Guilmet, Herrmann and Hynes dropped from the 40-man roster. No surprises. Scott Barnes managed to stay on board, surprisingly.

I say 90 wins and Tribe wins AL Central as Tigers fall off. In addition the Tribe signs masterson at the All Star break and Kipnis next off season....

not worried about the Royals, Frank?

That's me Civ!

I am upset that the season openeristarts at 10! I thought they would start a bit earlier like they do in Cleveland. This is so wrong!

I see a major regression toward the mean with this club this year.

Shocking !!!!!!!!!!!

Once upon a time. long, long ago, the Indians a season in Anaheim against the Angels at 11 p.m. and even worse my parents dragged me to see My Fair Lady at the Colony Theater and I couldn't wait to get out in case I missed a pitch. It turned that: a. I loved the movie; b. the game hadn't started when the movie was over, in fact I think, but memory may be creative here, that the game was in fact rained out.

Nyjer Morgan was a great scrap heap pickup. No risk. I had forgotten what he had achieved in the bigs. As recently as 2011 he hit .304 in 429 at bats. He stole 34 bases in 2010.

Obviously no superstar, but a nice depth outfielder pickup. Take a look at the link if you want to see more....

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... ny01.shtml

Watched that game, and was quite impressed with Axford.

He threw a very free and easy 94 mph. And that curve, wow!

You can see how he dominated when he had his command down. Let's hope that delivery tweak the Cardinals supposedly helped him with is for real. Looked so last night.

Glad to hear your opinion on Axford. What was the cause of his two walks? That is always a scary thing for a closer.

Hi Civ.

Honestly, the walks were not a loss of command from what I could see. He worked carefully, and just missed on quite a few pitches that were called balls. Remember, Oakland IS a very patient team in general.

So, opening day, working carefully. Seemed to me that there was no danger of them squaring him up so I was not worried. Maybe opening day jitters? Didn't seem so though, more just working carefully.

That "Uncle Charlie" is a thing of beauty and the difference in velocity is quite stark off the fastball.

Sounds good!

A reliable Axford at the back end could make the whole bullpen work out very well.

[I doubt Pestano will stay around long; his spring training ended poorly; we have one too many pitchers in the pen for now; and CC Lee is likely to deserve promotion before long]

Not enough of us are left here. Can we "open to the public"?

civ - great interview with Pluto here on a variety of topics. Including last night, and Axford.


http://www.cleveland.com/pluto/index.ss ... s_win.html