Here is another glorious episode of Burning River Radio, presented by BurningRiverBaseball.com.

On this episode we talk about the Tribe's recent success, Nick Swisher's injury and sabrmetrics as a whole. Part of today's discussion was inspired by this video of Hawk Harrelson speaking on the MLB Network from our sister site, Awful Announcing. During this discussion you will learn about a great new stat (TWTW), how to calculate BABIP and how to compare apples to oranges (it's easier than you think). Overall, this is a must hear for all humans.

There were a few technical difficulties while recording this one, so be aware that it may sound a little odd in places. Still definitely worth a listen. The boys talk about upcoming roster moves, the Ubaldo Jimenez trade, predicting series outcomes and the current state of the Indians farm system. 

Anyway, here is the episode recorded on April 30th. Enjoy!

Check out the best episode of Burning River Radio yet! Listen to Mike's great argument about why Bob Wickman's number should be retired throughout the league because he was the first teletubby to play professional baseball. Also, there are things we actually talked about like Mariano Rivera Day, Killing the AAA Astros, retiring the 1995 Indians, Omar's music career, lineup madness and the arch nemesis of Burning River Radio: Lou Marson.

Joe and Mike recorded another episode of Burning River Radio for your listening pleasure:

On this episode they discuss the Indians first week of baseball, including Ubaldo Jimenez's first start, Mark Reynolds power streak and Trevor Bauer's Indians debut. There is also an in depth discussion on the difference a manager can make in the game and how to quantify it. The show finishes up with a thorough trashing of the New York Yankees, just in time for the Indians home opener.

Joe's Expectations

There has been no season in recent history where the Indians have entered the season feeling so positive. Everything started with the signing of Terry Francona which completely changed the perspective of everyone in Cleveland. A slew of big free agent signing filled all the holes in the roster when it had looked prior to the end of the season that they would be filled internally or with AAAA Spring Training invitees (like Mike McDade).

This has changed the expectations from being picked to finish in fourth, competing with the Minnesota Twins for last place to being contenders for the division title along with the Tigers and White Sox. All this may be a little overblown as the Indians still have a very problematic starting rotation and an offense that is still not on the level of the Tigers or either of the big AL West teams (the Rangers and Angels). 

The good news for the Indians is two-fold. First, every part of the team has been improved from the 2012 season (and they actually played very well for the first half of that season). The defense has been dynamically improved, starting with the removal of the lead weights who stood in left field last year and replacing them with the greatest active defensive outfielder, Michael Bourne. With three career centerfielders starting in the outfield, it truly should be a "death to all flying things" situation. The biggest offensive improvement was switching out Casey Kotchman for Nick Swisher and adding a DH (Mark Reynolds) after playing most of 2012 with Travis Hafner on the DL. Even the pitching has improved with Derek Lowe and Tony Sipp (among others) gone, replaced by Brett Myers and a crew of top end relievers.

The second point of optimism for the Indians is that this team is not built to win in 2013. Swisher and Bourne each signed four year deals while Jason Kipnis, Carlos Santana, Asdrubal Cabrera and the other young Indians that were developed in house are under team control for years to come as well. In fact, the only players signed to one year deals are Myers and Reynolds, who each have replacements already with the team (Trevor Bauer and Jesus Aguilar) who should be upgrades for the 2014 season. This long-term establishment allows the Indians a window of contention much longer than just this year. It also leaves them able to compete this season by using the players signed to single year contracts. Remember to keep this in mind if the Indians struggle at all this year, that it isn't time to panic and pull the rip cord, instead, just relax and enjoy the ride.

The second acquisition was much flashier and a great move for the long term, something the Indians should have done more of this offseason. In a three-team swap, the Indians acquired the #3 overall pick in the 2011 draft, Trevor Bauer. Bauer’s stuff includes a mid-90s fastball and very good curveball. He also mixes in a slider, splitter and change-up and both his command and control need to be polished. According to scouts, he is a very raw talent and could take several years to develop. With some polish and maturity, Bauer has the ultimate ceiling of a No. 2 starter. So while Bauer can help over the long-haul, it will be a stretch to say he will have an impact this season in the starting rotation.

