Tribe 2019 Spring Training News And Notes

Terry Francona is optimistic that Francisco Lindor will be on the shorter side of the recovery time of 7 to 9 weeks because of his youth and how hard he works. Let’s hope Tito’s right!

We watched Trevor Bauer in his first Spring Training game and he looked good throwing three scoreless innings and giving up only one hit.

The Indians are taking a cautious approach with Corey Kluber during this spring training before he makes his first game appearance. They have a timetable of building him up on pitches in practice and then eventually in a game. We saw him working on his cardio and stretching today on the practice field and running wind sprints and doing other stretching activities.

Tyler Naquin told us he is in great physical shape and with that in mind he has a very good chance of winning one of the corner outfield spots for this team if not on an every day basis, on a platoon basis.

Hanley Ramirez passed his physical and has officially signed a minor league contract with the Indians. Terry Francona told us that they are looking at him as a DH and best case scenario, they are hoping he could hit maybe somewhere in the middle of the order if he makes the team.

it sounds like Carlos Santana is very happy to be back with the Tribe and the Indians are happy to have him as well. Terry Francona told us that he will play first base and DH.

There is no doubt that the strength of this team and who they are counting on to carry this team is the starting staff of Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer, Mike Clevinger and Shane Bieber.

Offensively the Indians will count on Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, hopefully Jason Kipnis and Carlos Santana to provide hits, runs, home runs and rbi’s.

It sounds like when he’s healthy again, Terry Francona will use Francisco Lindor in the leadoff spot. He mentioned to us the keys on offense are scoring runs and driving in runs and when you combined Lindor‘s totals in those two areas from last year it was over 200 runs produced. Francona also likes that Frankie will get anywhere from an extra 45 to 50 at bats for the season by hitting lead off.

One of the most amazing things we have seen so far here in Goodyear, Arizona at Indian Spring training 2019 is this big yellow ball in the sky, we believe that’s what they call the sun, and it helped us reach 72° today. Hopefully we can bring that back with us when we return to Stark County and O-H-I-O!