Tribe Watch (Week 17)

Record: 53 - 52

Standing: Second in AL Central

Let's of course get to the big news of the week which was the trades the team was able to pull off before the deadline. I already talked about the Fukudome deal earlier this week, so I won't expand on that. We also traded Orlando Cabrera to San Francisco for a minor league outfielder who's currently injured. Cabrera was doing absolutely nothing but hitting ground ball out when he was playing for us and when his playing time got cut, he started to whine, so I'm glad to see him go. Even if the guy we got for him doesn't pan out, it'll be a relief just to have unloaded OCab. Of course, the big move was the trade with the Rockies where we were able to get Ubaldo Jimenez. For the first part of last season Jimenez was absolutely unstoppable on the mound and seemed like a lock for the Cy Young award. However, since the midway point of last year, he's scuffled a bit, but has shown signs that he was re-emerging as that preeminent pitcher. No doubt, at his best, this guy can be the future ace of this club. Some are concerned about this deal because in order to get him, we had to give up four prospect, two of which were our highly touted first round draft picks of the past two years. This is always a risk, but it's one that I'm hoping pays off. Overall, I'm conflicted by these moves. I really like that our front office tried to be proactive and not be content with what they had. However, it seems like they missed the boat at trying to secure our greatest need, which is a right-handed power hitter. Our offense is absolutely scuffling right now and needs some kind of spark. I'll assume they feel the guys who are currently injured like Choo and Sizemore will still be able to come back and produce in time for the home stretch of the season. I sure hope so or otherwise these trades will have been for naught.

As for the performance on the field, the less said the better. As I just mentioned, our offense is really anemic at this point and we cannot score any runs. The only two wins we got this week came in walkoff fashion and we were really only able to get those because our pitching had been able to keep us in the game. This was a definite missed opportunity to get some wins, especially against weaker opponents like the Royals. This upcoming week could get real ugly. We have a huge 7 game road trip against Boston (for 4 games) and Texas (for 3). Those are two of the three divisional leaders and a pair of teams that have really good offenses. If we can't score any runs, we could easily see ourselves quickly falling down the ranks in the division. But despite this uphill climb, we've got to put our best foot forward and hope for the best, all the while saying Go Tribe!