Tribe Watch (Week 20)

Record: 62-61

Standing: Second in AL Central

The Indians were victims of a Motor City Massacre this weekend. After finally exercising some demons in Chicago by taking two out of three from the White Sox, we went into Detroit and got steamrolled. Neither the offense nor the starting pitching looked strong. Tomlin continues to give up too many home runs, Huff had an off days and Jimenez got rocked for 8 runs in four innings of work today. The bats finally started to come to life today and nearly overcame a seven run deficit, only to fall short thanks to some poor base coaching in the ninth. We currently sit four and half games in back of Detroit right now. Mathematically, we are not out of it by a long shot, especially considering how many games we still have left against teams in our division. With that said, I'm beginning to think now that this team just doesn't have the right combination of killer instinct and talent to push them past the Tigers and win the division. It always seems like there's at least one core area of the team that's faltering. And of top of that, the injuries continue to mount up. Rookie Jason Kipnis, who had provided a real offensive boost to the team went on the 15-day DL and Travis Hafner, once again, left in the middle of the game hobbling with some sort of foot or leg injury. While doubt may be creeping into my mind about this team, I certainly hope that they are able to remain confident. It'll be of the utmost importance to do so heading into this week. We head home for a long home game stretch against three teams with poor records. We'll begin with a four game series against the Mariners, which includes a double-header and then move onto a weekend set with the Royals. Winning ball clubs are the ones who are able to beat up on weaker competition, so we need to win most of these games in order to stay competitve. If we can, then all we can hope for is for Detroit and Chicago to lose some games and we'll be right back in it. We'll see where things stand next week. Until then, Go Tribe!