Tribe Watch (Week 2)

Record: 8-6 Standing: 3rd in AL Central Despite ending on a loss today, the Indians first road trip of the season turned out to be pretty successful as they managed to go 7-2 after taking two out of three from both Oakland and Seattle. While the season is still young, there's already some trends that have been developing, both positive and negative. In the past week, with the exception of Tomlin going toe-to-toe with Seattle's Felix Hernandez, our starting pitching was not great, but typically did enough to keep the Indians in the ball game. Certainly though their performances could be better to give the offense some breathing room. Most importantly is getting Justin Masterson on track. In his past few starts, he's begun the game strong but falls apart typically when seeing batters for the second turn. If he's to be our ace, we need him to remain in the game longer and be dominant in doing so. Offensively, while the Tribe was not as mighty as they were against Kansas City, there was a lot of timely hitting, which I love to see. We frequently got some clutch hits when we needed them. And for the most part the effort is being distributed evenly. There are a couple of weak spots (most notably Casey Kotchman), but they haven't been too detrimental thus far. The good news is that we were able to produce offensively this past week without Asdrubal Cabrera, who was gone on the bereavement list. He'll be back in the lineup when the Indians play again on Tuesday. Tuesday will start a six-game homestand where the Indians will once again play the Royals followed by a weekend series with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. We already stuck it to KC once this year, so let's hope we can do it again and the Angels, a team many figured would be a World Series contender, have been scuffling thus far to begin the season, so we might be facing them at an opportune time. Even if the Indians come home to some cold weather (as is forecasted) let's hope they continue to remain red hot. Go Tribe!