Anthony Castrovince ‏@castrovince

You hate to see Scott Radinsky as fall guy, but Tim Belcher's absence loomed large for #Indians' rotation this year.

According to Jordan Bastian of MLB.com, the Indians will release outfielder/designated hitter Johnny Damon and right-hander Jeremy Accardo on Thursday.

Both players passed through waivers after being designated for assignment last week. According to Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe, Damon hasn't heard if any contenders are interested in him, but he plans to continue to playing. The Indians are expected to either release or trade recently DFA'd right-hander Derek Lowe on Friday.


Related: Derek Lowe, Jeremy Accardo
Source: Jordan Bastian on Twitter Aug 9 - 4:05 PM

[quote="fkreutz"]Sparky Anderson always said there are 50 you'll win regardless, 50 you'll lose and 62 that can go either way. Acta stinks fire him, Shapiro and Antoneti. Dolan game them plenty of money to compete this year. Very poor management led to this disaster....[/quote


I cant believe that you just wrote that Dolan gave them plenty of money. The perseveration amongst the dolanites is unbelievable. I can't believe I waited until the end of the first game to bury this excuse for a team. Shame on me!

You could put it that way, I guess.

Didn't we get Kipnis in the Cliff Lee deal?

June 5, 2008: Drafted by the San Diego Padres in the 4th round of the 2008 amateur draft, but did not sign.
June 9, 2009: Drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the 2nd round of the 2009 amateur draft. Player signed July 9, 2009.

(from Baseball-ref.com)

eocmcdoc wrote:Didn't we get Kipnis in the Cliff Lee deal?

No, drafted Kipnis.

Thanks, So used to us not getting anything of consequence in the draft.

Dolan game them plenty of money to compete this year.

Really, Frank?

The Twins had an opening day payroll 16 mill higher than the Indians. The ChiSox had a payroll 18 mill higher. The Detroit Tigers had a payroll 54 million dollars higher.

54 mill ! ! !

Did Dolan really give them plenty of money to compete? Or did he just give them a little more than he normally would.

I think the answer is clearly the latter.

Manny Acta calls firing of pitching coach Scott Radinsky a 'sad, awful day': Indians Insider

Published: Thursday, August 09, 2012, 9:59 PM Updated: Thursday, August 09, 2012, 9:59 PM
By Paul Hoynes, The Plain Dealer


CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After the Indians fired Scott Radinsky as pitching coach on Thursday afternoon, he took his son, Scott, to a park in Cleveland to play catch.
"He asked me if he couldn't like the Indians anymore," said Radinsky. "I told him he could like anybody he wanted."
Radinsky was fired following the end of an 11-game losing streak that featured some of the worst pitching in team history. Ruben Niebla was promoted from Class AAA Columbus to replace him. He was scheduled to join the team sometime Thursday night during their game against Boston.
"Honestly, I didn't really see this coming," said Radinsky. "I really didn't. We were losing and things get magnified. Then you start hearing rumors that someone is going to take the fall."
It appears the decision was made to fire Radinsky during the Indians' 11-game losing streak, but the hammer wasn't dropped until the streak ended with a 6-2 victory over the Twins on Wednesday.
"We did not want it to look like Scott bore the whole brunt of the streak," said GM Chris Antonetti.
Radinsky was fired in his first year as pitching coach after replacing Tim Belcher, who stepped down after the 2011 season. Radinsky spent the previous two years as the Tribe's bullpen coach. Overall, he spent nine years in the organization.
"I'm holding my head pretty high," said Radinsky. "All I care about is those pitchers. I wanted to do everything I could to make them successful and help them establish themselves in the big leagues.
"I'm disappointed if I'm part of the reason they didn't succeed. Working with pitchers is why I got into coaching. My only concern was working with those pitchers, to help them get better, and protect them until the day I was fired."
The starting rotation was Radinsky's demise. "We were expecting the pitching, especially the starting rotation, to be better," said manager Manny Acta. "It's not all on Rad. He couldn't go out and pitch for those guys. But we were expecting some of those guys to take a step forward and it didn't happen."
The rotation went 0-8 with a 10.44 ERA (58 earned runs in 50 innings) during the skid. Overall, the starters have the third-highest ERA in the American League at 5.10. Only Kansas City at 5.28 and Minnesota at 5.40 are higher. As a staff overall, they have the second-highest ERA in the AL at 4.74.
"It absolutely hurts to know [my struggles] might have contributed to this," said former starter Josh Tomlin.
Radinsky said Acta called him early Thursday and asked him to come to the office.
"When I opened the door and saw Chris there, I knew what was going on," said Radinsky. "They didn't really have to say anything. Look I've always been a little different. I've always marched to my own drum beat, but they were good about it.
"I apologized for not being good enough. They said it wasn't all on me, but I was the one walking out the door. I'll never take the credit, but I'll take the blame."
The Indians' redrawn rotation includes three pitchers Niebla has worked with at Columbus this year -- Zach McAllister, Corey Kluber and Chris Seddon.
"Our focus right now is to get as much out of the rest of the year as we can," said Antonetti, adding that Niebla's status will be evaluated after the season.
"This is a sad, awful day," said Acta. "We lost a good member of our staff. All the blame doesn't go on him. We're all responsible."
McAllister worked closely with Niebla the last couple of years at Columbus. "Ruben has been a huge help to me, especially as I change my delivery," said McAllister. "He helped me get consistency with it."
Niebla, 40, has worked for the Indians for 12 years. He spent the 2010 season as an assistant to the big-league coaching staff. He played six years professionally with Montreal, Los Angeles and in various independent leagues.
On the shelf: DH Travis Hafner was placed on the disabled list Thursday with lower back inflammation. He could be done for the season. If that's the case, Hafner's last at-bat as an Indian could have come Sunday in the 10th inning when he homered against Detroit. It was the 200th of his career.
The Indians recalled Jason Donald from Columbus to take Hafner's spot.
Hafner, 35, is in the final year of his contract. He's appeared in just 60 games, hitting .239 with 11 homers and 32 RBI, while making $13 million. The Indians hold a $13 million club option on Hafner for 2013, which they will not exercise.
This is his ninth trip to the disabled list with the Indians and his second this season. Trainer Lonnie Soloff is scheduled to meet with reporters on Friday to explain the injury.
On Twitter: @hoynsie

Guys we were all screaming for Willingham, no the morons signed Wheeler, Sizemore, Damon and Lowe! give me a break! Willingham would have made a difference and so would LaPorta for crying out loud. LaPorta is going to go somewhere else and hit 25 dingers with his .250 BA and make Kotchman look even worse than the scrub he is for what $3 MILLION. That's management not Dolan....

That's it for Hafner. Last Indians AB a should-have-been game-winning Home Run.

CLEVELAND -- Travis Hafner might be back in the lineup before the end of the season, but if his current back problem persists, the veteran designated hitter will have at least ended with a bang.

Hafner's last at-bat ended with a home run -- the 200th of his career -- against the Tigers on Sunday. Since then, Hafner's lower back has flared to the point where the Indians were forced to place him on the 15-day disabled list on Thursday.

Head athletic trainer Lonnie Soloff offered more detail on Friday, explaining that Hafner has a bulging disk in his lumbar spine. Hafner is currently taking anti-inflammatories and he received an epidural injection on Friday to help the swelling.

"Any any of us, it could flare up at any given time," Soloff said. "The fact that he's a power hitter and spends a lot of his time in flection and rotation is certainly a cause of it as well. Our hope is that with the medication, the epidural and the treatment, he's going to feel better."

At this point, the club did not believe surgery was necessary, Soloff said.

"Anything is possible," Soloff said, "but I think that we're optimistic that it'll be a conservative case for us."

Soloff noted that Hafner's back injury flared up after the team's flight from Minnesota to Kansas City on July 29. The DH played against the Royals on July 31, but he was pulled for a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning. After going on baseball's paternity list for three days, Hafner returned to the lineup for Sunday's game in Detroit.

The issue never subsided.

It's the second stint on the DL for Hafner this season. He was sidelined for nearly six weeks after undergoing right knee surgery on May 31. In 60 games this season, he is batting .239 with 11 home runs and 32 RBIs.

Hafner had hit .320 (8-for-25) with three home runs in his seven most recent games.

