CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) - The Cleveland Indians are two weeks away from their April 1 regular-season opener in Detroit, with the club sporting a 7-10 record out in Goodyear.
With the team needing to finalize its rosters before the regular season, the Tribe announced their reassignment of pitcher Heath Hembree to the minor league depth camp.
The Indians' president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti addressed the move - as well as a number of topics - via teleconference on Thursday.
“Normally with someone like Heath Hembree, with the track record he has, we would have loved to play it out a little longer, give him more opportunities to make the team,” Antonetti said. “But we just didn’t have the innings for him.”
Hembree, 32, received a non-roster invite to spring training on Feb. 3 that would have paid him a reported $1.25 million-plus incentives had he reached the majors. Hembree logged 6 1/3 innings across seven spring appearances for the Indians with a 1.42 ERA, six walks, and eight strikeouts.
Player and prospect analysis
Antonetti also added the following when discussing the difficulty of player analysis during an altered Cactus League season: “The combination of fewer Major League innings, no split squads, and no Minor League games makes it difficult to get opportunities for a lot of players we’d like to see,” Antonetti said. “We’re in the process of determining how we prioritize innings and at-bats for the guys here.”
Alternate site availability
Antonetti also discussed the Indians' situation with their alternate site, in which Major League Baseball will have a final decision on whether players can participate in games come this April.
The team's access to the alternate site (likely to be Columbus) will influence which players will join the team in Cleveland, who will be sent to Site B, and who will remain in Arizona.
“Our hope is that we’ll be able to play somewhere between 2-4 games per week,” Antonetti said. “We’re working through scheduling with teams in the area. Our goal would be to try and get as many games as we can to accomplish both objectives — make sure we have players ready and conditioned to play in the major leagues, but also continue the development of players there so they have competition outside of their own teammates like last year.”
Filling the gaps
As for the final roster, many moves are still yet to be finalized, such as center field, first base, and the final two rotation spots.
Outfielders, such as Oscar Mercado and Bradley Zimmer, have been in the camp mix, along with Amed Rosario, who on Tuesday struggled with three errors at center against the Los Angeles Angels.
When asked about Rosario's experiment in the 8-spot, Antonetti answered: “He’s going to continue to get opportunities,” Antonetti said. “What we’ve tried to do is take the pressure off him and let him know we expect mistakes.”
Another Tribe outfielder, right fielder Josh Naylor, has been struggling at the plate, going 5-for-24 with five strikeouts heading into Thursday.
“Early on, he’s had some good at-bats and hit some hard line-drive outs to outfielders,” said Antonetti on the 23-year-old. “It doesn’t show in the stats on the surface, but the quality of his contact tells a different story. We’ll work with him on focusing and controlling at-bats.”
However, a number of Indians players have been showing out in Goodyear, such as Bobby Bradley, who is battling with Jake Bauers for the starting first baseman job. Bradley, who had a brief major league stint with Cleveland in 2019, entered play Thursday ranked among MLB spring training leaders with five doubles (tied for first), seven extra-base hits (tied for second) and 11 RBI (tied for second).
“What Bobby can do is continue to control what’s in front of him and continue to have a good camp,” Antonetti said. “His swing is in a great place and that’s carried forward to his performance.”
Yu Chang has also become a more proactive force in the Cleveland lineup, especially after Mike Freeman was traded to Cincinnati. Chang, 25, was 6-for-22 with four homers and a triple this spring before getting scratched Thursday with neck soreness.
“We’re really encouraged by what he’s done,” Antonetti said. “One of the challenges Yu will have to work through is making the transition from full-time in the Minor Leagues to a player who might not get regular at-bats in the Major Leagues.”
Indians' owner Dolan: Team's name decision timeline to made by midseason
While Antonetti addressed the team's on-field situations on Thursday, Cleveland owner Paul Dolan told the Akron Roundtable that his franchise should by the middle of the 2021 season if they can change their nickname for the 2022 season.
The organization announced on Dec. 14 that they were going to change their name, and Dolan said at that time that the team name would be changed for the 2022 season. However, Dolan said Thursday that there was a possibility that the team name might not be changed until 2023.
“The timeline remains the same,” Dolan said, “just to be clear we said no sooner than 2022. Our target is still 2022, but it is a difficult process. Trying to find a name that works, that we can clear, and ultimately in a tight time frame. By tight I mean we can’t just show up in spring training (in 2022) and say here’s the new name. We have to have it buttoned up long before that.
“It could be sometime in the middle of this year whether we know we’ve got it down where we can do it for 2022. If not we’d have to push it to 2023. We’re working hard to get it done by then, but there’s no certainty in that.”
Cleveland's baseball franchise has held their longtime nickname since 1915, and Dolan had said back in 2015, when the franchise decided to forgo its Chief Wahoo logo, that the nickname would remain.
However, that stance has since changed.
“I said it many times privately and publicly and I believed it,” said Dolan. “It didn’t mean I didn’t know there were problems with it. But frankly I put on blinders to it. Those blinders came off last year in the wake of the George Floyd killing. We, like so many corporate entities, said we rejected what happened there and we were re-committing to our role in the community, particularly our roles around social justice. Which begs the question how do we do that with a name that is a major problem for many in our community?
“We felt it was the right thing to discontinue the use. Frankly, we also felt it was the smart thing to do because the reality is the issues around the name are not going to go away. And I don’t think it’s our role as a sports team representing a community to be in the midst of a culture war. We need to unite people.”
Dolan says the process for the name change includes examining names that the organization likes, talking to fans, and trying to find a name that isn’t already owned by another entity.
“The real challenge is finding a name that works that we can use,” said Dolan. “There aren’t many words in the English language that somebody doesn’t own in some shape or form. Particularly in the sports realm, that’s a real challenge.”
Before the club had adopted the Indians moniker, Cleveland had gone by Blues, Blue Stockings, Bronchos, and Naps in their American League stint, which began in 1901, as well as the Lake Shores in their Western League stint in 1900.
Other teams in Cleveland's history of professional baseball included the Cleveland Forest Citys (1869-1872, 1879-1881) of the National Association/National League, Cleveland Blues (1882-1884), and Cleveland Spiders (1887-1899) of the National League, as well as the Cleveland Infants (1890) of the short-lived Players' League.
