From sweep to swept, Cleveland has already been treated to two very different sides of the 2017 Indians an offensive outage plagued the Tribe in the desert.
Even with a travel day to go from Arlington to Phoenix, the Indians offense looked hungover from an opening series high and ran into a buzz saw that was the Diamondbacks and could only muster up seven runs in the series after exploding for 21 runs in Texas.
While looking at the grand scheme of things, the Tribe caused no damage to the early season outlook as the team managed to go .500 on the opening road trip, a feat any team would be pleased with, but the road trip could have been so much more.
Lacking in the runs department, Indians hitters slumped in the dry heat of Phoenix in the warm up before returning to Cleveland to a highly-anticipated return of the American League champs. But fear not, the early position has the Tribe has in a good place with dawning of American League central play upon us.
Learning a thing or two in Phoenix, the Indians bats just struggled from top to bottom. Getting opportunities based on errors, the Indians nicked Arizona pitching for just five earned runs over the series, the contest between Texas and Phoenix was a mile wide.
Struggling to get productions in any spots, the Indians were first to score in two of the three games of the series. Last season, the Indians one of the beast teams in baseball in playing with a lead, but this did them no favors in 2017 against Arizona.
Lacking production from all the big names, you can point fingers at every Tribe player looking to come up in a big spot. Needing to put this series behind them will be a bit of a factor early on the for the Indians.
Getting less than impressive performances from Bauer and Tomlin, the Indians had a big chance on Sunday to get a road win in Phoenix, but could not come up with an answer for any of the Diamondbacks pitchers.
As they say, the past is this past and the Tribe will need to put this series in the rear view mirror and focus on the task ahead which features a lot of familiar faces.
Looking forward to four straight series against AL central teams, the Tribe will have a shot to provide an early edge to the standings. But in order for that to happen, the Indians will need to get a grasp on the pros and cons they’ve seen early on.
If the Tribe can get the offensive production we saw in Texas to start the season with beginning of the rotation coming around to aid in the effort, the Indians should provide the fireworks we’ve yearned for at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.
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