2020 Wild Card Series - Cleveland Indians vs. New York Yankees

[macbdog]

And be on some other team next year.

Well of course he will be they traded him.

 

[Kiddo]

The Indians should have a very deep rotation next season.

Bieber, Plesac, Carrasco are the top three and then you have Civale, McKenzie, Quantrill, Allen and Moss fighting for two spots.

Convert 1-2 of the guys who don't win rotation spots into relief guys, get Clase back and possibly bring up some of the young guys who weren't able to pitch this year to add to Karinchak, Wittgren and Maton and you should have a deep bullpen even without Hand.

The lineup... who knows. I think Santana, Lindor and Hernandez are all gone. Naquin and DeShields *should* be gone. Mercado they could maybe try and get right because of his defensive skills. Luplow is a fine cheap platoon option.

C: Roberto Perez/Austin Hedges platoon
1B: Josh Naylor
2B: Jose Ramirez
SS: ?
3B: ?
LF: Jordan Luplow
CF: ?
RF: Franmil Reyes
DH: ?

A whole bunch of holes to fill and not a whole lot of intriguing options near the majors to fill them depending on how you feel about guys like Bobby Bradley, Jake Bauers and Daniel Johnson.

These guys will all be on the roster next year and it very likely will be an improvement over this season

Nolan Jones
Daniel Johnson
Bobby Bradley
Jake Bauers
Tyler Freeman
Yu Chang

 

[col63onel]

Proud of the fight on the team. But our best pitchers shit the bed and then we had an awful strike zone last night. If Naylor and Oscar kept this up to any degree, we might've have the offense to really make a run.

Honestly, this might not even rank in the top 5 playoff disappointments. 07 and 17 were more painful for sure. 99 was pretty bad. 95, 97 and 16 were way more fun, but probably all ended more bitterly. Hell, even 98 stings because we had a 2-1 on the best team in MLB history and blew it.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Tough to end it that way with basically every pitcher having their worst results of the season.

Crazy game, baseball is.

Still, I enjoyed all the wins along the way, and talking baseball with you guys.

It will be an interesting offseason, but the team is certainly set up well moving forward.

I will probably be more of a lurker for the foreseeable future. Landed my dream job last week, and it’s going to be incredibly time consuming.

Love all you miserable people

I'm going to be miserable not having you around to disagree with every single one of my posts while citing small sample size almost every time. Don't work too hard and check back in when possible.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

The Indians should have a very deep rotation next season.

Bieber, Plesac, Carrasco are the top three and then you have Civale, McKenzie, Quantrill, Allen and Moss fighting for two spots.

Convert 1-2 of the guys who don't win rotation spots into relief guys, get Clase back and possibly bring up some of the young guys who weren't able to pitch this year to add to Karinchak, Wittgren and Maton and you should have a deep bullpen even without Hand.

The lineup... who knows. I think Santana, Lindor and Hernandez are all gone. Naquin and DeShields *should* be gone. Mercado they could maybe try and get right because of his defensive skills. Luplow is a fine cheap platoon option.

C: Roberto Perez/Austin Hedges platoon
1B: Josh Naylor
2B: Jose Ramirez
SS: ?
3B: ?
LF: Jordan Luplow
CF: ?
RF: Franmil Reyes
DH: ?

A whole bunch of holes to fill and not a whole lot of intriguing options near the majors to fill them depending on how you feel about guys like Bobby Bradley, Jake Bauers and Daniel Johnson.

I agree with this and would suggest trading for Clint Frazier to DH (I hear he's an awful outfielder). If he can't get playing time with the Yankees we'll take him back.

Mercado in center. Give him a full spring training (hopefully) and see if he can get back to where he was last year. Or platoon him in center with Daniel Johnson. I agree DeShields needs to go. I can't stand to keep watching him break the wrong way.

As for 2B and SS, we should get one guy in the Lindor trade who can start immediately and then sign a journeyman vet for the other spot. If Chang tears it up in Arizona then give him a shot.

 

[DCTribefan]

Rewatched the painful 9th inning this morning. Hand definitely struck out Torres but no call on inside corner at knees. Would it have made a difference? We’ll never know.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Well another season has gone by and I figured they would lose tonight the way yesterday went, but honestly the amount of walks in today's game really stated the umps was the hitters friend and the Indians had multiple guys who they legitimately struck out that the ump didn't call out. Hand had a strikeout in that 9th inning, and Urshela was struck out before he hit the HR. Glad to see the fight in the guys especially the pinch hit from Luplow.

Yeah, the Indians' pitchers were getting squeezed and that non-strike call to Urshela was egregious. After starting with fastballs Karinchak threw his first curve and it broke so much the umpire totally missed the call. It was a strike above the knees and the three-dimensional graphic showed the entire ball was well within the zone. The announcers just stared at it speechlessly. I think somebody mumbled something like, "He got a break there". It was embarrassing and it may have cost the Indians four runs. (By the way, I love that three-dimensional graphic. Wish they had it every game).

