February 21, 2010

Spring Training

Tribe opens at Goodyear, Arizona this week. Must be nice to have a completely new facility where the players want to be. Anthony Castrovince reports that everybody's there already.

Nearly every member of the 59-player spring roster (Branyan would make 60) is already here, even though position players aren't due to report until Wednesday and the first full-squad workout won't take place until Friday. "I'm excited," Acta said. "For me to show up a week before pitchers and catchers report and to see [Travis] Hafner, [Grady] Sizemore, [Shin-Soo] Choo and [Asdrubal] Cabrera on the field one week before they're supposed to be on the field excites me."

75-78 wins is about the limit of my optimism for the 2010 Indians. The pitching is just too young to expect anything better. But they have assembled a ton of very good young power pitchers, and Acta will put a pretty good hitting team on the field every day. A few of the young arms...Chris Perez, Justin Masterson and Carlos Carrasco will be around this season. Others names like Nick Hagadone, Hector Rondon, Jason Knapp and Alex White are coming.

It'll be fun to watch Brantley, LaPorta, Cabrera and Choo get a year better. You know what you're going to get from Jhonny Peralta, and hopefully by July you'll have Carlos Santana, one of the brightest young prospects in baseball, playing catcher. Sizemore and Hafner would both have to rebound physically and have big years for this team to overcome its shaky starting pitching and contend. The AL Central is mediocre, but probably not mediocre enough for that to happen.

In his Lazy Sunday column, Paul Cousineau takes a look at the shuffling at the top of the Indians' management team and how it affects the plans for 2011 and 2012. Having confidence about the future is a big part of being an Indians fan. A better day is always coming.

Paul links to Tribe Daily, where you'll find this nice Indians Spring Training preview.

Posted by dan at February 21, 2010 5:01 PM