Category: Cleveland Indians (Page 86 of 96)

Hey, at least they didn’t get swept, right? The Indians beat the White Sox 6-4 in 12 innings Sunday despite Bob Wickman’s best effort to give away the game in the 10th. After going 2-4 against the Twins and Sox last week, the Indians now find themselves 10.5 games behind Chicago and seven behind Minnesota in the Central standings with a series against the NL West-leading Padres up next. It ain’t lookin’ pretty, Tribe fans.

I guess someone had to take the heat for this mess. The Indians, who rank last in the American League in average, on-base percentage and runs scored, have fired hitting coach Eddie Murray. Manager Eric Wedge and general manager Mark Shapiro announced the firing after Saturday’s loss to the White Sox, naming minor league hitting coordinator Derek Shelton as Murray’s replacement until season’s end.

“We obviously have a tremendous amount of respect for what Eddie has accomplished in the game,” Wedge said, “but from an operations standpoint, we just felt like this was the best for our ballclub.”

It’s nice to finally see a little accountability from this team, but when are guys like Aaron Boone and Casey Blake going to have to take some responsibility for their pathetic numbers? It’s easy to throw Murray out there as the sacrificial lamb when the entire team is struggling, saying that he’s a poor communicator and that he’s “standoffish,” but nobody was complaining about him last season when the Indians owned the fifth-best offense in baseball. Eddie Murray is not the only reason this team continues to struggle, though as the hitting coach he certainly deserves some of the blame. Still, fingers should also be pointed at Eric Wedge, who writes Boone’s and Blake’s names on the line-up card almost every day, and Shapiro, who refuses to send Boone down despite his .160 average.

Sigh. Faced with the perfect opportunity to place themselves squarely in the middle of the AL Central race, the Indians instead find themselves 11.5 games out of first after losing to the White Sox 6-5 Saturday night. Victor Martinez continues to turn around his season, belting his fourth home run in his last six games, but it’s impossible to get excited about individual performances with the Indians slipping further and further out of contention.

I guess we just have to accept this garbage, because Wedge and ShapIRO refuse to do anything about it. The “Boone and Blake” show. How wonderful. Day in and day out, Wedge keeps putting them in and day in and day out, they keep screwing this team over. And for those of you who will ask, “If not Boone, who will play third?” WHO CARES?! You could get ANYBODY to bat higher than .150. Fifty-three games into the season is not a slump. Then there’s Dolan — “We’ll get free agents when fans starting coming to games….” Great. Does Wal-Mart say, “We’ll get good products when people start coming to our stores.” Of course not. And don’t give me this small market crap. This market, which includes Akron/Canton/Toledo/Youngstown, is NOT a small market. It’s a mid-market, and these idiots know it. I am not spending a DIME to see bums like Boone and Blake. This team and organization absolutely disgust me. I feel like it’s 1981 all over again — mediocre, if not bad, team, mediocre front office, and cheap owner who strangles the region by hanging on to a team he simply cannot afford, which clearly shows on the field.

So much for making up ground on the White Sox. The Indians lost the first game of this weekend’s big series in Chicago 6-4 Friday night. Coco Crisp had another big game, homering for the second-straight night and driving in three runs, but Jake Westbrook allowed four runs in the first and two more in the fifth to fall to 2-8 on the season. After evening out at .500 against Minnesota, the Indians have lost three-straight and, unless they can pull it together for these final two games of the series, they’re in danger of falling out of the Central race.