I think it just proves he is both an idiot as well as being a lousy pitcher. He walks too many, gives up homers, the only target he could hit successfully was T's elbow.

But Alex White gave us our first victory in weeks. He is looking like a typical Tribe 1st round bust. Whle Pomeranaz was the rare LH with a good fastball that we drafted and will probably be at least a solid starter if not a star.

Cunningham wins his OF job with a 213 average and 521 OPS. Not as hideous as Wheeler's pitching stats which won him a job.

Seagull said:

I used to think Eric Wedge ran a piss poor spring training and his teams usually were not ready to start the season.

2012 under Acta is the worst I've seen.

The stink coming from Goodyear is palpable.

In the games I actually watched on TV, I agree with Seagull. One of the main things I didnt like about Wedge was his Spring Trainings. Acta has morphed into him this year. The guys did not seem motivated at all and their playing was really lackadasical. Hopefully it was just Spring Fever.

Played 32 Won 7 .219 winning percentage

runs scored 133 runs allowed 191

Tribe seen running to the airport. Can't get out of Arizona fast enough. Weather is too nice. Players want to be on the golf course. Can't concentrate on playing baseball.

Manny Acta is ready to throw the switch on Thursday.

Hey, who took the loss in today's game? ha ha

seagull wrote:Played 30 Won 6

http://assets.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/bp/1518849.html

Thursday, March 6
Updated: March 13, 1:36 PM ET

Does anything in spring translate to regular season?
By Michael Wolverton
Special to ESPN.com

They're already grumbling in Philadelphia. The Phillies, after a strong offseason that has elevated them to the status of NL East favorites, have started their exhibition season by losing four of their first five games. Phillies fans, not exactly the most patient and supportive group around, are beginning to gripe about the poor start on talk radio and the internet.

But I'm here to put Philadelphians' minds at ease, at least until next month. Even if the Phillies play this way for the rest of March, it won't have any bearing on whether they'll be playing in October. Aside from dugout chatter, power ballads, and Yogi Berra quotes, there is nothing less meaningful in the baseball world than spring training records.

That's not an especially controversial statement. No one bases their preseason expectations entirely or even mostly on the spring training standings. And plenty of analysts have looked for a strong link between spring success and regular season success over the years, only to come up empty. But fans and writers still give in to the temptation to read something into spring records, especially when a reputedly good team has a bad record or vice versa. So it's worth taking a look at some numbers to see just how little March means for the months that follow.

To get a sense of how well spring training records predict regular season success, we'll look at all spring training records back to 1996 (stopping there before we got to the severely abbreviated spring training of 1995). Let's look first at the very best spring teams.

Does a great spring mean a great regular season? Here are the 15 top spring records since 1996, along with records in the subsequent regular season: There isn't much reason to believe in spring training records here. Seven of these 15 March Monsters finished below .500 in the regular season. There are some outstanding teams on this list, but there are some truly awful teams too. In particular, notice the great spring put together by the 1996 Detroit Tigers. After they left Florida, they turned out to be the very worst major league team since the '60s.

(The '96 Tigers' mirror image -- the 2001 Seattle Mariners, with a 116-46 regular season record -- showed no signs of their upcoming dominance during spring training. They finished March at 13-19.)

Even if having a great spring record doesn't mean anything, maybe having a spring meltdown is a sign of bad things to come. What about the very worst spring performers? Here are the bottom 15 spring performances of the past seven years:
This list tells pretty much the same story as the previous one. The worst four spring training teams finished below .500 in the regular season, but the next four, and seven of the 15 overall, finished .500 or above. The most surprising thing here is that the very worst spring training teams of recent years cumulatively played better than .500 ball during the regular season, effectively the same as the very best teams shown in the previous table.

Of course, if we really want to know about the predictive power of spring training, it's better to look at all the teams rather than just the ones on the fringes. We can do that by figuring the correlation coefficient between spring and summer records. A correlation of 1 would mean spring performance predicts regular season performance perfectly; a correlation of 0 would mean there was no relationship at all. Since 1996, the correlation between spring records and regular season records is 0.15. So there is a relationship, but it's very weak. For comparison, the correlation between last year's regular season record and this year's regular season record during the same period is a much stronger 0.52.

So a team's record in the spring means next-to-nothing about their record in the regular season, but maybe that's just because they play so few games in the spring -- not enough for teams' true abilities to emerge. If we look at spring training records over a longer period of time maybe the best teams will show themselves.

No such luck. Here are the top five overall spring records since 1996, along with regular season records during the same period:

Three of the top five spring performers of recent years are sub-.500 teams in the regular season, even when you look at seven years' worth of games. Meanwhile, the best teams in the league, the Yankees and Braves, were each below .500 in the spring. The correlation between spring records and regular season records over the seven years is 0.28 -- better than we saw in single seasons, but still not very strong.

