Off Day Musings

We’ll spend the off day taking care of some housecleaning on items that we haven’t addressed yet. Notably, Kaz Tadano has been traded to the Oakland A’s for a minor league outfielder named Ramon Alvarado, who played well in A ball, but is still a young player (20 years old). It’s amazing that Shapiro was able to get anything more than a bag of balls for Tadano, who would have likely hit the waiver wire had the A’s not called. Tadano just got caught in a numbers game in the Tribe organization, where he wasn’t as highly thought of as other bullpen arms in AAA like Andrew Brown and Jason Davis, and had the next wave of young arms (like Edward Mujica and Tony Sipp, though Sipp is a lefty) not too far away from supplanting him. Tadano could eventually end up being a productive ML pitcher; but in Cleveland, it seemed that Tadano was a simply a couple of batters away from getting in trouble (think Danny Graves, without the track record).

Still nothing on the Brandon Phillips front, but if Shapiro acquired Oakland’s 18th rated prospect, a young OF with some upside, he may be able to get some serious talent for the potential of Phillips. The Cardinals (who sent Junior Spivey to AAA) and the Nationals still seem like two likely destinations. As has been noted in the Tribe Report, Shapiro would pull off a real coup is he could get Ryan Church (who came up in the Indians’ organization and was optioned to AAA at the end of Spring Training by Washington) back to play the 4th OF role, because Todd Hollandsworth, to me, just doesn’t look like the long-term answer at that spot. I know that he has yet to even see action this year, but Todd Hollandsworth is still Todd Hollandsworth; and the spot could use an upgrade.

C.C. is expected to be out for 3-5 weeks, so Jason Davis will stay on as the long man until Fausto Carmona is needed to start a game next weekend. It could be Davis and Carmona yo-yoing back and forth between Cleveland and Buffalo, or Danny Graves could be waived at some point (which would do wonders for my blood pressure…yes, after only 2 IP).

As T-Bone has noted in the comments section, Adelphia is running a free trial of MLB Extra Innings on Adelphia, which has this baseball junkie sitting here listening to Keith Hernandez call the Mets-Nationals game on a random Thursday night.

Not many people understand how someone can sit and watch a game that you have no vested interest in (like watching a complete Braves game on TBS), but that’s the beauty of baseball. There’s so much to watch, from the strategy of trying to get a runner over to second with no outs to seeing Pedro Martinez be Pedro and bounce a fastball off of Nick Johnson’s elbow.

Enjoy the home opener tomorrow, the closest thing that Cleveland has to a citywide holiday (and not just an ethnic holiday like St. Patrick’s Day or the Feast in Little Italy).

I’d like to see the race to the front table at the Batter’s Eye Bar tomorrow.