Choo!

Cleveland began the season 30-15. Yes, it was a cupcake schedule. They were never destined to keep up that pace. But all they had to do was go five hundred and win a playoff spot with their head-start. Instead they've gone 5-15 since then. And the Verlander took first place from them last night. In that stretch they've played the Red Sox, Rays, Rangers, Yankees and Tigers in quick succession. So they aren't this bad either. 

But Choo looks absolutely awful. 61 games in and he has only 23 RBI and is batting a measly .234 with 5 round-trippers. He has not been a baseball player since his May DUI arrest. And Matt La Porta isn't doing much either beyond his .248 hitting. Getting Travis Hafner won't help much either since the defensively useless DH is arriving just in time for inter-league play. 

Losers of the Week

During our unofficial hiatus, some teams began their June slide. The Cubs and Athletics have lost seven straight. The Marlins lost five in a row. And the Indians, having dropped five slid behind the Yankees in their winning percentage and gave the recovering Texas Rangers a new season. 

The Cubs and A's were unlikely candidates in their divisions despite the new age of parity in baseball. But the next week or so should be a good indicator of whether the Tribe can stay ahead of the Tigers or whether this was all an early season illusion. They have two more against the Twins, then a four-game series in the Bronx, followed immediately by a series in Detroit. 

The Indians' left-handed heavy lineup is struggling against left-handed pitchers. They will be missing Travis Hafner and the .345 batting average at the time of his departure. He may only make it back in time when the Indians begin Inter-league play and lose their DH. 

Order to Be Viciously Restored

Yes, we talked up the Royals. We talked up a hot Orioles start. We are still talking up the Indians. And we told Red Sox fans and Rays fans that all they could justly expect was misery. We embraced the revolution of nobodies. But now order is visciously being restored.

The Red Sox started 2-10. They've since gone 25-12. They Rays are right behind them bunched up at the top of the American League east. Kansas City has falled below .500 and will rapidly drop behind the Chicago White Sox.

Cleveland still owns the best record in baseball, but their schedule suddenly stiffens in the next month. Boston hung them 14-2 in this afternoon's matchup. And now the Tribe is about to be exposed by the Rays. We still think Cleveland can win that division by maintaining a pace just barely above .500 for the rest of the year. But with one of the smallest run differentials in the league, Clevelanders should prepare for a painful adjustment.

Chief Wahoo Should Stay

Over the weekend, Stephanie Liscio, an Indians fan and blogger took to the Sweet Spot blog to announce her auto de fé on Chief Wahoo.

The occasion of Chief Wahoo's persecution is "Caps Week" in which Lisco notes correctly that the retro "C" caps of the Indians are pretty stylin'. But Lisco transitions quickly into a short history of Chief Wahoo and her sincere hope for eliminating him:

It took more than 30 years for Chief Wahoo to make his first appearance on Cleveland Indians uniforms. In 1946, new owner Bill Veeck went to the J.F. Novak Company to design a mascot that "would convey a spirit of pure joy and unbridled enthusiasm." The design job went to 17-year-old Walter Goldbach. The new logo drawn by Goldbach lasted on team uniforms from 1947-1951, when it was reformatted into the present-day incarnation of Chief Wahoo. The name Chief Wahoo was eventually coined by sportswriters a few years after his creation. It’s interesting to consider that a logo widely described as racist and offensive made its first appearance during the season that the Cleveland Indians integrated -- the first American League team to do so, with Larry Doby.

Fascinating indeed. Notice that Lisco can't quite work up the courage to call Wahoo racist outright, since she knows that it was not intended to be racist. Instead "Chief Wahoo" is merely "widely described" as racist. It's not true, just a suspicion that "some people" have. We could say that there is a stereotype that Chief Wahoo is a negative-stereotype.

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Price Signals

Typically, baseball watchers put excellent starting pitchers into two categories: machines and beauties. Justin Verlander is a machine. Tim Lincecum is a beauty. Price splits that difference.

Each pitch Price throws becomes a separate athletic event from the others. He collects himself. He lifts his arms up passing them from the back to the front of the shoulder socket, shaking out the last pitch out of his system. He pulls on his uniform. And takes two big open-mouthed breaths. Huge exhales, with an unncessary shoulder shrug to go along with his final breath. He could almost be yawning. There is a hypnotic quality to the routine. Most pitchers have a pre-pitch ritual, but it might be subtle. By contrast the Indians' Carlos Carasco has a quick pump of his arms forward, ball in pitching arm in glove, and he sighs before each one. It's easy to miss. Each pitch seems to disappoint him, whereas Price seems genuinely jazzed to see his own stuff snap into the mitt.

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This is better than Major League.

–Indians closer Chris Perez on his teams 18-8 start, now 19-8. 

The Surprises of the AL Central

Quick. These are three headlines. All three are ludicrous, but only one is made up.