However, give the Yankees credit. For the second straight night they refused to chase pitches out of the zone. You can't expect to win any game allowing 12 walks in 9 innings. It seemed to me the Indians' pitchers were intimidated. Hoynes wrote that by the fourth inning it looked like Carrasco was "scared out of the strike zone". It's just as likely the misplay by DeShields broke his composure, but as a veteran he should have been able to just concede the run and get three outs.

If the Indians pitchers had been more aggressive and challenged the hitters with more pitches in the zone I don't know what would have happened. But the end result was 21 earned runs in two games so I don't know how it could have been worse.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Absolutely. Both he and DeShields should be non-tendered. Daniel Johnson needs to be given a chance to platoon with Luplow in RF.

I'd platoon Johnson in center with Mercado and play Luplow every day. He's starting to show he can hit right-handed pitching and the more he faces the better he'll get.

 

[DCTribefan]

I'd platoon Johnson in center with Mercado and play Luplow every day. He's starting to show he can hit right-handed pitching and the more he faces the better he'll get.

I’m coming around to Luplow too although his August sure tried my patience.

 

[CDAV45]

Tough to end it that way with basically every pitcher having their worst results of the season.

Crazy game, baseball is.

Still, I enjoyed all the wins along the way, and talking baseball with you guys.

It will be an interesting offseason, but the team is certainly set up well moving forward.

I will probably be more of a lurker for the foreseeable future. Landed my dream job last week, and it’s going to be incredibly time consuming.

Love all you miserable people

Congrats on the new job and check in when you can. I appreciate the conversations.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

The Indians really got screwed by luck that game.

1. The rain delay. Carrasco said he pitched about two innings to stay loose until the game could be restarted and that was a factor in him running out of gas in the 4th. Also, DeShields said even after misjudging the ball initially he would have caught if he had not slipped on the wet grass trying to reverse his direction. Maybe, I don't know. But he definitely fell down.

2. The wind was blowing strongly out to right field. The only ball I thought it really affected was the home run by Sanchez. It looked like routine fly to right until Naquin kept drifting back and back until he ran out of room. The announcers were shocked. They all thought it was an easy out. The wind gifted the Yankees two runs in a one-run loss. The Indians did not hit any fly balls to right that were blown over the fence.

3. With runners on first and second and nobody out in the 9th, on a check swing the ball hit the bat and bounced off home plate high in the air to the back of the mound. Hand appeared to stumble on the rubber and then was backing up going downhill and couldn't catch the ball cleanly. I've never seen that happen before. If Hand catches that ball and gets a force at second or an out at first we probably win. Gardner's strike out would have been the second out and Sanchez' sacrifice fly would have ended the game with a 9-8 win.

Between the rain, the wind, and a lucky bounce on a check swing at the worst time the Indians couldn't catch a break. But like I said earlier, you can't expect to win if you walk 12 batters. Indians pitchers never figured out that nibbling around the edges wasn't going to work against this team of very patient veteran hitters and it resulted in 21 runs in two games. Victory does not go to the faint of heart.

 

[TFIR]

Thought it interesting Carrasco said he "threw 2 innings" during the rain issues. Still, if at all possible I would have let him get out of the trouble himelf. (Yeah, I know, we go by the numbers) He is a veteran - and only the DeShields misplay was his problem in the inning.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Gio Urshela pretty much won this game by himself. The grand slam on a 96 mph fastball on the inside corner at the knees was an amazing swing. Then the key single in the 9th inning rally on an 0-2 pitch off the outside corner that he threw the bat at to make contact, but managed to line it up the middle. Finally, the Gold Glove caliber double play to save at least one run and possibly more.

Glad to see he's become a great player after two organizations gave up on him, but too bad he had maybe the best game of his career against us in the playoffs.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Thought it interesting Carrasco said he "threw 2 innings" during the rain issues. Still, if at all possible I would have let him get out of the trouble himelf. (Yeah, I know, we go by the numbers) He is a veteran - and only the DeShields misplay was his problem in the inning.

He was over 70 pitchers plus the pitches he threw during the delay. The first batter of the inning crushed a line drive that DeShields screwed up. By the way, Statcast had that drive rated as being caught 99% of the time. Then Cookie walked the next two hitters. Between the pitch count, the rain delay, and getting beat by the first three batters it was time to lift him.

I thought it was unfair to bring in a rookie in that situation but Alomar said it was pre-planned. They were looking for strikeouts and he's their guy. Unfortunately he was too amped up and couldn't get his pitches over. He threw a fastball on the edge of the zone and down to Urshela, but he just put a great swing on it.

Both Bieber and Karinchak were making their first playoff appearances in high pressure situations. They didn't respond well but I'm confident they'll perform much better next time.

 

[DCTribefan]

I’ve tried to give Sandy the benefit of the doubt all season but his in-game decision-making is too often baffling. I honestly believe he failed in his audition to be Tito’s replacement.