Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. That’s called breathing, and it’s what you should concentrate on doing after the Tribe lost 2-0 to the Houston Astros last night in the 2015 season opener. I know we’re trained as Clevelanders to be eternal pessimists when it comes to our sports teams but sweet Jesus Twitter was insufferable last night. More of the same on the airwaves this morning as well. I only made it about 45 minutes of The Fan this morning (a personal record) before switching over to some Van Morrison Pandora in the interest of my personal health. Aside from the fact that, you know, it was the FIRST GAME OF 162, here are some other reasons why you shouldn’t freak out about the loss:
1) The outing from Corey Kluber. I don’t think any of us were expecting him to pack it in after securing his future with a 5 year, $38.5 million deal the day before. But it’s also obviously unrealistic to expect a repeat of last year’s magical Cy Young campaign. So from a performance standpoint, I wouldn’t say I was nervous to see how he would do, but I was certainly very interested. I mean this is a guy who will turn 29 on Friday and has barely over 2 years of MLB service time. Yeah, last year was incredible, but we don’t exactly have a long track record to go off of to mold our expectations. I’d say, for me personally going into last night, a strong outing from him was right up at the top of the list of things I wanted to see. And boy did he deliver. I wasn’t really nervous about last year possibly being a fluke of sorts, but any ounce of doubt that was anywhere in my brain was quelled by that man’s cutter.
2) Sorry to break this to you guys but, uh, Dallas Keuchel is a pretty damn good pitcher. Casual fans probably have never heard of him because he plays in Houston and has only been in the bigs for a couple of years but the dude very well could be an ace in the making. He was 19th in the majors last season in WAR among starting pitchers, ahead of the likes of James Shields and Sonny Gray, and one spot behind Madison Bumgarner. His FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching, 3.20 is considered “great” by Fangraphs) of 3.21 was also 19th in the bigs, and his 63.5 ground ball percentage was the best in the majors — by 6.5%. And oh yeah he won the Gold Glove for American League pitchers, something we saw first-hand last night (holy shit Ryan Raburn). All that on top of the fact that he’s left-handed, something that obviously makes things a little more difficult for a lineup that’s predominantly left-handed. And ALL THAT on top of the fact that it was the first game coming out of Spring Training, when pichers are traditionally ahead of hitters in terms of being ready to rock and roll. We saw that all around the league yesterday, not just in Houston. 6 teams were shut out on Opening Day, the most in MLB history.
But other than that, yeah our offense sucks.
3) Speaking of offense, let’s take a look at the guys who beat us from the lowly Astros lineup. Jose Altuve scored the first run of the game after he singled in the bottom of the 6th, stole second base and was brought home on a single. He was an All-Star last year. And the American League batting champion. And he won the AL Silver Slugger for second baseman. And he led the league in stolen bases. And he recorded the most hits in a single season in Astros history with 225. He was driven home by George Springer, who was ranked as the 18th best prospect in the game by Baseball America before the 2014 season and went on to hit 20 bombs in 78 games. The guy who scored the second run, shortstop Jed Lowrie, just signed a 3 year, $23 million with the Astros this past winter after two decently productive seasons in Oakland.
I’m not saying they’re a good team. A .500 season would probably be considered a success. But these aren’t your daddy’s 100-loss Astros anymore.
3) Defense was unquestionably our biggest concern coming into the 2015 season. I’m not even going to look up the stats from last year, there’s no need to. We were the worst defensive team in Major League Baseball, and it wasn’t close.
But we got the year started off on the right foot last night. First glance at the box, no errors. Awesome. I thought Lonnie, who seems to be public enemy number one when it comes to leather complaints, played a very good third base. Ramirez made a nice play coming in on an Altuve dribbler early on, and had a good bid at the Springer single that brought home the first run of the game. Smooth didn’t exactly look like his namesake at times but, like he always does, got the job done in left. I’m not expecting any gold gloves from this team (I suppose the Yanimal could be in the running), but I am expecting a significant improvement from 2014. Last night was the first step towards that.
Also, quick note on a discussion point from Kiley & Booms this morning. I feel like the calls for Francisco Lindor started before the team even reported to Goodyear for spring training. His monster spring certainly didn’t quiet them. At this point I don’t know how you question much of anything that Shapiro, Antonetti and Tito do, especially when it comes to probably the biggest personnel decision facing the club in recent memory. They’re gonna do their due diligence and call him up when they feel he’s ready. The discussion this morning was whether or not Lindor would have got to that Springer ball that Ramirez dove for and ended up bringing home Altuve. They both said yes. How you can say that, without question, a 21-year-old with no big league experience would make that gold-glove caliber play to save a run (the go-ahead run at that point) in his first Major League game is beyond me. Even if he does make that play, you’re not winning if you don’t score, and I’m pretty sure Ramirez brings more to the plate offensively than Lindor right now. I forget who said it but the idea was floated that you bring Lindor up, let Ramirez stay at short and bring in the top prospect for defensive purposes late in games. That’s the point where I turned it off. Just unconscionably stupid. The brass is going to bring him up when they feel he’s ready, and whenever that is, it’s his job. Period.
Bottlegate 