Stumbling To The Finish Line

Can it get any worse? No, I’m not talking about the boring Browns; I’m talking about YOUR Cleveland Indians. You remember them don’t you? Most of you aren’t paying attention. One of my favorite lines in Major League seems to apply to the Tribe these days:

Lady: “who do you play for.”

Jake Taylor: “The Indians.”

Lady: “Here, in Cleveland? I didn’t know they still had a team.

Jake Taylor: “Yeah, we’ve got uniforms and everything.”

It sure seems like we don’t have a team these days. Well why would you notice them other than for their complete collapse in September. As if the 2009 campaign wasn’t bad enough, the Wahoo Warriors have put together their longest losing streak of the season – eight – after completing a four game set in Oakland. Nothing like being swept by a fellow last place team!

That’s right, I call the Indians a “fellow” last place team because they now sit tied with the Royals in the basement of the AL Central – the worst division in baseball. That, my friends, is saying something. These last two weeks can’t be over quick enough it seems. I almost feel sorry for Eric Wedge. “The King of all Grinders” himself is at the end of the line, or should I say the “end of the grind.” It looks like he has officially lost his team.

Who can blame them. Its been a horrible season of disappointment, trades, and losses. Everyone knows changes are in the air; they have been since the first salvo was fired – the late June trade of Mark DeRosa to St. Louis. The final domino to fall will undoubtedly be Wedge.

The 11-4 loss in Oakland was probably viewed by a few hundred at most locally. The Browns/Broncos game was on at the same time. Even the most die-hard Indians fans were probably only watching at commercials. By the time I realized they were on, the score was already 5-0 Oakland.

Fausto Carmona’s second straight season from hell continued yesterday. He received little help from his defense and the Baseball Gods. The five-run A’s second came courtesy of one bloop hit after another, coupled with Trevor Crowe losing a pop fly in the sun. “It doesn’t matter about the sun,” said Crowe. “I’m a major-league baseball player and I need to make that play. If you get hit by lightning and the ball gets lost in the sun, you still need to catch pop-ups.”

After Crowe’s adventure in left, the next two A’s – Adam Kennedy and Rajai Davis – hit RBI singles.

Ever the optimist, the Grinder still stayed positive about Fausto’s performance over the next four innings, where he retired 12 of the next 13 batters he faced. “The effort we saw from Fausto in the first, third, fourth and fifth innings is what we want,” said Wedge. “He just has to finish innings off.”

After getting the first out in the sixth, Fausto imploded. He walked Daric Barton, gave up back to back doubles to Scott Hairston and Cliff Pennington and was finished off by Kennedy’s two-run homer.

This game was immaterial. It is tough to find any sort of positives in the entire four game set in Oakland. You can say David Huff’s seven innings of two run ball in Friday’s 2-1 loss was good. Other than that, there is nothing good to say.

Interesting stuff over the weekend came out of the mouth of Tribe closer Kerry Wood. He has been very quiet all year, but the frustration clearly has come to a boiling point. I think he summed the season up best with the following set of quotes:

“There’s no one to blame except the players,” he said. “The bottom line is we’re the ones playing the game. The coaching staff, the people who are trying to help you every day, can only help you so much.

“You go out and make the adjustment or you don’t. Guys that don’t aren’t here very long. We didn’t make adjustments when we needed to. We got rid of a lot of guys and now we’re starting over.”

“I didn’t come here with the idea of sitting on 19 saves at the end of September,” he said. “I had opportunities early on. I blew a couple early on. Ask any reliever what he needs the most and it’s consistency.

“A lot of times I’ve been ready to go into a game [in a save situation] where we’ve scored an extra run. I’m not complaining about that. I’ll take all the runs we can get. It just worked out that way.”

Good for Wood for putting it all out there. You know this is not what he signed up for. Watching this team over the last month stumble through a 3-15 stretch just proves that a new voice is needed. We are t-minus 13 games from that happening.