Mark Shapiro

Welcome to Tribe Talk, where Bleacher Report's Cleveland Indians fans weigh in on the ups and downs of the club each week throughout the season.

With our Tribe deeply buried in the AL Central cellar, this week we start looking ahead to next year.

Entering Sunday Night's save opportunity, Kerry Wood's ERA was a less than modest 7.98.  He was 1-3 with five saves in eight chances.  His ticket out of here, originally thought to be through a trade, was likely heading towards an end of the year release after the Indians refused to trigger the club option on his contract.

36 hours into Manny Acta’s first spring training as manager of the Indians, and he’s already nestled himself a nice, warm place in the back corner of Cleveland’s media doghouse.

That didn’t take long, did it?

On one of the youngest teams in the majors with question marks for most of the team, Acta has curiously already ended all speculation and named Russell Branyan the starting first basemen.

“He’ll get a majority of the time at first base,” said Acta. “We didn’t sign him to be a backup guy.”

The Indians have called a press conference for 1:30 pm today, where they are expected to announce that GM Mark Shapiro will move to a new role as team president and Assistant GM Chris Antonetti will take over the GM role, effective after the 2010 season.

While the news has not been officially confirmed, it is expected to be announced at today's press conference.

Conducting his second television interview in as many days, Manny Acta sat on the set of All Bets Are Off with Bruce Drennan knowing full well he was about to drop a bombshell.

The idea was brought up in the past few weeks and was even denied by Mets general anager Omar Minaya. However, when push came to shove, the idea was about to become a reality much to the delight of the entire city of Cleveland.

Any Cleveland fan with a decent short-term memory knows that, for the past several seasons, the Tribe has experienced consistent inconsistency at third base.

Since Travis Fryman hung up his cap, the Indians have had a revolving door at the hot corner. The Indians have had four different Opening Day third basemen in the last seven seasons, none of them for more than two years in a row.

Eric Wedge inherited a young and talented baseball team seven years ago when he took over as manger of the Tribe.

Welcome to Tribe Talk, where Bleacher Report's Tribe fans weigh in on the ups and downs of the Indians each week throughout the season.

This week we revisit our past discussion on the fate of manager Eric Wedge, ponder the value of a manager calling out a player in a public forum, and address a few more of the Tribe’s many pitching woes.  

I would like to thank this week's participants Nino Colla, Dave Wiley, and The Coop for their contributions.

The 2009 season has not gone at all as planned for the Cleveland Indians.

They have struggled, at one point or another, in every aspect of the game, losing because of starting pitching, the bullpen, blown saves, bad defense, bad managing, a lack of situational hitting, a lack of hitting period, and even some blown calls (when a fan reaches over the fence to snatch a ball away from a fielder it's interference, not a go ahead home run, even for the Yankees, but I digress).

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