o btw it’s not lindor hahahahahaha

After another failed bid to get back to .500 yesterday, the Tribe optioned third baseman Lonnie Chisenhall and shortstop Jose Ramirez to AAA Columbus. Third baseman Giovanny Urshela and utilityman Zach Walters were brought up to replace them.

Urshela is ranked as the Indians #4 prospect by MLB.com and #8 by Baseball Prospectus, but doesn’t appear on Baseball America’s list. He’s 23 years old, 6’2″ and 215 pounds. He bats and throws right handed.

In 21 games with the Clippers this season, he hit .275 with 3 bombs and 9 RBI. His season got off to a late start due to some back problems that resurfaced last month. 2014 was his breakout year (at least offensively), when he posted a .276/.331/.473 slash line with 13 Yahtzee balls and 65 ribbis in 104 AAA games. The success continued into the Venezuelan Winter League, where he was leading all players with a .398 batting average before a knee injury ended his winter.

So what’s the immediate impact, you ask?

• Mike Aviles will be the primary shortstop until he-who-must-not-be-named finally receives the call.
• Zach Walters will probably fill the super utility role now that Aviles will be playing every day.
• We don’t know if Urshela will get the majority of playing time at third or if he’ll split with Walters, but they’re surely not calling him up to ride the pine. Whenever he’s in the lineup, our infield defense improves tremendously. His glove has always been seen as his ticket to the big show. Whether he’ll hit enough to win the job going forward remains to be seen but he’ll be sniffing Web Gems on the reg.
• Lonnie and Jose get a chance to take some pressure off themselves, go back down to the farm and try to figure some things out. Antonetti said today on a conference call that Ramirez would play a little short (I think they have another guy down there) but also some other positions. This fits in with my preseason hope of seeing an infield of Urshela-Lindor-Ramirez-Santana with Kip in the outfield. A guy can dream.

Bonus nugget of Urshela robbing Jesus Aguilar of a hit in the Venezuelan league

KEEP THE CHIEF