Cleveland Indians

THE SUBJECT - Luis Valbuena, also known as Baby Louie.

Luis Valbuena came over to Cleveland in the three-way deal with with the Mets and Mariners that sent outfielder Franklin Gutierrez to Seattle and J.J. Putz to New York.

After spending 22 games in Triple-A Columbus, Valbuena made a quick debut with Cleveland and opened a lot of eyes as a potential second baseman for the club's long term future.

As the trade deadline begins to inch closer and closer, it becomes more obvious what teams will be buyers and what teams will be sellers.

It is fairly obvious that the Indians will be one of the teams that will be sellers. They are currently 13.5 games out of first place and 16 games under .500 with a 26-42 record.

There has been talk about a few Indians pitchers being moved between now and the trade deadline. Jake Westbrook's name has been mentioned in connection with many teams.

A (hopefully) monthly look at the Tribe's performance from a variety of statistical angles. Suggestions for additional stats and categories are welcome - just let me know.

Matt LaPorta was bad early on this season. There were high hopes for him entering the year, a prospect with immense talent that would finally receive regular playing time.  Clearly it didn’t happen:

119 At Bats
.218 Batting Average (26 Hits)
1 Home Runs
7 RBI
13 Runs
0 Stolen Bases
.290 On Base Percentage
.277 Slugging Percentage
.269 Batting Average on Balls in Play

After Washington Nationals’ rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg dazzled in his major league debut, people couldn’t wait to see what he would do as an encore yesterday against the Cleveland Indians. While Strasburg didn’t mow through the Indians like he did the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was still pretty effective.

Baseball at Progressive Field all of a sudden got a lot more exciting over the last week.

The Indians had a four-game set against the Boston Red Sox, winning two of those games, Carlos Santana was called up, and now Stephen Strasburg will be toeing the mound to the delight of baseball fans everywhere.

Once it was announced that Strasburg would be starting, tickets for today's game started selling like crazy. The good part of that equation is there will be a much fuller house today than has been the norm at Progressive Field this year.

At this point of the season, we can safely say that the 24-36 Indians are not going to have a myriad of talent making the American League All-Star team. Luckily for them though, MLB rules require that at least one representative from each team be part of the roster.

In the case of some teams, the choice is easy. The Pirates will have Andrew McCutchen, and the Royals will have Jose Guillen. For the Indians and others, however, the choice is more difficult. There are a handful of different players that could be All-Stars, though, based on how they're playing.

When the Cleveland Indians traded 3B Casey Blake to the Los Angeles Dodgers back in the summer of 2008 for prospect Carlos Santana, I was really surprised. Santana was a rising prospect in the Dodgers’ organization and was hitting .323 with 14 home runs in High Single A at the time of the trade.

According to ClevelandIndians.com, Indians top prospect Carlos Santana is expected to make his Major League debut sometime this summer and could be in the majors as early as the all-star break. The 5’11” catcher is said to be the best player within the Indians farm system and the Tribe hopes that he may be able to deliver the spark that the Cleveland offense desperately needs.
   

Welcome to the Cleveland Indians Trading Post, a weekly segment meant to help my fellow Tribe fans sort out which of the few familiar faces left on the team won’t be around much longer.

This week’s potential trade bait is Russell Branyan.

The basics