Cleveland Indians: 3 takeaways from the first White Sox series

The Cleveland Indians win another series but drop the last game against the dastardly Chicago White Sox.

The Cleveland Indians took two out of three against the Chicago White Sox in the first series of uber-short 2020 season. The pitching looked phenomenal, again, but the offense didn’t come through in game three of the series, resulting in a 4-0 loss.

The Indians need to keep winning series, and hopefully sweeping some, in order to keep pace with the Minnesota Twins. With the situation with the Miami Marlins more than likely costing them playable games, the Indians need to make every series count if they hope to make the postseason. After all, they could very easily find themselves giving up three, four, or five games to the ravages of the schedule like the Marlins may have to.

The Indians can’t afford to have games taken away from them due to an outbreak. Sure, it’s fine for the Marlins, they weren’t going to the playoffs but the Tribe are. That means the team has to make sure each series is taken advantage of properly. They can’t afford bad losses. There are holes they need to fix, and that’s why we’re talking about what we learned from the first White Sox series.

Here are three things we learned from the White Sox series.

Bradley Zimmer deserves more time.

Domingo Santana has had a solid start to his season but looking at the rest of the outfielders start, it’s perplexing why Bradley Zimmer isn’t getting more opportunities. He’s played every game so far but has only half the number of at-bats that Jose Rameriez and Francisco Lindor have. With how stagnant the offense has been at times, you’d think Terry Francona would try starting him instead of just bringing him to pinch-hit.

Jose Ramirez looks like an MVP again.

Jose Ramirez seems to have found his 2018 and 2017 form again. Hitting .435, Ramirez is the only player after the first White Sox series, besides Cesar Hernandez, to play every game and hit over .300. Not even Lindor has been that steady. In fact, Lindor is on the other end of the spectrum, barely over the Mendoza Line. While the pitching can carry the team to the World Series, the team will need to score. Thankfully Ramirez looks like a catalyst to some offense. Right now the goal should be to score enough runs to win every series. That shouldn’t be too hard, assuming Ramirez keeps this pace up and someone, anyone, steps up too.

Too early to panic about Brad Hand

Brad Hand had a rough night on Wednesday, giving up four runs and earning the loss for the Indians. While it’s curious why Francona brought him out when it wasn’t a save situation, the White Sox have a potent offense. Him getting blasted once isn’t the worst thing that’s happened. He’s had three appearances, and two of which were save-situations that he both times locked up. Yes, he gave up one run in one of those situations, but the end game isn’t to win by a X-number of runs but just to simply win. Right now Hand has been able to help get the Indians two wins so far. Hand should get right, so as of right now it’s nothing to worry about.