Baseball is back and these are the three storylines to follow during the Cleveland Indians season.
The baseball season has finally been announced, there will be games played this summer and the boys from the Cuyahoga will be suiting up after all. The Cleveland Indians are setting out alongside every other 29 teams in the Majors for a shot at a playoff birth in this upcoming 60 game season. After those 60 games, then the playoffs begin. With all eyes on the eventual World Series championship.
Whether it’s 60 games or 162 games, the end game of any season is to win the World Series and to get there you usually have to go through a bit of a roller-coaster season. In years past, the season was a long, grueling marathon. More akin to a slow jog over the course of many miles. This year, however, think of the season more like Top Thrill Dragster over at Cedar Point. Fast, violent, bumpy and you’re not entirely sure if you’re getting over the apex of the ride.
With every season, long or short, there come questions about the team. Who will step up, who won’t? What injuries could develop and is this the year where the mascots finally stage their government coup d’etat? I’d vote for Czar Slider. You know, cus I’d have to.
Questions that develop throughout the year, that play a hugely important factor in the season’s identity turn into more of a storyline. A developing situation that ebbs and flows, that changes with each at-bat, or each passing win and loss.
These Indians will have many storylines to follow. Be it the trade of a possible future Hall of Famer, or if an unheralded star will rise from obscurity to take the mantel of Cleveland’s best like others have in the past. So with all that said, these are the three storylines that Indians fans will wanna keep an eye on.
Will Francisco Lindor be traded?
Ever since it was revealed that Francisco Lindor wanted stupid-money in free agency, it’s become clear the team won’t re-sign him. Beyond that, it’s clear that Lindor doesn’t want to re-sign here. The multi-time All-Star has apparently cut off ties with the club throughout the offseason as the team continued to try and offer him deal after deal to get him to stay. Lindor apparently has declined all calls from the front office according to league sources.
Now Lindor has two years left on his deal and teams may or may not want to take a gamble on him. Considering how long, and how few options guys like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado really had, it seems odd that Lindor would be so cavalier in his desire to hit the open market at the price he’s rumored to want. Teams like the Yankees and Red Sox aren’t putting up that kind of money anymore to sign free agents.
Especially not the Red Sox, who just traded franchise star Mookie Betts this past offseason due to the enormity of his contract demands. So the rest of the time Lindor is in Cleveland will be filled with “do we trade him or not?”
The other problem with trading Lindor is the idea of value. It comes down to two trains of thought. 1. Get whatever we can for him.
2. Use his skills to help us win for as long as we have him.
In one idea, you get the best deal you can and hope the rest of the team is good enough without him (it should be) to keep winning. After all, offense wins games, but pitching wins championships. The Nationals let their “best” hitter go and they won it all last year. Who says the Indians couldn’t do the same thing.
On the other hand, keeping Lindor and letting him walk is a sign that the team is committing to the fans to give the club the best chance of winning in the short term. Keywords, short term. By trading Lindor the team can get back assets that can help extend the window indefinitely if used correctly.
Will the team get off to a slow start?
The Indians have a nasty habit of starting off slow, have you ever noticed that? Doom and gloom hover over the fanbase until about June or so when all of a sudden a burst of talent and energy erupts and the team all of a sudden gets their collective heads out of their collective butts.
Under Terry Francona the Indians have had, shall we say, a sleepy spring? The team routinely starts off slow throughout March (when applicable), April and May, resulting in a record of 190-183 over Francona’s past seven seasons as club skipper. That’s barely a 51% winning percentage in the first two months of the season. How many games are usually in the first two months? Glad you asked; 52 games on average.
That means if the Indians are going to follow suit like the last seven years under Francona, and start off slow, then this team won’t be seeing the postseason this year. Now maybe, it’s only a percentage of games and not necessarily a totality. Meaning that the Tribe would only struggle for 32% of the games played. That gives the team about 40 games to turn things around.
It’s also entirely possible that the Indians’ future Hall of Fame manager Francona does all sorts of things differently in 2020 and the slow start ends up being an irrelevant piece of interesting trivia. Maybe this team goes 50-10 or 55-5 throughout the shortened season because Francona opts not to play it safe.
The team is going to have to come out swinging, regardless of the spring-time usuals. The club can’t afford to fall behind fast and early, because the odds this team puts together another 22-game winning streak isn’t very likely.
What young players, if any, will step up?
I mean, not really. It’s more like “…will there be at least one?” That’s the question that the fanbase should really ask. It seems like every year for a while now there’s always one person that explodes out of nowhere and becomes this next great star. Someone with some talent sure, but not the guy many expected or thought possible. Your Michael Brantley’s, Corey Kluber’s, Shane Beiber’s, Jason Kipnis’ types.
Over the years, we’ve heard all sorts of things about Matt LaPorta, Andy Marte, Francisco Lindor, and even Jose Ramirez to a degree. Yet when some guys made it up to the majors, something ended up not working out for them. Added on to that, some of the Tribe’s best prospects over the last few years, Clint Frazier, Justus Sheffield, and Francisco Mejia all got traded away for relievers. Not exactly the best use of your farm system, yet here we are. Making it all the much more important someone unheralded steps up.
For instance, in years past, when the team waited for LaPorta to turn into a star but instead found Brantley. This year the team will keep waiting for Bradley Zimmer to turn into the guy he’s supposed to. Will a Jake Bauer, Tyler Naquin, Frammil Reyes, or Oscar Mercado be the next guy to break out? What about pitching-wise? Who’s going to join Beiber, Carlos Carrasco, and Mike Clevenger? Will it be Zach Plesac, Scott Moss, or Aaron Civale?
There’s a lot of possibilities but there’s not a lot of certainties. Be it in the rotation, the bullpen or the lineup, someone is going to have to step up and play in a way that was unexpected if this team has a hope of making the World Series.