Crossroads

Don't look now, but the Tribe has to do better than .600 for the rest of the season to have any hope of ending with a good enough record to make the post-season. Kind of seems like a pipe dream at the moment, doesn't it?

And yet we enter a three game series with the Twins tonight only two games behind them, just two games out of second place. Yes, I know we're still 8.5 games out of first, but we're going to have to take baby steps with this, people.

So where's the good news?

Well, it would appear that Ryan Garko has learned how to hit again. And while our outfield definitely lacks in power, we're really starting to see how formidable they could be down the line. Choo is hitting .333 in eight games. That's eight hits -- 5 for extra bases (four doubles and a home run), a stat the Tribe is sorely lacking in. He also has 5 RBI and scored 5 times. Not bad at all.

Ben Francisco is coming down to earth a bit, but he's still hitting .302. On May 30th, Franklin Gutierrez was hitting .236. He's now up to .252, a pretty nice upswing which hopefully will continue. And, of course, there's Grady, who leads the team in home runs and is always a threat to do pretty much anything.

But we're obviously not going to get power from the outfield any time soon, which means it's got to come from the infield. Victor Martinez only has 11 extra base hits, all doubles. And, as we've seen lately, Garko is better off when he doesn't try to hit it out.

In other words, we need the old Pronk back in a bad way.

And let's not even get into the bullpen.

Let's face facts, we need to play small ball and we need our starts to go at least six innings every time out. That's the only way we're going to win until we get our bullpen patched up and Travis Hafner returns from whatever planet he was kidnapped to and replaced by this guy we've seen lately.

But we've got a struggling Twins team and a Padres team that scores less than we do coming in to the Jake this week. If there were ever a time to get things going, it would be now.

Site News: For those of you who might actually read this thing, it's now part of what I like to consider a network of sites and blogs, all created by yours truly. The main hub is www.kylegarret.com. I have two other blogs as well as a page on the main site with samples of my writing that's updated every Sunday.

What does that mean? Well, that means there are six days a week for three blogs, which means twice weekly updates. This one will be updated every Tuesday and Friday.

You know, in case you wanted to mark your calendars.