The third acquisition, Scott Kazmir, was recently named the fifth starter. He had promising numbers over the winter and had a good spring. The reality of fifth starters is that they’re well below-average, and Kazmir, like in 2009, is a capable fifth starter. If he can get back to that level, he can serve a purpose, even if he isn’t the Kazmir of old, the guy who pitched like a dominant ace early in his career with the Tampa Bay Rays. However, all postseason ready teams have competition for the fifth spot in the rotation and is usually not correlated  

With no impact free agent starting pitchers available this past off-season, the organization decided to bolster the defense, the outfield defense to be exact. As you know, run prevention is a combination of pitching and defense, with the former being highly correlated to the latter. There are concerns about how the Indians’ pitchers will contribute to the run prevention, but the defense should make a stronger contribution, helping the pitchers out. To say that the Indians’ rotation isn’t good enough is to say that the Indians will allow too many runs. The infield is still a defensive mess and with a staff made up primarily of ground-ball pitchers, could turn out to be one of the main culprits. That’s without even considering Santana’s work behind the plate. But the outfield is where the Indians could shine. Let’s group the corner positions together. These should be occupied by Nick Swisher, Drew Stubbs, and Michael Brantley. Swisher is getting older, but his defensive track record in the outfield is pretty good. Stubbs’ numbers with Cincinnati were great, and he played in the middle. Brantley has been a center fielder, but the numbers don’t speak kindly of him. Will it be enough for the poor infield-defensive performance? I am not willing to bet my hedges.

The organization needed to focus it's efforts on acquiring high-ceiling, major-league or near major league talent. Because they did not do that this past offseason, they are only delaying the inevitable. For a low-revenue team, higher-priced free agents should only be pursued when the team is ready to winnow. With 90+ losses three of the last four years, they are obviously more bullish on their 2013 forecasting than I am.

Therefore, I must conclude that the Indians will not make the postseason.

Brett Myers could be the question to everybody's answers in 2013.

Burning River Baseball is evolving. Starting in the 2013 baseball season we will be introducing a new aspect of the site, Burning River Radio. This will essentially take over the Indians Arguments segment of the site, giving you an audio version of the debates that initially inspired the creation of this site. Mike and myself have been having these discussions for years and now we are bringing them to you. All you need to do to listen is press play on the widget below:

This first week we will be posting two episodes. The one posted above is an intro episode to the show, where we outline what we will be doing in future episodes and introduce ourselves. Below, is episode two, where we talk about the Indians 25 man roster and our predictions for the Burning River Awards. We discuss in depth the versatility of the team, the 27 man roster, the greatness of the bullpen and the terrifying starting rotation. Sorry for any technical difficulties, but we are new at this and it should get better as the weeks go on.

The most recent episode will always be available on the right side of the website and will be in a player like those in this article. New episodes will be posted in articles just like this one as soon as they are recorded. If you would like to download the show and listen to it elsewhere, go to burningriverbaseball.podomatic.com The show is unedited and uncensored so if you are easily offended, don't listen. We will try to record at least one episode a week during the regular season, but don't count on anything. Enjoy, and be sure to give up your feedback at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Indians arguments is back with our predictions for the 2013 season. This year (after epically blowing all of our MLB predictions) we will be sticking with what we know, the Cleveland Indians. We have three categories of predictions this season. First is the Indians leaders for the triple crown stats (wins, strike outs, ERA, home runs, RBI and batting average), followed by our predicted winners for the Burning River Awards given away at the end of the season. Finally, each writer for Burning River will pick the final rankings for the American League Central Division.

Indians Triple Crown Leaders

Burning River Awards

Central Division Standings

Hopefully we will be at least a little more accurate than in previous seasons, but either way, we'll go over results at the end of the season and laugh at how silly Mike was.

Prior to the season starting the writers for Burning River Baseball made some predictions about all of Major League Baseball as well as for the Indians more specifically. We didn't fare all that well on the team predictions, so let's see how the big league predictions went.

