Tribe ends skid, but still sucks

If you're a Tribe fan, you've got to love Shin-Soo Choo. After his two home runs yesterday, Choo is back in the team lead with 12, and his four RBIs were key to the Indians' 5-3 defeat of Cincinnati, ending the club's seven-game losing streak. Choo also leads the team in RBIs, hits, total bases, and the three major average stats (among those with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title).

Carlos Santana also went deep, for his fourth home run in just 15 games. True, 15 games isn't much of a sample size, but he's shown he's definitely a major league-caliber player, and could play in an All-Star Game as soon as 2011. Heck, he might have gotten there this year if he'd started the season in Cleveland. And speaking of young talent, rookie Mitch Talbot won his eighth game of the year, which leads the team; and his 3.88 ERA is none too shabby.

All of that is encouraging, unless you look at the standings. The Indians are now 27-47, which puts them on a pace to go 59-103. That would qualify as the second-worst record in team history, behind the 1991 team's 57-105. Though, it should be noted that the '91 team included a lot of players who would go on to be stars during the Tribe's coming glory days — players like Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga, Jim Thome, Sandy Alomar and Charles Nagy.

And the Indians are not, as a certain commenter recently claimed on a previous post, the worst team in the American League. That would be the Baltimore Orioles, who are an eye-popping-bad 23-52, which puts them on a pace to go 49-113. They could threaten the mark for single-season losses, set by the expansion 1962 Mets, who went 40-120. As bad as this Indians team is, we can at least take some comfort in the fact that the club that takes the field every day in Baltimore is worse. Not much comfort, but some.