Tag Archives: Cleveland Indians

Whoever runs the Indians Facebook page is having themself a day

January 14, 2016 Ai Leave a comment

I know, I don’t really go on Facebook anymore either, so s/o to our friend @JL_Baseball for (unintentionally) tipping us off to this via Twitter.

It started when the team posted an article from MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince. In it, he lists 5 teams who have quietly had good winters so far, and the Indians are numero uno. The comments section….did not agree.

They cite this article more than a few times, though I’m sure none of these scholars clicked it. The whole headline is, “MLB teams continue to spend, despite evidence that it does not help them win.”

I make this argument all the time too. There are multiple ways to improve your chances of winning a baseball game. Score more runs, or prevent the other team from scoring more runs. Sure, power bats help one of those strategies. But that’s not the strategy this particular team implements. And neither have any of the recent teams that have made it to the World Series.

Boom. Roasted.

This this THIS, times one thousand million. Challenge yourself to get past the accepted narrative about our team. There’s not a lazier group of fans in the city of Cleveland, maybe in professional sports, than the “Dolans are cheap” crowd. Have a thought process, back it up with facts, I’ll listen to you all day. I love having those conversations. But I throw up in my mouth every time someone complains about the Dolans not opening their wallets, period, end of argument. Put some work into forming an actual informed opinion. Bet it ends up being a different one.

KEEP THE CHIEF

Browns, Cavs, Cleveland, Indians

Which Cleveland Professional Sports Team Has The Most Fake Twitter Followers?

January 12, 2016 Mike 1 Comment

So yesterday as I was perusing through the ol’ Twitter timeline I noticed an article from Next Impulse Sports claiming that half of the Carolina Panthers Twitter followers were fake. 500,000 accounts out of 1 million. Sheesh. Team accounts buying Twitter followers just seems kinda scummy. But apparently that’s pretty standard stuff for big companies/pro teams/celebrities trying to build their brand? I imagine in the early days of Twitter people probably did this shit all of the time.

Well, that got me to thinking about our favorite professional teams in Cleveland and their Twitter accounts and how many of their followers were real and how many were fake. Ya know, the real hard hitting, investigative stuff you’ve come to expect from this site.

I used Twitter Audit because that seems to be the go to site/app to expose these accounts. I’m not sure if it’s 100% accurate but there has to be some truth to it.

First up:

The Cleveland Indians

102,000+ fake accounts follow the Indians. So basically the capacity of The Horseshoe at Ohio State.

Cleveland Browns

Almost 152,000. I definitely thought the Browns would be close to around 300K. Just seems like a Scheiner or Farmer move to buy hundreds of thousands of fake followers while Scheiner was busy raising season ticket prices so he could afford to pay Swagger’s appearance fee.

Cleveland Cavaliers

What? The Cavs with 366K fake followers? Arguably the most popular team in town needed to buy all those followers? C’mon now… No doubt in my mind that this happened in 2010 right after Dan Gilbert wrote the Comic Sans letter. Truth be told I might consider losing LeBron again if that meant 100,000 + followers on the @Bottlegate Twitter account.

So there’s that. Hope you enjoyed this pointless “study.”

PS- Check that 98%, bitches

Indians

Be thankful for meaningful baseball in Cleveland (and Terry Francona)

October 4, 2015 Ai Leave a comment

Your Cleveland Indians will wrap up a thoroughly disappointing 2015 campaign against the Boston Red Sox this afternoon. After last season’s this:

and this:

on top of this,

we hoped that a little bit of this:

would help make this come true:

It didn’t. And that sucked.

But for the third year in a row, Terry Francona had the Indians battling for a playoff spot until the bitter end. There’s something to be said for that.

Put away all your disdain for Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn, the Dolans, Mark Shapiro and any other of your go-to scapegoats when it comes to Cleveland baseball for a second. The goal of every team in baseball at the beginning of the year is to make the playoffs. Every game you play counts towards your record, which ultimately decides whether or not you will reach your goal. Therefore, every single game you play has the potential to determine whether or not you do reach your goal, until you’re mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.

The Indians were finally mathematically eliminated from the American League Wild Card on Wednesday, September 30th this year. They had four games left to play. So four of the 162 games in their 2015 season were pointless. They had a chance to try and reach their goal of the playoffs 98% of the times they took the field.

In 2014, the Indians were eliminated from playoff contention on September 23rd, with four games left to play. 98% of their games were meaningful.

And they obviously reached their goal in 2013 when Terry Francona led them to a Wild Card berth in his first year at the helm. So in three years in Cleveland, Francona’s team has played a total of 8 meaningless games. I know missing the playoffs is disappointing. I’m as pissed about this year as anyone. But look at the three years before Tito:

2012 – Eliminated on September 15, 16 games left
2011 – September 19th, 11 games
2010 – September 3rd, 28 games

(don’t check those)

The goal is to make the playoffs, and we failed. But believe it or not there are a couple steps in between the throne of success and the pit of failure. And number 12 is standing on Tito’s shoulders with one hand touching the top.

KEEP THE CHIEF