We can only hope that somehow we move past that wasted contract.

If the knee surgeries killed Swisher's career, cant insurance pick up the contract? Or at least help with it. If Swisher agreed it could be his biggest contribution to the team.

Very few teams can get (cost effective) or actually insure contracts anymore.

[This is from the PD before the season started and Nick had not made his miraculous recovery from double knee surgery]

Hey, Hoynsie: If the condition of Nick Swisher's knee(s) prevent him from playing in 2015 or anytime in the future, do the Indians have an insurance policy that would reimburse them for all or part of his salary? – Chad Madden, Jamestown, N.Y.

Hey, Chris: The Indians do have insurance on Swisher, which will protect them if he is unable to play regularly over the life of his contract. I'm not sure what the range of their protection is.

However, the Indians feel Swisher is making progress from his knee surgeries. He was cleared last week to start running after getting his knees checked in Los Angeles. Still, of all the injured Indians, he represents the biggest unknown.

The big question to me is will Swisher be able to play in the field, either at first base or right field? There are some with the organization, including Swisher, who feel the outfield would put less strain on his knees than first base. At this point, you have to figure Swisher will be the Tribe's primary DH depending on what he can and can't do in spring training.

I hacked the MLB All-Star voting page in under 20 minutes

By HookSlide on Jun 17, 2015, 11:28a 132
Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

The MLB All-Star voting system is easily exploitable. And MLB probably doesn't care.
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To be fair, "hacked" really isn't the right word. That word implies some kind of username/password cracking, which in turn implies some kind of secure system, and quite frankly, the All Star voting page set up by MLB is anything but secure. With a basic knowledge of HTML, a bit of Javascript, and a few minutes to play around, I was able to exploit MLB's All-Star voting system quite easily.

The key to exploiting the system was realizing that -- are you ready for this? -- there is zero verification surrounding the most important piece of information supplied in the voting process: your email address. The voting page asks you to supply an email address, along with some other information such as a birthdate, a zip code, and a favorite team, but unlike most systems that at least try to implement some form of security, MLB does not require you to validate your email address. There's no confirmation email sent with a "click here to verify" or "use this five-digit verification code" message, some way of ensuring that the email address you supplied in the voting process is actually yours.

Let that sink in for a moment.

And while you were letting that sink in, I just cast 35 more ballots, using your email address. Let me know when you get the "Thank You for Voting" email from MLB.

With that major security flaw exposed, it was a simple matter of using Google Chrome's built-in network traffic monitor to discover that all of the voting selections are being sent via URL, attached to a request for an image that is 1x1 and white. It's so small you'd never see it, but it's there, and embedding that image effectively casts another ballot.

Let that sink in as well.

I've embedded that image somewhere in this post, by the way, so by the time you've read this far, that image has loaded and you've already cast another ballot for my specific All Star player picks. Thank you for your support.

As I was showing this neat little trick to a friend, he said, "wouldn't you think MLB would want to lock this down better?" A very good question, with an even more interesting answer. The answer, I believe, is "no." Let's face it: MLB has been trying to generate interest in the All-Star Game for years, trying to encourage fan participation in the vote. The 2015 fiasco with the Kansas City Royals has been the best thing for MLB, and I don't believe they're the least bit embarrassed by it.

In the end, it's all about the numbers. That's why they let you vote 35 times. At the end of the voting, they can roll out the numbers and say, "Look! Fan voting is up! Over five million people voted for Bryce Harper!" but if you divide by 35, it turns out only 143,000 people voted for Bryce Harper. (Those aren't real numbers, of course, they're just for the sake of illustration.)

So if a group of enterprising fans decides to exploit the use-any-email-you-want hole in the system to stuff the ballot box, and all of MLB fandom is talking about it for four weeks straight, that's great for MLB! Where's the problem? What is there to "fix" from their point of view?

You think people will actually boycott the All-Star Game this year because the voting has been exposed as a "mockery"? Maybe some will, but if eight of the nine starting players are Kansas City Royals, and that fact continues to be hyped by the major networks, I'd be willing to bet good money that there's a "train wreck" quality to the whole affair that people simply won't be able to avoid watching.

Yes, the voting system is a farce. I exploited it in less time than it takes to watch a re-run of Scrubs. But don't count on MLB doing anything to fix that any time soon.