So there's very little relationship between spring training records and regular season records, in the short term or the long term, whether you look at all teams or just the extreme ones. And that's actually pretty surprising when you think about it. After all, they're largely the same teams playing just months apart. Why can't we tell anything about a team from how it plays in March?

You can list the reasons as well as I can. It's partly the parade of minor leaguers and NRIs in the spring who will never see playing time during the regular season. It's partly the severely unbalanced schedules that teams play in the spring. It's partly the lack of motivation for veterans who are just marking time until Opening Day.

But more important than any of those is that the game itself is fundamentally different in the spring than it is in the summer. Players are yanked from the game with no regard to the score. Pitchers will go an entire appearance without using their best pitch in an effort to work on the No. 2 and No. 3 pitches in their arsenal. Managers will send up a lefty pinch-hitter against a lefty reliever just to see how well he can go against his platoon split. In short, the game is not played to win.

And that's fine. There isn't a baseball fan around who doesn't love spring training, where the stakes are lower, the rosters are bigger, and the players are carefree. Enjoy the games. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that a win for your team in March will translate into five in June.

I guess the Tuesday game is in North Carolina.

I know the Carolinas, and still had to google "Zebulon" to see where it is.

We'll be shaking hands with Scott Erickson, our new organizational pitching coach for 2012 with the Carolina Mudcats.

More from DENVER LOU:

I'm back from Florida with just a few items.



Detroit seems to be the team. Lots of power.



The Pirates hit very well.



With the exception of Detroit, most teams seem to be blah. Then of course it was Spring Training. Saw Jackson hit an inside-the-park home run He can fly.



Saw Fielder go 1 fer 3 w/2Ks. Son had the glasses on him during pre-game and said that he didn't socialize with anyone else on the team, and they returned the favor.



While there, we heard that analysts were picking the Nats for the playoffs. I will be surprised. Ronny Belliard was one of the coaches. Did not see Chad Durbin on any of their rosters. Jason Michaels played quite a bit, then they cut him, then they resigned him. The Nats do have Lidge. DeRosa is a benchwarmer.



The Astros look like a disorganized team. ??? I saw two guys I liked, Chris Johnson, who can hit them a long way (but he's got to hit them first) and Brian Bogusevic who hits pretty good and has a PHENOMENAL arm. They also had a guy named Travis Buck.



Woke up one day and heard that the Tribe had signed Vlad to a one-year contract. it was never confirmed.



Where the Astros gonna play next year? Some said ALC others ALW, but they will join the Rangers. Rangers have always complained about being in the ALW because they have a two-hour difference with the west coast.



With the Nats looking to go to Ft Myers, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Astros try to move next. They have never been happy about Kissimmee even after the $17M upgrade. Saw a few games there. Right field stands had a lot of visitor's fans while left had much, much less.



Chipper announced his retirement during an afternoon game at DWorld.



And finally, the Winter Haven sports complex is still thriving. Games going on all the time (college and hi-school). No condos, no shopping centers.



Well that's it for another year.



DLOU

The worst of the worst all finished sub-500 and I think our record beats them all for futility, so we may be establishing a new precedent in 2012.

At least we are beating the Mudcats today 5-0.

At least we know we can win ball games. That's a good thing Lou. Final was 13-0 and the Mudcats kept is close.

ZEBULON, N.C. --

Cabrera, Duncan, Donald go deep; Lowe sharp over three

The Cleveland Indians welcomed the Carolina Mudcats to their farm system with a 13-0 drubbing Tuesday afternoon during an exhibition at Five County Stadium in Zebulon, N.C., a suburb of Raleigh. The affiliation with Carolina continues the Indians' partnership at the Class A Advanced level in the Carolina League, as the Mudcats replace the Kinston Indians.

Shelley Duncan, who led the Tribe with 19 RBIs in Spring Training, further quieted critics of Cleveland's supposed left-field void by crushing a no-doubt home run to left in the top of the fourth for a 3-0 lead. "Shelley can provide some of that right-handed power that we've missed in our lineup," Acta said. "He did that for us last year and during Spring Training, and he's going to get his chance."

Gotta look at the positives. No mention of the .161 batting average anywhere. The guys hitting 6 points less than LaPorta. Who would'a thunk it? I'm not ready to be quieted

I was in Zebulon today, and called that Shelley Duncan Home Run! The Tribe was in control until the seventh when the Mudcats proceeded to walk about 10 batters over the next 2 innings. It was a beautiful day for baseball, and I got my Mudcat's hat.