Posts tagged EricWedge at FanHouse

With the Indians in full 2009 mode after trading CC Sabathia to the Brewers, there's a lot of speculation going around Cleveland about changes that will be made with the team. Some guys may have new addresses come August 1st, and players that are still on the team may have new roles.

One of the rumors going around is that shortstop Jhonny Peralta's days at shortstop may be numbered, and that the team is planning on moving him to third base in the future. It's a rumor Jhonny's manager Eric Wedge denies.

"He's our shortstop. I don't see us making any change anytime soon," Wedge said. "I see a guy who is doing everything he can to be the best he can be."

"As [first base coach]Luis [Rivera] has continued to get a better feel for the league and different players he's helped Jhonny better position himself. He's doing a better job of being in the right place at the right time. There is always going to be that ball that is just off the glove. But he's as good as anybody in the game, if not the best, at the routine play."

So Peralta is good defensively, but only if the ball is hit right at him? I understand Wedge wants to support his player (especially considering that player is hitting .341 with 5 homers and 20 RBI since moving to the cleanup spot), but a move to third base would make a lot of sense.

So now that the Cleveland Indians have shipped C.C. Sabathia off to Milwaukee, we can officially say that the Indians are done trying to win in 2008. The focus has now been moved to preparing this team for the 2009 season and trying to figure out which pieces fit into that picture, and which ones don't.

While none of us can see the future, there is something about this Indians team that most of us have known for quite a while, and that is the fact that Grady Sizemore will not be a lead-off hitter his entire career. When Grady first came up with the Indians, everybody knew he was destined to be a middle of the order type guy, but with the Indians monster lineup the last few seasons, there was no need to do it.

Well, it's time now. Grady has grown up and he's ready to be the guy the Indians build their lineup around. Travis Hafner's power and ability to make contact with the ball have magically* disappeared and there's no guarantee they'll ever come back, so there is an opening.

Eric Wedge is currently batting Ben Francisco third, and Jhonny Peralta in the clean-up spot (where Jhonny's been raking). Meanwhile, Sizemore has an OPS of .914 and leads the American League with 22 home runs, yet he only has 50 RBI. How can that be? Well, since Grady hits lead-off, 16 of his 22 taters have come with nobody on base.

The Cleveland Indians are struggling, and things keep getting worse. Players are going down to injuries left and right, the White Sox are at the top of the division, and if they don't pay attention they could end up behind Detroit AND Kansas City. So what's the cause? Who is to blame?

Well, Yankees Chick blames Kyle Farnsworth. Matt Snyder (Dugout SN: AlongCameASnyder) has his own ideas. But once again it is The Dugout who cuts through the melodrama and bias of sports writing on the Internet to bring you the true story; a story of intrigue that could only have been birthed in the depths of the most deductive scientific minds.

Join us for part 1 of 10 Little Indians, after the jump.

The Cleveland Indians haven't been having much luck with elbows lately, as the team recently found out they've lost starter Jake Westbrook for the season with an elbow problem, and now elbow problems may rob them of Victor Martinez for some time.

While it initially seemed like Martinez had re-injured the hamstring that landed him on the disabled list earlier in the year when he had to leave Wednesday night's game after running out a ground ball to first, it turns out that Victor aggravated an elbow injury he's been dealing with for a while now.

''Victor has been having right elbow soreness and pain,'' manager Eric Wedge said, adding that Martinez aggravated the injury on a swing. ''It's something he has been battling all year. But Victor is a tough cookie, one of the toughest players I've seen.

''They'll [MRI] scan him [Thursday], and we'll go from there. So we don't know how it will play out.''

Martinez wasn't available for comment after the game yesterday, but Wedge said the elbow has been bothering for a while, which may help explain why he's only been hitting only .208 in his last 21 games, and has seen his average drop from .356 on May 1st to it's current .278. The elbow is also probably a factor in Victor's lack of power this season, as he's yet to hit a home run after averaging over 20 a season the last four years.

The problems that the Cleveland Indians are having on offense this season can't all be pinned on one player in particular. It's really been an entire team effort, as there are only two players on the team who started on Opening Day who are currently hitting over .255 on the season. They are Grady Sizemore (checking in at a robust .258) and Victor Martinez, who is hitting .292.