All the focus here should be placed on the fact that I perfectly picked the NL Central which should have been one of the harder divisions to pick as he has more teams than any other division and they are more evenly matched. I also correctly picked the Braves as a Wild Card team. We both completely blew the AL East as did almost every person who predicted the outcome preseason. The same is true of the AL West. In the NL West, the Diamondbacks and Rockies were huge disappointments the the Dodgers being unexpectedly good. None of any of the four World Series picks even made the play-offs, so this was pretty far off. Overall, I got four of the eight playoff teams correct while Jen got three.

Along with the team standings, we also picked the winners of the two major postseason awards. 

At first glance it looks like we did terrible, as there are no correct answers, but it isn't all that bad. In the AL Cy Young, we picked the #2 (Verlander) and #3 (Weaver) placed pitchers, but of whom had great seasons. In fact Verlander finished just 4 points beind Price overall. In the NL, Dickey was a surprise runaway as no one picked him prior to the season to do much after years of mediocrity before joining the Mets. Lee and Greinke were both obvious preseason choices, but Lee struggled behind a poor offense and Greinke was traded to the AL mid-season. Neither received any votes.

The NL MVP was another surprise with Posey blowing everyone out. Tulowitzki wasn't a bad preseason choice, but an injury kept him out for most of the year. Upton also had some problems on a poor Diamondbacks team and didn't receive any MVP votes. Cabrera was probably the least surprising of all the major award winners in 2012, but for some reason we each went different directions. The ultimate first half player, Bautista had another great first half and then missed most of the second half of the season with injury. Pujols had a terrible start, but ended up making up some ground, finishing 17th in the voting. Who would have thought preseason that Fernando Rodney and Jim Johnson would have been better AL MVP picks.

Overall, there weren't very many upsets among the award winners. Mike Trout (AL) and Bryce Harper (NL) were picked to win the Rookie of the Year awards when they made their debuts and they did. Bob Melvin (AL) and Davey Johnson (NL) each excelled where they weren't expected to, so they deserved their manager of the year award. The AL Cy Young was one of the closest races and any one of the three pitchers could have won the award without much controversy. If there was one snub, it was the NL MVP, where Andrew McCutchen and Ryan Braun each had arguably better seasons than the Giants catcher. Most likely they were both hurt by their team's failure to make the postseason.

For the Indians-centric view, no Cleveland Indians players received a single vote for any award in 2012. If any Indian got snubbed here, it was Zach McAllister who probably deserved about a fourth place finish in the AL Rookie of the Year race.

Prior to the season starting, the writers at Burning River Baseball made some bold predictions of what would happen during the Indians season. We also made predictions for all of baseball that will be reviewed after the World Series.

The inaccuracy of the predictions has a lot more to do with Indians players not meeting expectations than bad guesses. Going line by line, Kipnis and Cabrera were two of the five players who qualified for the batting title and finished 3rd and 4th in that category among qualifiers. Santana performed as expected by leading the team in home runs for the second season in a row, but still underperformed. Hafner completely disappointed this year, but Choo came in fourth in RBI, just 9 behind the leaders and Cabrera.

Like Santana taking the home run title, Masterson took all three of the pitching triple crown stats, but was very unimpressive in doing so. Only two Tribe pitchers qualified for the ERA title and both were terrible. The Jimenez pick for strike out leader was not far off as he finished just 16 back from Masterson and was the only other pitcher to qualify with at least 162 innings pitched. Tomlin ended up with the highest ERA (6.36) of all starting pitchers despite leading the team in ERA in 2011.

The only correct prediction in the Burning River Awards section was Jen's pick of McAllister for Rookie of the Year. The picks of Choo were as close as can be with Kipnis ending the season in a virtual tie with Kipnis for team MVP. Hagadone removed himself from the Rookie of the Year discussion by punching something and breaking his hand after blowing a game, but this was not a terrible pick. Both picks for Comeback player were based on players who underperformed in 2011, but the winner was a player who was actually above average compared to the rest of the team that year, he was just a lot better this year than last. Crowe was never given a chance on the Indians this year even though the Indians couldn't find a decent left fielder through more than half the season.