Tribe skid continues

I know most of you aren't paying attention to the Tribe at this point. Honestly, even though baseball is my favorite sport and the Indians are my favorite team, I haven't been paying them much attention myself the past week or so. They've been on the West Coast, which means their games during the week started right around my bedtime. And the rest have been while I was at work or doing yard work or whatever. So I haven't watched an Indians game in several days.

And by the look of things, I haven't missed much. The Athletics' 8-4 win yesterday was the Indians' sixth straight loss. The skein drops the Tribe to 61-87, their low-water mark of the season in comparison to .500. Which I suppose is to be expected. They traded away most of their marquee talent, Grady Sizemore is out for the season, and a very large percentage of the current roster has spent time in the minors this year.

In fact, there are just two pitchers currently suiting up for the Indians who haven't spent a single day in the minors this year: Kerry Wood and Justin Masterson. And 2009 is Masterson's first full season in the bigs. And among the position players, it's just Kelly Shoppach, Jhonny Peralta and Shin-Soo Choo. Travis Hafner and Asdrubal Cabrera both had rehab stints in the minors, so they weren't really minor-leaguers. So that's a grand total of seven players the Indians have right now who were never true minor-leaguers this year. No wonder they're struggling.

This team could be better next year, but unless they make some free-agent signings, don't expect them to win more than about 65 to 70 games. And I don't think they'll make much of a splash in that department.