Of course, even though Martinez has the highest batting average of all the Indians regulars (Ben Francisco is hitting .304, but he's only played in 26 games) he still hasn't been as productive as Sizemore. Grady may only be hitting .258, but he's slugging .488 and has an OPS of .859. Martinez, on the other hand, is slugging .351 with an OPS of .685.

Victor's career marks are .465 and .836. Of his 49 hits this season, 39 of them have been singles. The only extra base hits he's had are his 10 doubles, as Martinez is yet to hit a home run this season. Why the drop off in power for the catcher who's averaged 21 homers and 99 RBI over the last four seasons?

His manager, Eric Wedge, thinks it has a lot to do with the hamstring injury Martinez suffered on Opening Day against the White Sox.

You saw a glimpse of it earlier, thanks to Will's posting of Asdrubal Cabrera's unassisted triple-play on Monday, but that's not the only play Cabrera has made for the Indians in the field this season. His defense, be it at second base or at shortstop, has been hard not to notice. Particularly the last few days when Asdrubal filled in for the struggling Jhonny Peralta at short.

The difference between Cabrera and Peralta in the field is hard to miss. Asdrubal has more range to his left and right, and this was evident on quite a few plays over the weekend, and he's also garnered comparisons to former Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel. As a result, some people are wondering how much longer Jhonny has as the Indians shortstop.

"Asdrubal has a knack for getting big hits late in games, and his defense at short was outstanding," manager Eric Wedge said.

Wedge said the decision to play Cabrera a second consecutive game at short was due more to the Indians playing a doubleheader than to anything else.

Of course, when Wedge was flat out asked if Cabrera would be getting more time at shortstop, he only said that he'll continue to "mix him in."

Peralta's defense isn't the only thing hurting him, because it wasn't exactly his defense that the Indians originally fell in love with, it was his bat. A bat that has been hitting .208/.267/.383 this season, and just .130 in May. Peralta is also failing to drive in runs, as he's only hitting .143 with runners in scoring posiiton.

I don't expect Peralta to lose his job yet, as I'm not sure the Indians are ready to make Jamey Carroll their everyday second baseman. Still, after this season, who knows?

While coming into the 2008 season, the lineup in the AL Central that everybody seemed to be falling in love with was the Detroit Tigers, and it was hard to blame anybody for doing so. I mean, Magglio Ordonez, Curtis Granderson, Carlos Guillen, Gary Sheffield, and they added Miguel Cabrera? Damn. While I was interested in seeing what kind of astronomical numbers Detroit's lineup could produce, I was also pretty interested to see what the Cleveland Indians could do.

After all, this was a lineup that scored 811 runs last season, and did so without any real help from their big masher, Travis Hafner. I figured that Pronk had just had a down year in 2007, and that this year he would return to the form that saw him get MVP consideration in 2006.

That's not the case so far. After Cleveland's extra-inning victory over the Mariners on Thursday night, Hafner finds himself hitting .221/.314/.365. Those numbers are well below his career averages of .287/.394/.544. He's still driving in runs, as he does have 17 RBI already, but his lack of hitting has caused manager Eric Wedge to drop Pronk from the third spot in the order to the sixth.

"I feel like this young man is going to get back to where he needs to get to," Wedge said. "It's going to take a little bit of time and a lot of work. [Hitting coach] Derek Shelton and I have spent a lot of time together, and Derek has spent a lot of time with Travis talking about this. We're going to get him there and he's going to get himself there. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when."

The yearly awards are beginning to trickle out, and thank God; too much more Alex Rodriguez speculation might make one's head explode. Instead, let's honor something less exhausting and far less quantifiable: manager performance!

In two unsurprising hauls, the Arizona Diamondbacks' Bob Melvin in the NL, and the Cleveland Indians' Eric Wedge in the AL, were awarded manager of the year for their performances throughout the 2007 season.

The two awards are not identical in their merit, though. Melvin's honor comes from guiding the Diamondbacks to a mathematically confounding season, in which a young Arizona team outperformed their Pythagorean record by 11 games. Because managerial acuity sits nicely in the sweet spot where performance is difficult to quantify, Melvin's is a pretty good place to look when explaining the D-Backs' discrepancy.

On the other hand, Wedge's performance (no doubt aided by his scruffy whaler's beard) was steadier, more constant, so much grease on the considerable Cleveland Indians' wheels. Both managers deserve their awards, and both of teams they manage are likely to keep them winners for years to come.