Archive for Guardians

Justin Masterson and the Indians played what many would consider an ideal Opening Day game through the first eight innings Thursday against Toronto. The offense produced a solid four runs off Ricky Romero, Masterson struck out 10 and got another 11 batters to ground out in an eight-inning, one-run masterpiece start, and the Indians carried a 4-1 lead into the ninth. But then they handed the ball to Chris Perez, and things went downhill in a hurry.

The Blue Jays needed just five batters to tie the game against Perez; he would face seven overall, allowing three runs on three hits and two walks, recording just two outs. Let’s take it hitter-by-hitter:

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The feud between Ubaldo Jimenez and Troy Tulowitzki reached a tipping point this past weekend. After an off-season in which the two took shots at each other through the media, Jimenez hit Tulowitzki with a fastball during a Spring Training game and nearly caused a brawl. While no one was ejected during the game, Bud Selig — who was there — took matters into his own hands. After Selig reviewed the incident, he suspended Jimenez for five days. While Major League Baseball may be trying to curb violence in the game, it’s unclear whether this was the right decision.

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Reports last night suggested that the Angels and Indians were working on a deal that would ship Bobby Abreu’s discontented soul to Cleveland. The deal has apparently fallen apart, and right now, it doesn’t look like Abreu’s going to get his wish to get out of Anaheim. However, Buster Olney raised an interesting question this morning:

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After sniffing success through the first half of last season, the Cleveland Indians have fully shifted into contender mode. Trading away promising, young starters Drew Pomeranz and Alex White for right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez cemented that transition for the organization, and the thirst for a postseason berth continued this winter with an early acquisition of veteran Derek Lowe.

Due to their expectations to contend in the AL Central and for a postseason berth, the spring training battle between Jack Hannahan and Lonnie Chisenhall for the starting third baseman role this year is incredibly interesting. It pits an average guy in Hannahan (who offers little in terms of upside or, historically, offensive production) against a former top prospect in Chisenhall (who is inexperienced and struggled last year, but has legitimate upside).

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This is the third of four stories on Major League Baseball and social media. You can read the first two stories here and here. Full disclosure: Major League Baseball Advanced Media employs FanGraphs contributor Paul Swydan, who wrote this series.

As the social-media revolution began, few major league franchises were fortunate enough to have a championship-caliber team. And perhaps only one was down the street from a company leading that charge. In 2010, the San Francisco Giants went on a historic World Series run while its neighbor was going on a run of its own. That company was called Twitter.

The close proximity between the baseball Giants and the social-media giant gave the team the online head start that perhaps no other team enjoyed — though several teams have now been able to replicate. And the rewards are still rolling in for those franchises.

Case in point: one of the first Tweetups organized by a club was one that the Giants hosted with Twitter founders Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, “They have been instrumental in helping us understand how to use Twitter to communicate and engage with fans,” says Bryan Srabian, the Giants’ social media director. Twitter, too, most certainly understood the value of a live baseball game.

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As Aaron Gleeman noted yesterday, it has been a rough week for Sizemores. Oakland third baseman Scott Sizemore tore his ACL, and much less surprisingly, yesterday it was reported that Cleveland center fielder Grady Sizemore will be out 8-12 weeks after a procedure on his back. Grady Sizemore’s story is probably well-known to most FanGraphs readers: from 2005 to 2008, he was one of best players in baseball.

Since then, he has been hampered by injuries and increasing ineffectiveness when he was able to take the field. It was not as if Cleveland was expecting a return to super-stardom for Sizemore when the team declined his 2012 option and then re-signed him for 2012 ($5 million deal with incentives). The team simply needed another outfielder as they try to make a run at the playoffs. But Sizemore is out for at least a couple of months, and probably at least half of the season. No player stands out as the obvious replacement. Let’s take a look at a few options, and what Cleveland stands to lose.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Cleveland is an incredibly difficult organization to rank. The system is one of the weakest among the 30 MLB organizations and a lot of the talent is fairly new, having been acquired in the past few seasons. Trades (such as the questionable one for Colorado’s faltering ace Ubaldo Jimenez) and poor draft decisions have led to limited depth – especially in the upper levels of the system. To be fair, the big league club has also enjoyed the graduations of some key talents, such as Lonnie Chisenhall, Jason Kipnis (both in 2011), and Carlos Santana (2010). The organization has filled some gaps with clever talent acquisitions via the international market. Out of all 30 organizations Cleveland had the biggest overhaul in Top 10 lists between 2010-11 and 2011-12 with Nick Hagadone as the only player that appears on both lists.

1. Francisco Lindor, SS
BORN: Nov. 14, 1993
EXPERIENCE: 1 season
ACQUIRED: 2011 1st round, Florida HS
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: NA

Lindor was considered by many to be the top shortstop prospect in the 2011 draft and the Indians organization eagerly grabbed him up with the eighth overall selection. He offers strong projection with the bat despite his slender frame. Plus bat speed helps him generate surprising power for his size and it’s easy for scouts to project 20 home run power if he fills out as expected. The Puerto Rico native, who attended high school in Florida, is also a solid defender with good fundamentals for his skill level. He has sure hands, good actions and a quick first step that helps his average speed play up, which gives him above-average range. Lindor will play the entire 2012 season at the age of 18 so the organization may be cautious with him and start him out in extended spring training. He’s expected to reach low-A ball at some point during the coming year.

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I have never cared much for the distinction of “Quad-A” — the thought that some players can be so precipitously worse just one rung higher in the organization seems somehow absurd or narrow-focused to me. But nonetheless, we have players such as Matt LaPorta who seem to fit the cliched mold all too well.

LaPorta — unlike most players designated Quad-A — was at one time a highly touted prospect and a first round draft pick. Though, as my colleague Dan Wade noted, LaPorta’s status has not led to success — rather, it has led to a likely exercising of his minor league option in 2012.

The Cleveland Indians are somewhat flush with major-league ready first baseman — though not necessarily All-Star first basemen (the glove-first Casey Kotchman; the positionless Russ Canzler; the not-quite-a-catcher Carlos Santana). Meanwhile, LaPorta has assembled nearly the same number of plate appearances in the majors (1008) as in the minors (1046), but has played nothing like his minor league self.

At this point, the question is not whether the Indians will send LaPorta to Triple-A — but rather will it do him any good?
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In 2008, the Milwaukee Brewers were one of the feel-good stories of the baseball season. They ended a 26-year postseason drought and brought October baseball back to the land of beer and cheese.

Milwaukee also made headlines when they orchestrated the blockbuster trade of the summer. To augment a starting rotation that lost young right-hander Yovani Gallardo earlier in the year to a torn ACL which he sustained in a freak injury against the Chicago Cubs, the Brewers sent first baseman Matt LaPorta, center fielder Michael Brantley, left-hander Zach Jackson, and right-handed reliever Rob Bryson to Cleveland in order to acquire their ace, CC Sabathia.

At the time, the four-prospect package was largely considered a steep price to pay for a half-year rental. Over three years later, though, how does that trade look?

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