Tribe Fans, Time to Start Pointing Fingers Elsewhere

For the first time in a long time I started off this year really excited to see what the Cleveland Indians were going to bring to the table for the 2008 season.

Last year was a treat...even though the Indians choked in the ALCS, they made it farther than they have gone in six years, which for me was an extremely long six years and I am sure for other Indians fans...they will agree. But this year I had very high expectations for the 2008 Tribe...none of them are being met.

Instead of the Indians taking off to a 6-10 game lead after two months of play, the Indians are finding themselves in more of a panic mode than anything else.

The starting pitching to this point has been absolutely phenomenal with four of the five starters landing a spot in the top five in A.L. ERA leaders. The bullpen up to this point hasn't been doing nearly as good as last year with Betancourt struggling and Joe Bo having injury problems.

But other than that—you can't blame the bullpen for many of the losses that the Tribe have already had this year. There is only one thing to blame for the way that the Indians have started this year off, and fans of the Indians who are reading this know exactly what I am talking about—HITTING!

As a team the Cleveland Indians are batting a league lowest .234. Casey Blake is the teams RBI leader with 27 and he is only batting .216. Jhonny Peralta is the teams home runs leader with 11 and he is only batting .225. Ryan Garko batted .289 last year and is only batting .234 right now and his swing is absolutely disgusting.

Sizemore is supposed to be our all-star outfielder but he is only batting .255 and looks completely lost at the plate at times. Do you even remember in the year 2006 when Hafner hit 42 home runs and batted .308 with 117 RBI?

He didn't have a great year last year but did finish with 100 RBI. At the same time pitchers feared him because of the great power he had in his swing. He is now batting .217 with only four homers.

And you know what? Us Cleveland Indian fans have to start blaming someone else other than Hafner or Garko or the rest of the Cleveland Indians for the way they have been swinging the bat.

Remember Jason Michaels from earlier this year? If you were like me you were screaming at the TV every time he came up to bat because he couldn't hit the ball if his life depended on it. His batting stance looked like he was trying to do the splits or something and every time he hit the ball it was just a little grounder to somewhere in the infield. It was pitiful remember?

Well, while he was batting .207 in 21 games with the Cleveland Indians, he has most recently been picked up by the Pittsburgh Pirates and played 16 games and is batting .281. I wondered how someone with that batting stance could possibly be doing better anywhere else when it hit me. Our hitting coach is not doing his job!

I happened to catch Michaels in an at-bat against the Cincinnati Reds this afternoon and what do you know...his new hitting coach at Pittsburgh worked on his stance to where he is no longer trying to do the splits in the batting square. Wow! That was all it took was a batting coach doing his job, and a player can all of a sudden hit the ball! Who would have known!

My point is this. The whole entire Cleveland Indians team is in a slump right now with the exclusion of Victor Martinez. But at the same time Martinez has been known the past few years for his power and is yet to even hit a homer in two months so far this year.

Does anyone else think that perhaps we should start blaming someone else other than the players?! The Cleveland Indians have a hitting coach who is obviously not doing his job right now. His name is Derek Shelton and his job should be on the line.

He had a good few years with the team but is just not getting the job done anymore and his name needs to start floating out there to all Cleveland Indians fans. Derek Shelton is ruining the 2008 season for the Cleveland Indians. In 2005 when Eddie Murray wasn't getting the job done very well, the organization was very quick to pull the trigger and fire him.

If Derek Shelton isn't fired soon, then we have no hope for this 2008 season. This is the same team we took one game away from the World Series last year—there is no excuse for our team hitting like this!

FIRE DEREK SHELTON!!!