As of right now, there is no known timetable for his return.

"It will depend solely on his responses to the medication, the injection and the treatment," Soloff said

Soloff says "

I think that we're optimistic

"

That's really optimistic!

Indians starter Roberto Hernandez to make season debut Wednesday


Published: August 11, 2012 - 11:06 PM

CLEVELAND: Roberto Hernandez finally will make his season debut Wednesday by starting against the Angels in Anaheim.

The three-week suspension imposed by Major League Baseball for using a false identity was completed Saturday, enabling the former Fausto Carmona to be added to the Indians’ roster as early as today.

However, that won’t happen. He will be kept off the roster until the day he pitches, allowing the Tribe to keep another reliever in the bullpen.

“Our bullpen needs a day or two more to get completely in shape and rested,” manager Manny Acta said Saturday. “The extra guys in the pen give us a chance to get the pen in order. These guys have been used a lot lately, especially Vinnie [Pestano] and Tony [Sipp].”

The bullpen already has one more arm than usual, Frank Herrmann, who was called up Tuesday.

Hernandez’s first start will fall on the same day that Chris Seddon would have pitched, which means either Seddon or a reliever will be erased from the roster to make room for Hernandez. Could Acta put Seddon in the bullpen?

“We haven’t made that decision yet,” Acta said. “Seddon obviously is unavailable today and tomorrow.”

That’s because Seddon started and threw six innings Friday night.

In his final rehab start, Hernandez gave up one run and four hits in seven innings for Columbus Friday night.

HONOREES — The Indians added three members to their hall of fame Saturday night: Cy Young Award winner Gaylord Perry, the late head trainer Jimmy Warfield and Jack Graney, who played outfield for the Tribe in the early part of the 20th century and became the first former player to broadcast baseball on radio as the Indians’ play-by-play voice.

KIPNIS MISSING AGAIN — Jason Kipnis missed his third game in a row with a stiff neck.

“He’s making progress but not good enough to be out there,” Acta said. “He will see a doctor later today.”

HAFNER DONE FOR YEAR? — With 1½ months left in the season, will Travis Hafner’s back problem keep him off the field for the rest of the schedule?

“I don’t think so,” Acta said. “I don’t think that’s what the medical staff thinks. Nobody here seems to think it’s that type of thing.”

Hafner’s bulging disk created inflammation in the area that has been treated with an epidural and oral medication.

BAD BREAK — Promising Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks sustained a fractured right wrist when he was struck by an Esmil Rogers fastball in the ninth inning Friday night.

FARM FACTS — Gregorio Petit homered and singled twice, driving in two runs, as Columbus beat Indianapolis 5-1. … Jake Lowery doubled and drove in two runs in Lake County’s 4-3 loss to Great Lakes. … Joe Wendle had two hits and one RBI, and Jeremy Lucas homered, as Mahoning Valley defeated Batavia 7-3. … Claudio Bautista homered and singled, but the Arizona League Indians lost to the Giants 6-5.

Sheldon Ocker: Indians’ flawed roster destined to fail from start

By Sheldon Ocker
Beacon Journal sports writer

Published: August 11, 2012 - 10:50 PM

CLEVELAND: The Indians’ hideous 11-game losing streak is over, but the fallout should last the rest of the season and beyond.

For the most part, the reversals were attributable to a flawed roster that was destined to fail from the outset of the season.

Then why didn’t the Indians lose eight in a row or 10 in a row earlier in the season, maybe more than once? Because the rock-solid part of the team, setup man Vinnie Pestano and closer Chris Perez, and to a lesser extent Joe Smith, who pitches the seventh inning, almost never let a lead get away.

It’s a big advantage for a team whose lineup is almost bereft of run producers in the six-through-nine spots to keep the game to six innings. Couple the excellence of the back end of the bullpen with sporadic proficient starts by Justin Masterson, Zach McAllister, and less often by Ubaldo Jimenez, and the Tribe was able to win low-scoring, close games.

During the first two months of the season, Derek Lowe carried the rotation with an amazing display of pinpoint accuracy with a sinker that forced frustrated batters to beat the ball into the dirt.

