https://twitter.com/MLBastian/status/595295812021723137

HEY.

No time to wallow in despair after last night’s Cavs game, people. After undergoing season-ending surgery on both knees at the tail end of last season, Nick Swisher will be activated by the Tribe this afternoon and will presumably be in the lineup for the first time since August 9th. During his six-game rehab stint in Columbus, Swisher collected nine hits in 24 at-bats, including one moonshot and five RBI.

At the very least, and I know some people hate this, but at the very least Swisher brings his attitude and leadership back to a clubhouse that quite frankly could use it right now. 9-15 and 7 games back of the division leading Tigers on May 5th is a less-than-ideal position to be in. Your pitching staff isn’t throwing the ball all that well, your lineup isn’t scoring runs consistently and you’re missing your Silver Slugging catcher for another month or so. A “spark”, albeit an extremely expensive one, certainly can’t hurt.

We’ll mostly see him used as a DH for now, and my bet is probably the majority of the season. He’s obviously not the same threatening presence in the box that he once was, but we’ve been running David Murphy out there as our DH and that makes me sad inside. Swish has respectable career numbers against lefties: .266 BA, .393 OBP, 305 BB and 289 Ks. 57 of his 239 career bombs have come off of southpaws as well. Who knows how productive he’ll be right away, or at all, but I have to admit I’m a little excited to see his smiling face again.

Other thoughts…

• Jason Kipnis. So hot right now. Since Tito bumped him up to the leadoff spot in the order on April 26, Kip is slashing a sexy .344/.462/.688. That also includes three dingers, seven RBI and eight runs scored. Add in a 2/1 BB/K and he’s been just what the doctor ordered at the top of our…order. Crushed it.

• Indians, Dodgers, Astros top the MLB team hard-hit rate leaderboard. Here's the full list pic.twitter.com/CS8caAYCKE

  — Mark Simon (@MarkASimonSays) May 4, 2015

So that can’t be bad, right?

• SALTY WATCH: In my notes from last week I floated the idea of the Tribe trading for recently DFA’d former Marlins catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. It was reported they had multiple teams interested in acquiring the former Red Sox backstop. No deal was made however, and Salty hit release waivers this afternoon. One would think he’s a lock to clear release waivers, since any claiming team would be responsible for paying him around $6 million still owed to him this year, as well as $8 million in 2016. When he does clear, he’ll be free to negotiate with any team and they’ll be able to (but probably won’t) sign him at a pro-rated amount of the league minimum salary. He’s not great (some might say awful) defensively, he hits better from the left side and has had a couple down years, but he does have a history with Tito and I watched Brett Hayes swing and miss three consecutive times twice in the same inning on Sunday.

KEEP THE CHIEF

18 games into the 2015 season and your Cleveland Indians have six wins. 97% of the 30 Major League Baseball teams have more than that (the Brewers are the only team with less). Take those six instances where we accidentally had more runs than the other team at the end of the game, add one, and that’s how many games we are out of first place in the AL Central. Our .232 team batting average puts us at 21st in the majors. In terms of offensive WAR, the good guys have posted a 0.7 for the entire team. So if we dumped our entire squad and replaced them with league average players, we’d pretty much have the exact same record. Our ace gave up 6 earned runs and struck out 25 batters in his first three starts. He got zero, six (bullpen gave up 7) and two runs of support. Since then he’s given up ten earned runs in two starts. The good news is, our defense has improved. After being last in the league in every measurable statistic in 2014, the Tribe defense has absolutely blown the doors off the place with a -1.7 UZR this season. 0 is considered average.

In all seriousness though, one of the most encouraging parts to this dismal start has been Trevor Bauer. He’s currently 2-0 with a 0.95 ERA, 1.00 WHIP and 26 strikeouts in 19 innings. And not only have his starts been one of the few things to look forward to when watching the Tribe, he’s hijacking your TV sets on his off days with some Grade A Royals trolling:

Get it? Cause the Royals got in a brawl with the White Sox last week? Oh Trevor, you slay me.

A couple more thoughts heading into tonight’s 6:10er:

• Tell you what, I’ve been sort of trolling the #FreeLindor movement for quite some time now, but I’m beginning to question whether or not I should be. As it stands today, April 28, I’m still not on the Lindor bandwagon. But I might start checking ticket prices online. Jose Ramirez isn’t hitting a lick, and he already has as many errors (4) in 16 games this season than he had in 56 games in 2014. I’m certainly not ready to give up on him, and I know Tito isn’t either. I’ve always thought the best move when they bring him up would be to shift Jose to 2B and Kipnis, a former NCAA All-American outfielder, to RF. This would free Brandon Moss to DH, and I’m sorry Jerry Sands, I was there for your two double show, it was magical, but teams are going to throw as many lefties as they can against this club and you really shouldn’t be getting regular major league ABs. Lindor is finally starting to hit the ball in Columbus (.284/.360/.403) and we all already know his glove is ready. I’m not saying the next time I tweet #FreeLindor I’ll be 100% serious. But I’m getting pretty close.
• Two other semi-bright spots so far have been mini-renaissances of Mike Aviles and Ryan Raburn. Handsome Mike has a couple bombs, a 6/3 BB/K and an OBP of .366 while doing some time in the 2 hole. Raburn has been able to get back to hitting lefties, posting a .385 clip with a bomb and 8 RBI against them. You were counting on comeback years from Kip and Swish, but so far it’s been Aviles and Raburn.
• The Miami Marlins designated catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia for assignment yesterday, just over a year into the 3-year, $21 million deal he inked with the club in 2014. They have ten days to find a suitable trade partner, which apparently they’re already well into the process of doing, or the backstop will become a free agent. He’s been absolutely brutal this season (2-33 at the dish) and last year was a disappointment as well (.220, 11 HR, 44 RBI), but the guy hit 55 bombs from 2011-13 in Boston and hits from both sides of the plate (although I waited until right now in the blog to look at his splits and he is about one thousand times better hitting left handed). Salty played for Tito in 2011, so there’s some history there. The Marlins will have to eat quite a bit of his contract for anyone to take a risk on him. If they’re willing to eat enough, I wouldn’t hate to see the Tribe make a run at him. Granted, I would like to see if Roberto Perez can blossom a bit playing every day, but at the very least this would give them a backup catcher (Perez or Salty on any given day) that could actually play a little bit and a veteran with a World Series ring to handle this pitching staff. We’ll see.

That’s all for now. Come out to section 181 in the bleachers tonight and chat/cry/buy me a beer.

KEEP THE CHIEF