2015 Indians Opening Week Cleansing PSA

Source: YouTube

Indians fans, hang in there, it is going to be okay. Lets go through the bad bullet points to get it out of our system:

• Starting elite catcher gone until the end of June.
• MVP caliber left fielder is nursing a sore back.
• The number four and five starters couldn't get anyone out in the first two innings.
• Your Cy Young Ace is 0-1 despite pitching well in both starts.
• Your team is already losing before the offense gets to hit.
• This highly touted bullpen seemingly imploded in front of you eyes.
• Anytime your offense scores a run the opposition scores right back

Most of you probably felt like my good friend from Billy Madison: Old Man Clemens watching the first innings of the weekend series against Detroit.

But do not worry my feathered faithful. Good things still happened this weekend. The fact of the matter is this. Detroit kicked the Indians' butt. There is almost something psychological going on with them right now. In poker (I'm now two for two with shoehorning poker references into these articles) there is a term called levelling. Levelling basically is the following. Always thinking ahead of your opponents current thought process and then acting accordingly based on that thought. It can get very complex as the levels can go on forever. In the Indians case, they know that Detroit knows they think that they can't beat them. To borrow another term from poker, "scared money never wins". That is the biggest thing that is working against the Tribe right now. They know that Detroit owns them.

To borrow a funny meme from a friend of mine:

@PLuhtaTSR on Twitter

But the good news is, that is now over with. Everyone just needs to really just forget about that weekend. The ballpark looks beautiful and from a first hand point of view the new remodels look amazing and has really brought an "event like" feeling to that right field corner. On top of that some things did happen that should at least encourage some people. 

McAllister: Not actually that bad

I will preface this with the following, I have not looked at anything from Zach McAllister's outing. I could be completely off the mark here. I'm just going off of what I saw watching the ballgame live in the park. McAllister appeared to be a victim of some poor defense and some BABIP bad luck. I can think of only a few balls that were smoked. On top of that, he allowed 13 hits, but only two extra base hits, a double to Yoenis Cespedes and a wind aided home run to Nick Castellanos (that might have been gone regardless, like I said, didn't look at any advanced metrics). There appeared to be a lot of balls hit where fielders weren't, and some of those hits were not particularly hard hit. The ball that dropped between Michael Brantley and Jose Ramirez specifically, Brantley did not make a very good effort. We can probably just chalk that up to the bad back I'd assume. Ramirez just seemed to never be in the right spot for some of these ground balls Friday and it was just a rough one all around for all Indians fielders. That is without me even mentioning the comedic impersonation of a right fielder that David Murphy displayed.

Sometimes baseball just happens.

Indians Hit A Lefty: #RightHandedPower??

David Price is really good. After all the nonsense about not being able to hit left handed pitching the Indians did the unthinkable and hit one of the best left handed pitchers in the league. This will not stop the outcries for another right handed stick but this is something tangible that people can point to, it actually did happen. Jerry Sands probably is not Manny Ramirez playing right field. He is probably a lot more like Ryan Raburn but it was nice to see him do something positive. It could be even more important now that Yan Gomes is on the shelf. This is the positive section of this article though. For as much as it seems Raburn is only on this team until Nick Swisher and/or Tyler Holt/Zach Walters return he did have some good swings Saturday and Sunday. Do I think he should be on this team? No, but it was still nice to see.

Off Days

The off days on Monday and Thursday could not be coming at a better time. Which is sad to say being only six games in but it really should be viewed as a positive. The Indians really need to just get these two games over with and get out of town and really start to find their identity as a ball club. Right now that is all up in the air. They are banged up and need to sort through some things. Almost hit the reset button on this season. Obviously the six games still count in the standings but really they need to start fresh with the team they're going to have going into Minnesota on Friday. I'm assuming that Corey Kluber is the starter Friday followed by T.J. House and then Carlos Carrasco. I don't know who Minnesota is running out there but I also don't care much. I like the Indians chances in that series.

Lastly

Baseball is back people. It is not always pretty, but even when it's bad it's still really good.

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