Pretty soon I am going to see the standard replies from the usual suspects that that is what all the teams do. Well all the teams dont have such a weak payroll as does Dolan.

I note Jeff Manship's ERA hovering around 1, comes from a 30 year old who's appeared in half a dozen previous major league seasons and never finished with ERA below 5. That's why these guys hang around!

Hey civ, another stud pitcher who had a knack for giving up homers was mentioned by Manning (after Tomlin surrendered another blast) in tonight's game. BTW, again, it was a solo shot.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... itch.shtml

LOL, check out 1986 and 1987.

Tough loss tonight

Is .500 the glass ceiling the Tribe keeps bouncing off ?

re Blylevan: 46 and 50 are huge totals. And he managed perfectly league-appropriate ERA of 4.01 each of those two years. With runs at more of a premium now the home run tendency could be more risky but with Tomlin the bigger surprise yesterday was that he allowed a run without a homer being involved. That's rare for Josh

Back to .500 with a win tonight! Too bad they didn't start winning earlier in the season.

Coincidence or not, the winning (and run scoring for that matter) corresponded with the flurry of trades and influx of youngsters.

Chisenhall included in the influx. But don't sleep on Lindor of course, Almonte and Gomes has contributed lately as well.

Only 3 games back in the "all important" loss column!

Lindor is so much more than advertised. 9 homers in about half a season. OPS well over 800 as a 21 year old. And the fielding is every bit as good as anticipated. And he has fun out there. He probably won't win the ROY since Texas' Correa is a bigger hitter but there's not a young player outside of Harper or Trout who I'd rather build a team around. He does it all. Sure, there's going to have to be a sophomore or junior slump at a some point, but he has all the tools and the drive to be a megastar.

If we were to make the wild card position, if our pitching could surprise the teams ahead of us and if Lindor were to an important role in that he could win ROY.
Lot of "IFS" in this post!

Linked to the split stats for Lindor, I was pleasantly surprised that Lindor hits well from both sides of the plate. In fact, even better batting right handed! Boy, is that welcome on this team.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/9116/splits/

seagull wrote:Is .500 the glass ceiling the Tribe keeps bouncing off ?

They were 3-2 on April 9. That is the last time they were above .500!

Can Kluber put us over? Can we take 3 of 4 from the Royals?

Couple interesting notes:

Ventura went 3-0 with a 1.57 mark in his first five career starts against Cleveland before giving up five runs while walking four over 5 1/3 innings in a 7-5 loss at Progressive Field on April 29. Ventura has allowed eight runs and 16 hits over 11 innings in his last two starts. He's particularly struggled on the road this season, posting a 5.15 ERA in 11 outings

Jason Kipnis homered against Ventura in that April 29 contest, but the All-Star second baseman is batting just .179 over his last 28 games