As we embark on a six-month regular season and hopefully have baseball to watch well-beyond September in Cleveland, here are a few suggestions that Tribe fans might want to keep in mind this season.
1. Don’t expect Edwin Encarnacion to hit eight homers in April.
It’s true that Edwin is one of the best power hitters in the game, but what some people may overlook is that when he was hitting his 35-40 homers per season in Toronto, his home ballpark had a roof for cold weather.
Anyone who’s been to a decent amount of Indians games in April knows how it can make for quite a few low-scoring games.
Whereas Rogers Centre in Toronto was manufactured to be a hitter’s park regardless of the temperature outside, the ballpark on the corner of Carnegie and Ontario is not conducive to the longball early in the season.
The good news is that when the weather does heat up, there’s a big old porch in left field with Edwin’s name written all over it.
The wall in front of the left field bleachers is practically daring Encarnacion to send airborne baseballs to John Adams on the drum.
Not since the days of Manny Ramirez and Albert Belle have the Indians possessed the right handed hitting power comparable to Encarnacion.
If he gets out to a slow start in April, don’t panic. We really don’t know much about how he’ll react to playing home games off the shores of Lake Erie.
On the off chance that he goes into a slump, there will always be the one guy calling into a sports talk radio show after a couple weeks saying: “What a waste of money. What a bust.”
Don’t be that guy.
In late-May, June, July, August and September, bring your glove if you’re sitting anywhere between the right field foul pole and Quicken Loans Arena.
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