I looked through the Royals stats and found some pretty unimpressive performers. Kipnis, for one, deserves to be an All Star starter. I saw some quote from Manfred that he might do something about this farce. Maybe he can cast an extra several million votes for all of the runners up so the Royals get Salvador Perez and the rest of the spots go to deserving candidates.

Doesn't this make you feel better?

Murata leaves positive impression despite tough debut

BALTIMORE -- Toru Murata got through the Orioles' lineup fine the first time around in his Major League debut. The second time around, though, didn't go as smoothly.

After being called up as the Indians' 26th man for Sunday's doubleheader, Murata lasted 3 1/3 innings, allowing four hits, five runs (three earned), one walk and two home runs while striking out two in an 8-0 loss.

"He got through it the first time with the error that led to the two runs, which is unfortunate," Indians manager Terry Francona said. "But the second time through, once they had seen him, he left some balls up that hurt him."

Murata said that there were no nerves when he took the mound at Camden Yards, and it showed with a 1-2-3 inning in the first. The right-hander's perfect outing through five batters came undone in the second, when Jason Kipnis made a two-out error that aided in the Orioles' two-run inning.

The 30-year-old rookie mixed in a heavy dose of breaking pitches that fooled Baltimore hitters during the first trip through the lineup, but the Orioles were able to catch on in the fourth.

Chris Davis led off the inning with a long home run to right field, and Travis Snider followed with a solo shot of his own on a hanging breaking ball two batters later. Murata was pulled after walking J.J. Hardy.

Murata will most likely be sent back down to Triple-A Columbus, where he is 5-3 with a 2.79 ERA. The pitcher spent five years in the Cleveland organization for a chance to pitch in the Majors, and he left a favorable impression on his manager.

"I thought he had very good poise," Francona said. "I love the way he was out there enjoying competing, you could tell [when] somebody made a good play. All the things came as advertised. The teammate he is, things like that."

[who sits around counting swings and misses? there are lots of strange jobs out there]

Carlos Carrasco has stuff to dominate rest of season

David Schoenfield, SweetSpot blogger

Major league hitters don't swing and miss as often you may think. When they swing, they put the ball in play 41 percent of the time, hit a foul ball 37 percent of the time and swing and miss just 21.6 percent of the time, or about one of every five swings.

Which helps tells us about the type of stuff that Cleveland Indians pitcher Carlos Carrasco had Wednesday night against the Tampa Bay Rays. Carrasco came within one strike of throwing the Indians' first no-hitter since Len Barker's perfect game way back in 1989, and while it was painful to see Joey Butler line an 0-2 changeup over the leaping Jason Kipnis, Carrasco's performance rates as one of the most impressive of 2015, not just in results but in pure dominance.

The Indians' Carlos Carrasco works from the stretch and uses four pitches that would grade out as plus.

The Rays swung at 67 of Carrasco's 124 pitches -- and missed 30 of them, a swing-and-miss rate of 45 percent, or more than double the MLB average. That's the most swings and misses in a game this year, three more than Max Scherzer generated in his one-hit, 16-strikeout outing June 14 against the Milwaukee Brewers. The last pitcher with 30 swings and misses in a game was Francisco Liriano of the Minnesota Twins in 2012 start against the Oakland A's. And the last one with more? I'm not sure. Our database only goes back to 2009 and nobody else had 30.

Carrasco works from the stretch and has four pitches that would grade out as plus: a 95-mph fastball with sink to it, a changeup with late movement, an excellent slider and a curveball. Obviously, everything was working on this night and watching him blow away the Rays -- 11 of his 13 strikeouts were swinging -- left me wondering: How did he enter the game with more hits than innings and a 4.16 ERA?

Carrasco took a perfect game into the seventh inning, losing that when Butler walked on a 3-2 changeup after fouling off two pitches. Maybe Butler remembered that changeup when Carrasco got two strikes on him in the ninth. Or maybe it was the right pitch -- Butler swung through a changeup on the 0-1 pitch -- and Carrasco just elevated it a little too much, allowing Butler to smack a hard liner into right-center. Remarkably, it was the third game in a row this series that the Cleveland starter was perfect through five innings, following Cody Anderson on Monday and Danny Salazar on Tuesday. If that sounds rare, it is: It's the first time it's happened in the expansion era (since 1961). Maybe that's a bit of indictment of the Tampa Bay lineup, but it also points to the potential of this Indians rotation -- potential that had a lot of people picking the Indians to win the division.

