurt Grady who is now hitting better but apparently cannot throw and Travis is coming back meaning Grady has to play the outfield or nothing at all. I wish I just knew the truth about what was happening right now. I have no idea how bad the elbow is. Grady says he hopes it does not become a DL situation but Grady even mentioning the DL makes it seem pretty serious. The sad part is since he is starting to hit better if he goes on the DL I am afraid he will come back rusty and all of this progress he has made recently will mean nothing. I said from the beginning that something seemed off with him and apparently I was right. I just hope they can fix it without sending him to the DL. I would be really sad if he was not playing when I go to the Jake in June.
Here is Sara’s whole song if you are interested.
THEY WON THEY WON THEY WON THEY WON THEY WON!!!!!!!
That was my reaction while jumping up and down at the verge of tears last night when Victor hit his game winning single to center last night. I probably looked insane but I really do not care. I watched that entire game except for the 1-2-3 top of the first. I gave up on them like everyone else with half a brain but they proved us all wrong. It was amazing. The best game I have seen in a long time, the best ninth inning anyway.
In case you missed it here is what happened. The inning began with a walk to Grady. Victor popped out. Jhonny singled. and moved Grady to second. Choo hits a tailor made double play ball that should have ended the game but Rays shortstop Reid Brignac threw it over the second baseman’s head and Grady scores while everyone else moves up one base. Mark DeRosa absolutely crushes a line drive but right at Evan Longoria. Two outs and Ryan Garko is up. Ryan Garko hits a three run home run. A-Cab walks. The Rays bring in Isringhausen. At this point I think we may have a chance. Francisco walks. Jamey carroll walks. Bases loaded, two outs and Grady is at the plate. What does Izzy do? Walks Grady and walks in a run. It is now a one-run game. Victor comes up and is currently 0-18. Make that 1-19 as he hits a single into center and two runs come around to score and the INDIANS WIN! Amazing and unbelievable. Anyone still watching the game was in shock I am sure. That was the happiest I have been all season. Yes I was even happier than when Grady hit the first grand slam in the New Yankee Stadium’s history. And even happier than when two days later we beat the Yankees 22-4. It was amazing.
Here’s the problem. Anthony Reyes is probably out for the year. Aaron Laffey is out for four-six weeks. We currently do not have a pitcher for Wednesday’s game or Thursday’s game. So something miraculous will have to happen to keep us in this. Something miraculous happened last night though so maybe the Indians have a few more miracles up their sleeves. I hope so.
Other notes from last night’s game: 1) Jhonny really wants to play shortstop and he showed that last night with his defense. 2) Victor=clutch. 3) Grady should wear high socks more often. They are clearly the reason we won and he looked good.
Adorable. The power of high socks Grady.
Picture: The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Should I give up?
Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements even if it leads nowhere?”- ADELE
The Indians lost their series against the Reds this weekend in the 11th today. Was it disappointing? Very. Can I accept it? Surprisingly, yes. The Indians were trailing 3-1 in the top of the seventh when with two outs Grady hit a RBI triple down the right field line and then scored on a controversial interference call by the third base umpire. I did not see any interference but here is why it is okay that the umpire mad the call: 1) the Reds catcher did
not tag Grady at the plate. It was close but he did not tag him so he was safe despite what the home plate umpire called. 2) The Indians have had way too many questionable calls go against them this season that they deserve one (well more than that but this is a start) to go in their favor. Then in the bottom of the eleventh Vizcaino comes in and give up a lead-off single, a sac bunt, and then a walk-off base hit to end the game.
So why am I okay with the bullpen losing us another game? Because they threw ten scoreless innings before that. Because for the second day in a row the Indians came back from behind two days in a row. Because Grady and the Indians refuse to give up. Because Grady may be back as the leader of this team. He made a daring play to tie the game that maybe people would call stupid with Victor coming up next and a real possibility of getting thrown out at the plate but he refused to give up on this team’s ability. He showed today why he has been called the leader of this team and everyone I think he is back. I hope he is back. If he is really back the Indians still have a shot at this division. Detroit’s lost two in a row, Kansas City has been struggling, Chicago has been REALLY struggling. The Twins are the only team in the Central right now that look good. Which is exactly how I want it. Indians and Twins battling it out for the Central in September. That is my wish. Today the Indians showed they have the heart and the fight to help make it come true for them. So the answer to the question in the title… NO! Absolutely not. If Grady is not giving up, then I am not either. I do not care if this season goes nowhere in the end, I refuse to give up.
Next up the Rays. After a controversial end to last weekend’s series this looks like it could be pretty interesting. Personally I hope both teams just forget last weekend and play like grown men but as we all know baseball players sometimes do not behave like the mature adults and model citizens they should be so I guess we will see how they pitch to Victor and the other Indians tomorrow night and how the Indians behave tomorrow night.
Picture: Cleveland Plain Dealer
Indians, Cardinals, and Tigers! Oh my! 
