Seeing as how it's a battle for second place in the division now, I'll share my thoughts on this season:
1) Regardless of what anyone says, we were snake-bitten by injuries this year. First off, Choo missed a very large part of the year, which kept him from ever getting in a consistent rhythm. When your team struggles offensively as is, you can't afford to lose a .300 BA/20 HR/90 RBI player for more than half of the year. Then you add in Pronks battles with injuries, Gradys continued struggles with injuries (despite starting off the year red hot). Then on top of those injuries, we had injuries later in the year to one of our teams strongest points, which is pitching. Carrasco went down (and will ultimately have Tommy John surgery so he's probably going to be out all of next season as well) follow by Tomlin going down, and after Alex White was called up he went down with an injury too. I know you can't blame everything on injuries, but the baseball Gods sure weren't kind to us in that regard.
2) I liked what I saw from a lot of our young players. Brantley looked good before his injury, Santana has been a nice surprise despite his atrocious batting average, Zeke Carrera has looked like a formidable 4th outfielder, Kipnis has looked very good, displaying great power and plate discipline, and of course, Asdrubal Cabrera has exploded onto the scene and been outstanding this year. The future looks very bright based on these core players. Then we have the young pitchers, Justin Masterson has been out-freaking-standing this year. If he could have gotten more run support this year, he would've been in the Cy Young conversation. Josh Tomlin looks like a good #3 at best (more than likely a very good #4) and not to mention the outstanding bullpen this year (Pestano/R. Perez/J. Smith/Herrmann/Sipp/Hagadone/C. Perez). We'll need to shore up the starting rotation for next year, but we look to be set there, too.
3) We're ahead of schedule. People can say we're only a .500 team because of our start (which is true) but that doesn't change the fact that we're sitting at .500 right now. We were expected to be fighting to stay out of the basement this year, so being in the pennant chase as long as we were plus being .500 right now is light years ahead of where we were expected to be. While that may not mean much to some people, I think the experience this season has given our young players will be more important than most people realize. They've gotten a taste of pennant chase baseball, while also getting major league playing time under their belt. Hopefully, this will help our young players improve in certain areas next year (ie, Santana and Chisenhalls batting average, etc).
Now for things we need to take care of before next year:
1) First and foremost, we need at least one right handed bat. Two would be ideal, but we need at least one right handed power bat. We need someone from the right side of the plate who can drive in runs and help add some protection to the middle of our lineup (Cabrera and Santana would be lethal if they had some protection in the lineup). I've heard David Wrights name thrown around, but I'm not sure we have the prospects to pull that off, plus if he's traded his player option for 2013 is voided. I'm not sure who the answer is here, but we need someone.
2) We need to find another starter to add to the rotation. I'm ready to give up on Fausto Carmona. If we release him and he goes somewhere else and becomes a multiple Cy Young award winner, so be it, he hasn't done **** for us (besides 2007). He has a million dollar arm, but a ten cent head. He has no confidence in himself, and if he gets off to a rough start he just gets shelled (see the Detroit game where he went 1 and 1/3 innings and gave up 8 runs and a boatload of hits). He's just too damn inconsistent to be relied upon as a starter on a team that'll be fighting for first place in the division. Then you factor in Carrasco having Tommy John surgery so we won't have him next year and we need to add some guys at the back of our rotation. We have some guys who could possibly meet that criteria in David Huff, Jeanmar Gomez, and Zach McCallister, but I'd like to see if we could bring in someone more proven to put in that #3 hole ahead of Tomlin. Plus, it'd be nice to add another southpaw to our rotation seeing as how everyone currently in it minus Huff is a righty. We have a formidable #1 and #2 with Ubaldo Jimenez and Justin Masterson so we need guys behind them to help get wins and keep the bullpen fresh.
3) This may surprise some of you, but as ready to wash my hands of Fausto Carmona as I am, I am as equally reluctant to rid ourselves of Grady Sizemore. He's been nothing short of useless these last 3 season due to injury, but I still think if he can take an off season and rehab his knee properly, then couple that with the fact that if we do get another offensive threat or two (meaning he won't have to do as much offensively/carry the whole offense as much) that he's worth keeping around. If healthy, he's a great defender in center field, and he can be a great lead-off hitter if he has good hitters behind him. He may never return to his old form, but if he can manage to get on base at a decent clip and continue to play good defense, I think he's worth keeping around. And, well, who else could we get to play center field on a daily basis? I don't feel comfortable with Zeke/Duncan/Crowe being everyday players.
What do you guys think of a lineup like this:
Batting order:
Grady Sizemore, CF
Jason Kipnis, 2B
Asdrubal Cabrera, SS
(Right Handed bat here), 1B(?)
Travis Hafner, DH
Carlos Santana, C/1B
Shin-Shoo Choo, RF
Michael Brantley, LF
Lonnie Chisenhall, 3B
Starting rotation:
Ubaldo Jimenez
Justin Masterson
Fausto Carmona*
Josh Tomlin
Jeanmar Gomez*
* implies someone who could be replaced depending on what the team decides to do this off season
PS: Sorry if this is incoherent rambling, it's 5 in the morning as I type this out, I can't sleep so I figured I'd give my insight on the team.
08-05-2011, 01:57 AM
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