But Lowe began to fade in June, not coincidentally, the same month he turned 39. Josh Tomlin’s command problems became more acute and (during the streak), McAllister showed his inexperience with an inability to handle adversity when someone made an error behind him.

The stability of the lineup has depended on mostly young players in the top five positions. The rest of the batting order has been composed of a patchwork of mediocre veterans and career bench players plus Travis Hafner, who needed to produce if the offense had any chance of working.

We know now that Hafner was unable to hold up his end of the bargain. Nagging injuries kept him sidelined too often and probably affected his swing when he did play. I wrote in spring training that if Hafner could generate runs, the offense would be effective enough to allow the team to be competitive. I thought Hafner would come through. He hasn’t, and the attack has suffered accordingly.

The Johnny Damon experiment was doomed to fail from the get-go, but that didn’t keep the Tribe’s deep thinkers from running him out to left field long after it became apparent he could no longer play.

Moreover, as soon as the club announced the signing of Damon, Shelley Duncan stopped hitting. A coincidence? Probably not. He worked hard in spring training to earn a job, which should have come with an implied promise that he would receive a chance to keep it.

Now Damon and Lowe are gone, as is pitching coach Scott Radinsky. He was chosen to be the scapegoat for the failures of the pitchers and was fired Thursday.

Lowe looked like the bargain of the century for two months, but age and the wear and tear on his body brought him down. At the end, his pitches had little movement, and he had trouble keeping his sinker down in the strike zone.

With two months left in the season, the Indians still had no answer in left field, a first baseman who is the antithesis of what they need and a third baseman who has begun to play like the backup he was before he came to Cleveland before the 2011 season.

Last year at this time, I wondered how other teams could have passed up Jack Hannahan. He was making spectacular plays at third and contributing timely RBI hits to the offense. But for whatever reason, he has taken a step backward to where he was when the Tribe rescued his career.

Like Hannahan, Casey Kotchman is a bona fide run-saver in the field, but as an offensive threat at first base, he leaves much to be desired. That was no secret of course. The Indians knew they needed a run producer at one of the corner infield positions but failed to procure one.

Hannahan and Kotchman have been two of the guys in the bottom half of a lineup that has been virtually nonproductive. They’ve had plenty of company down there with Duncan, Damon, the departed Jose Lopez and (at times) Lou Marson, Brent Lillibridge and Hafner.

It was only a matter of time that two or three guys in the upper half of the lineup would go into a slump, exacerbating the problems at the bottom half of the lineup that generated the seeds of a losing streak.

We also saw what happens when Perez has a couple of off nights. Sunday’s and Tuesday’s defeats were a product of blown saves, but it’s hardly a black mark on Perez’s record to blow four saves in two-thirds of a season.

Combined with the long-term defects of the rotation, it’s not all that surprising the Tribe tumbled into a long losing streak.

So it’s time for some soul searching as teams love to say, “re-evaluating.” Mistakes have been made, mostly in the way the roster was put together. There are too many left-handed batters; a rotation that lacks a true No. 2 starter, let alone an ace; no power at first third or left field, and a limited bench, partly because the reserves are in the lineup half the time.

General Manager Chris Antonetti is the man who filled the lineup with lefties, obtained Lowe and Damon, declined to pull the trigger on the logical signing of Josh Willingham and made a late July deal for Lillibridge to improve the 25th spot on the roster, as if that would make some sort of impact.

On the other hand, Antonetti operates under a severe handicap. Why do you think he re-signed Grady Sizemore? The GM had $13 million to work with and three positions to upgrade. Three positions can’t be fixed with $13 million, but he had to try. So he crossed his fingers and gave Sizemore $5 million, handed over $5 million to Lowe and $3 million to Kotchman.

At that point, the bank closed up shop, and Antonetti had to hope against all odds that these moves would work. Of course, they didn’t. Why would they?

If an evaluation is genuinely going to take place, the emphasis should be on how the baseball operation is funded. Only two people can do that, and nobody knows if owners Paul and Larry Dolan can or will infuse more cash into the club.

We’ll find out over the winter, but don’t get your hopes up. The Indians are destined to finish last in attendance, which can’t do anything but affect the 2012 budget in a negative way.