The best part about the game of baseball is that, no matter the outcome on any given night, you get to wake up and do it again the next day. The worst part about baseball is when you wake up and your schedule is wide open. Such is the case for the Indians for the next, oh, 188 days.

2014 was quite the roller coaster year for Tribe fans. We ended the season with a record of 85-77, our first back-to-back winning seasons in 13 years. We saw Corey Kluber and Michael Brantley emerge as top players at their respective positions. We put up a statue of one of the most revered Indians of all time and celebrated 25 years with the second best radio voice in baseball. Our ballpark will house a new two-story bar, a statue honoring the first African-American player in the American League, glass-walled raised bullpens, an expanded Kids Clubhouse and five local neighborhood-themed areas in 2015.

Our 2013 All-Star second baseman dealt with an oblique injury and slashed .240/.310/.330 after signing a 6-year extension in April. Our starting pitchers, while excellent in the second half, sported a 4.49 ERA in the first, good for 26th in the majors. After signing him to be a middle-of-the-order power bat in 2013, we paid Nick Swisher $1,875,000 per home run he hit this season (8). Another middle-of-the-order power bat, Carlos Santana, hit a whole 7 points above the Mendoza line in the first half. We had the worst defense since Doug Allison first used an actual baseball glove for the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1870.

We had our ups, we certainly had our downs. But the bottom line is that only two of our 162 games were “meaningless”. That ain’t bad.

 

AROUND THE HORN

CATCHER – Yan Gomes, ladies and gentlemen. After a solid 2013 campaign and a contract extension, people were concerned whether Gomes could continue to produce when handed the backstop reins for a full season.

 

Bye, Haters. Gomes stats, with his MLB rankings among qualified catchers in parentheses: .278 BA (4th), 21 HR (3rd), 74 RBI (3rd), .472 SLG (2nd), 121 wRC+ (3rd; Weighted Runs Created Plus where 100 is average), 4.6 WAR (3rd). He did commit 14 errors, but some of those are balls that should be picked by middle infielders, and we all know the Yanimal has a hose. His 12.4 Def rating from FanGraphs put him 3rd among catchers.

Good year for Roberto Perez as well. Statistically he doesn’t jump off the page, but he’s solid defensively and will only benefit from more ABs at the big league level. It shows that Tito has some confidence in him with Santana’s catching days all but over. He should be back in Cleveland in 2015.

FIRST BASE – Not too much change here. After an abysmally slow start, Carlos Santana ended up tying his career high in homers (27) and setting a new high in RBI (85) and walks (113, led the majors). And while some (most) of the metrics don’t necessarily support it, I know personally I was comfortable with him defensively at first. He had the least amount of errors from Indians regulars in the infield (5).

Jesus Aguilar was one of Francona’s go to call ups later in the year. The kid absolutely mashes minor league pitching, knocking in 105 runs in AA in 2013 and 77 in Columbus this year. He certainly has the potential to become an important bat in the Indians lineup, I’m just not convinced he’s very close to being there yet.

SECOND BASE – Here’s where things start to get a little interesting. I don’t need to summarize how badly Jason Kipnis struggled this year for anyone who watched the Tribe consistently. I’m not extremely worried about that. He was battling an oblique injury all year, which is a classic “Quit being a pussy!”-from-fans-and-“Ouch.”-from-people-who-have-actually-played-baseball type injury, as well as a hamstring issue at the end. He might not consistently put up his 2013 numbers over the next six years but he’s a much better player than his 2014 stats indicate.

That being said, Kip needs to be moved to the outfield when top prospect Francisco Lindor is ready for the bigs. He doesn’t have great range by any means. His turns on double plays are beyond slow. I’ll talk about Jose Ramirez below but him and Lindor up the middle would probably be the best double play combo we’ve had since Omar and Robbie Alomar. Kip was an All-American outfielder at Arizona State and would be just fine if we stuck him in RF. His bat, when he’s on, would be fine production from a corner OF and his speed would play even more to his advantage with a much larger area to roam out there.

THIRD BASE – 

I really don’t know where the Tribe goes here. I’ve never been a big believer in Lonnie Chisenhall. He had a decent year offensively, but take away May and June and it turns to average pretty quick. His major problem was the glove. Of his 18 errors, 10 were throwing, 8 were fielding and 6 resulted in broken TV remotes. You simply can’t justify putting him out there defensively every night when he was statistically the second worst defensive third baseman in the bigs.

Good luck, Tito. The Santana experiment was a failure. I don’t think Ramirez has the arm for third, nor does Kipnis. You have Giovanni Urshela at AAA Columbus, who could either be a future Gold Glove winner or never even make it to the bigs. Unless we are going to clear out our wallets here for a free agent (we won’t), we’re looking at names like Alberto Callaspo and Donnie Murphy. Time to earn that season-long supply of Lancaster.

SHORTSTOP – Behind the day we cut Chris Perez, trading Asdrubal at the deadline this year could possibly be the most relieved I’ve ever been as an Indians fan. I just couldn’t take seeing him swing at a 58-foot first pitch curveball with runners on anymore. I couldn’t. So trading him was awesome, and the job Jose Ramirez did after that was even more awesome. That little kid can fly, man. He has good at-bats, gets on base, isn’t afraid to swipe one and always runs hard. And his defense. His defense. Watching him play shortstop after seven years of Asdrubal was like your first sip of Great Lakes beer after drinking skunked Natty you hid in the woods at every middle school party. He gets to balls in the hole that Cabrera would have “noped” after one step. He doesn’t have a cannon arm but his hands make up for it. I love watching this kid play. Whenever Lindor is ready, this kid needs to be playing second base every day.

OUTFIELD – Left field. Michael Brantley. That’s all.

Michael Bourn was not all that bad in center when he was healthy. There’s no denying he’s getting older and further away from the time when he was one of the best defensive outfielders in the game. But like Santana, even though some metrics disagree, I’m comfortable with him out there. I do think Tito needs to change how he’s used offensively though. I know he’s been a lead-off hitter his whole career but it’s time to kick him down to the bottom of the order. Let a young spark plug who can still run (see: SHORTSTOP) set the table at the top. Bournie just can’t run like he used to. He’s also a fucking TERRIBLE bunter. Need to be able to get runners over for the heart of the order.

The right field platoon of David Murphy and Ryan Raburn went about as averagely as you could have hoped. They both battled some injuries. Murphy was actually pretty productive with runners on, hitting .326 with runners on base and .360 when they were in scoring position. Raburn was just bad. Not many other ways to describe it. His ABs slipped, due to both injuries and Tito’s confidence in him as a result of his lack of production. Defensively, he did some things in the outfield I’ve never seen any other professional baseball player do in my entire life. Exhibit A:

 

This was fun, though.

I’m okay with never seeing Raburn in an Indians uniform ever again. 2013 was nice but I think we now know why the Tigers let him go in the first place.

I do like what I saw from some of the young guys out there at the end of the year. Tyler Holt came out of nowhere for a lot of people and proved he can be worth something at this level. He played extremely well defensively and was adequate-ish with his bat. He’ll never be enormously productive in the batters box, but he has shown in the minors that he can get on base and play defense. I like giving that type of young player ABs out there instead of a guy like Raburn. Zach Walters played out there a bit too. Kid can hit BOMBS but I don’t think he’s polished enough as a hitter yet. His 35% K% is two percent worse than the major league leader. Murphy will certainly get the lions share of the PT out in right next season but I would like to see Tito keep Holt around.

Stay tuned later in the week for the next two parts of the 2014 Wahoo Review which will talk about our pitching staff and take a look ahead to the 2015 season.

KEEP THE CHIEF