| James Judge. 28th July, 2005 - 1:23 am
 If the Cleveland Indians have any shot at the playoffs, they need to find an ace quickly. C.C. Sabathia, the Indians current ace has gotten rocked almost all season. During his first 3 starts of the season, Sabathia had a 0.92 ERA. That has been the only bright spot for the Indians and their ace this season. Sabathia’s ERA as of July 26, is a disastrous 5.24. After the game in Oakland Monday night C.C. stated “I'm so confused right now, I can't tell the difference between a good pitch and a bad pitch.” This was C.C.’s fourth loss in a row and probably won’t be his last for quite a while.
C.C. lately hasn’t been pitching, but throwing. He is throwing with his arm trying to blow away batters instead of pitching intelligently. Maybe C.C. should learn a thing or two from the Indians veteran starting pitcher, Kevin Millwood. Millwood has been around this game for a while and knows what he is doing. He never gets rattled, and never gets scared to throw certain pitches at certain times. He is a very intelligent pitcher.
The rest of the Indians haven’t faired much better. The Indians best pitcher record wise is southpaw Cliff Lee. One major problem for the Indians starters is the lack of offense, which will put into a pitchers mind that they have to throw a perfect game and that just is not going to happen. I’m sure, that just like me, we are all tired of hearing the excuses from manager Eric Wedge about the offense, and defending his starting pitcher even though Sabathia had just given up 8 runs in 2 1/3 to the Oakland A’s.
After the game when asked about C.C.s performance Wedge said, "the A's batters did a good job vs. him. He was leaving the ball over the plate, and they didn't try to do too much with the ball. In the second, [Eric] Chavez got that leadoff home run and it really just dominoed from there."
My question to you Eric is how is it not C.C.’s fault for leaving the ball over the plate? The batters aren’t pitching to themselves.
In my opinion I think the Indians should trade C.C. Sabathia for some more pop in the line up. Then promote Cliff Lee or Kevin Millwood to the ace spot and bring Jason Davis up from Buffalo. The Indians need some more pop in the lineup, preferably a right fielder. Casey Blake has done nothing for the team this year offensively, so in my opinion he should be gone to. If the Indians Front Office wants the fans to know they will do anything they can to make the Indians into a playoff caliber team, then they need to get rid of the slackers and bring people in with experience, skill, and talent. Otherwise, the Indians will be stuck in rebuilding mode for a long, long time.
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