Most swings-and-misses in a game since 2009 (x-no-hitter):

Carlos Carrasco, Cle July 1, 2015 30
Francisco Liriano, Min July 13, 2012 30
x-Tim Lincecum, SF July 13, 2013 29
Anibal Sanchez, Det April 26, 2013 28
CC Sabathia, NYY June 7, 2012 27
A.J. Burnett, Pit Sept. 21, 2013 27
Anibal Sanchez, Det May 29, 2013 27
Max Scherzer, Det Aug. 24, 2013 27
Yu Darvish, Tex April 2, 2013 27
Corey Kluber, Cle Aug. 27, 2014 27
Max Scherzer, Was June 14, 2015 27

Following a long and winding road after the Indians acquired him from the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009 -- a path that included Tommy John surgery after the 2011 season -- Carrasco finally put everything together in the second half last season, when he posted a 1.79 ERA in his final 10 starts after moving into the rotation. Carrasco has always had the stuff; his head and heart have been questioned at times. Maybe that was fair, maybe not. His breakthrough seemed to result in large part to throwing his slider more. After throwing it less than 10 percent of the time in 2011 and 2013, he increased its usage to 22 percent last year, a rate he's maintaining in 2015.

There's still that issue of his hit rate before Wednesday night. It's more normalized now, but Corey Kluber has suffered from the same affliction: A high K rate and also a high hit rate. It's not quite as simple as blaming the Cleveland defense. With two strikes, both are devastating: Kluber has allowed a .130 average (10th lowest among starters) and Carrasco a .133 average (13th). In a hitter's count, however, Carrasco has allowed a .442 average, which ranks 96th out of 98 qualified starters; Kluber ranks 91st with a .411 average. With the quality of stuff those guys have, they shouldn't be bunched with guys like Kyle Kendrick, Jeremy Guthrie and Jeff Locke.

My first thought was perhaps they lay in too many fastballs when behind in the count; Gerrit Cole, another starter with Grade A stuff, also ranks poorly in this area with a .413 average allowed (the MLB average is .339) and he does rely on his 95-plus heater a lot. But Carrasco ranks 65th and Kluber 78th in percentage of fastballs thrown in hitter's counts.

I don't have an explanation. But there is this: The Indians are 36-41 and I'm not quite ready to declare their season over, because we saw what Carrasco can do and we've seen him get on a roll before. Kluber's peripheral stats are still outstanding; he's not going to go 3-9, 3.66 in the second half. Salazar and Trevor Bauer are still striving for consistency but have great stuff as well. Anderson may solidify the fifth slot in the rotation. The Indians had the best rotation in the majors in the second half last year. It could happen again. If it does ... well, you never know.

After all, the Indians are due -- not just for a no-hitter but something even bigger.

The Indians had the best rotation in the majors in the second half last year. It could happen again. If it does ... well, you never know.

Talk about a roller coaster. From the pits in Baltimore to awesome pitching in Tampa.

Seagull- I think they may be related, finally decided to get their **** together.

Len Barker's perfect game way back in 1989

It was 1981

Who won that Cliff Lee trade ?

Who won that Cliff Lee trade ?

LOL! Years (and years) after the trade I think we can declare it finally decided.

I guess when there are that many moving pieces in a trade, many young, you don't know for a very long time how it will
turn out.

I.E. Brantley as well in the CC trade. Remember Matt LaPorta? Who everyone thought was the key?

Lee and CC are now washed up and hugely, hugely overpaid.

Who won that Cliff Lee trade ?

So they got Lee for some good years; we got very minor help from Jason Donald and Lou Marson; Jason Knapp flopped; and then the evolving value of Carrasco. If this were a financial transaction the delayed value the Indians got compared to the immediate value of Lee would be discounted ---- so who wins long term? I dont' know but I am OK with the results.

Understand Civ - but at the time we dealt him, we weren't looking for immediate results.

So you could call it a win/win, because we got the long term asset, they got the short term asset. Which is what both wanted.

That said, anytime you are paying 20+ million for a completely useless guy that's tough to swallow.