Raul Castro Proposes Term Limits For Cuban Politicians

Indians Keep Pace With Kansas City, Move to 10-4

Species of Freshwater Dolphin Discovered in Finger Lakes

Can you guess the fake one? I made up the fake one, and I have difficulty. All three are just so ridiculous. And yet we find ourselves in a world where the Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals are battling for the AL Central Division. Dogs and cats are getting along. The Sun rises in the west. The end times are upon us.

Last night, Cleveland beat Kansas City 7-3 in 10 innings, putting them two games ahead in the AL Central race, and giving them the best record in baseball (with the Rockies.) If the playoffs began today (a ridiculous thing to say, but not that much more ridiculous than “First Place Cleveland Indians”), the Royals would be in a playoff with the Angels for the Wild Card.

The Royals haven’t been this exciting since George Brett tried to remove Tim McClelland’s head from the rest of his body; the Indians haven’t been this good since Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughan was their closer.

The best thing about this? Nobody saw this coming.

‘On the other hand, the Indians and Royals will be spending yet another season in the so-called "rebuilding stage."’- Bleacher Report

Not these guys either:

“It’s been 26 years since the Royals have made the postseason, and 2011 does not look to be the year that the streak ends.- 5th in AL Central

The Indians are in a rebuilding phase and will need to add some veterans. They did not do much in the off-season, so the pickings could be slim when they realize what they have isn’t worth very much.- 4th in AL Central”- Intentional Foul

Or these:

“The Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals are in the midst of a rebuilding process, pitching and their batting lineups are not strong enough to compete for any division crown.”- MLB Clubhouse

Not a single ESPN baseball writer predicted these teams to be competitive. I don’t quote how wrong these guys are to make them look silly. I didn’t do an AL Central preview, but if I had it would have read something like “Expect the Indians to be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in the second week of May, and the Royals to finish in last place in the AL Central, and third at the Little League World Series.”

But nothing is so right as everyone being so wrong. It is so delicious to see these teams and their long suffering fans having a good beginning to the season. I hope they can hold it up all year. Can you imagine how Ozzie Guillen will lose his mind, night after night, if his White Sox (who nearly everyone predicted to win the division, including Buster Olney, Aaron Boone, and my three year old niece) have to finish out of playoff contention to a couple teams who weren’t supposed to be able to beat the 1993 Mets (and by that I mean not the Mets in 1993, but the 1993 Mets roster today.)

This was supposed to be rebuilding year. But these teams may actually be built.

PHOTO BY FLICKR USER D.L. ON A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE

Manny Before "Manny"

Yesterday was my birthday.  I spent most of the day watching sports- Celtic’s Scottish Cup semifinal, the Mets first win in a week, a really exciting Rangers playoff win.  It was a good day.

I also spent some time reflecting on birthdays past.  Eighteen years ago, my birthday present was a trip to a minor league game.  My dad brought my brother, myself, and a couple other guys who I don’t remember to see The New Britain Red Sox play the Canton-Akron Indians.

The game itself was not terribly memorable; I think the Sox lost.  The only reason I remember who they played was because one of the players on the away team- Manny Ramirez.

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I just wanted to go up there, have good at-bats, help the team and get a win... . I was definitely nervous.

-Grady Sizemore celebrates his return to baseball and to a compelling team by giving some of the most boring quotes imaginable.

Was Phillips Worth It?

MLB Trade Rumors examines the Brandon Phillips trade, five years into the deal.

In the five seasons since the trade, Phillips has hit .275/.326/.447, averaging 21 homers, 24 steals and 151 games per season, enough for 16.8 wins above replacement (42nd among MLB position players for that period). He has won two Gold Gloves (deservingly, according to UZR) and has a 30-30 season and two other 20-20 seasons to his name.

Yeah, I'd say the Reds did better with Phillips than the Indians have with Jeff Stevens, who became Mark DeRosa, who was used to acquire Chris Perez.

Cleveland Fans Aren't Bad, They Just Moved to Texas

There has been a lot of comment about the horrifyingly low attendance numbers for the Cleveland Indians at the start of this season. If you combined this past Saturday and Sundays crowds, the people who actually showed up, you could barely fill a third of the stadium. If you took the paid attendance it would fill about half. That's not just lost ticket sales, that makes it hard to break even on overprced concessions, on impulsively-bought merchandise, on lighting the damn field up.

And low attendance isn't a reflection of bad baseball. It's been stalking the team even when they were good.

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Everybody was hung out to dry. I didn’t know what to do. I was screaming from the bench, but I don’t know what I was saying.

–Ozzie Guillen, expressing in deeply existential terms, his bitter reaction at watching the Indians turn a triple-play against his White Sox this Sunday. Yeah, a triple play just did that to Ozzie. In his face.