Since my birthday is right around Opening Day, I spent many afternoons freezing my patootie off in old Cleveland Municipal Stadium watching the game around one of the numerous poles holding up the roof.
So, when Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) opened in 1994 and the team's fortunes turned around, culminating in World Series appearances in 1995 and 1997 (yeah, they lost, but at least they got there), I was one pretty happy fella.
Being a small-market team, I knew that the good times couldn't last forever, but I bought into General Manager Mark Shapiro's rebuilding plan in 2002 (initiated when Bartolo Colon was traded to the Montreal Expos mid-season) and hiring of Eric Wedge as manager to teach the young kids how to play.
But, here it is, 2009, and the team is an absolute shambles. The team isn't hitting, the starting pitchers can't get past the fifth inning, and the bullpen is a complete shambles.
The latest move, the trade of infielder Mark DeRosa to the St. Louis Cardinals for relief pitcher Chris Perez and a player to be named later, really has me baffled.
When we started the season, DeRosa was our starting third baseman. In fact, we traded three minor league pitchers to the Chicago Cubs to get him. At some point, the team realized that, although Jhonny Peralta was a serviceable shortstop, Asdrubal Cabrera had the potential to be a spectacular one. So, they moved Peralta to third and Cabrera to short.
This left a hole at second base. Now, DeRosa played 93 games at second in 2007 and 95 games there in 2008 for the Chicago Cubs and is a lifetime .278 hitter. So, it would seem to me that the logical decision would be to move DeRosa over to second.
Logic has no place in baseball.
Instead, the front office installed Luis Valbuena at second. Valbuena has a total of 54 games in the major leagues (DeRosa has 965) and is a "lifetime" .213 hitter. Sure, Valbuena's fielding percentage is slightly higher (.990 vs. .980), but he hasn't played enough games to really get an idea of how good a fielder he is.
So, now, DeRosa's been traded and we got one major league relief pitcher and the infamous "player to be named later." Let's look at this major league relief pitcher. He's only been in the majors for two years, appeared in a total of 70 games, and has an ERA of 3.72. An ERA of 3.72 in the National League translates into an ERA of about 4.72 in the American League due to the Designated Hitter. I'm sure Chris Perez is a nice guy and may turn out to be a good pitcher, but he's not going to single-handedly turn the bullpen around.
And, let's talk about the bullpen for a minute. The off-season signing of Kerry Wood for $20 million was supposed to establish the back-end of the 'pen and let everyone else settle in to their accustomed roles. Well, due to injury and ineffectiveness, Kerry Wood is the only member of the bullpen who started the season on the roster and stayed on it all year.
And Wood has been far from advertised. He's blown 4 saves so far this year (he only blew 6 all of last year for the Cubs), and his ERA is over two runs higher. It looks like he has no control over his curve ball and batters are sitting on his fastball. Since he's only had about 15 save chances, part of the problem may be that he's not getting enough work. So, if I were the manager (famous last words), I'd let Wood pitch the ninth inning two out of three days (or three out of five), regardless of the situation, until he gets his feel back.
The American League Central Division spent the first three months of the season tightly bunched up with all the teams around .500. Now, the Tigers are starting to pull away while the Twins and White Sox are playing better. The Royals are showing their true colors (but are still better than the Indians), while the Tribe settles in the basement.
When you go from a team that some picked to contend to the team with the worst record in the AL, that calls for some new direction. I'm not calling for anyone to be fired (*cough* Wedge *cough* Shapiro *cough*), I'm just sayin'.
UPDATE: Wedge just got ejected from tonight's (6/29) game. At least he's still got some fire in his belly.
