Indians still waiting for hitters to wake up

5/23/2008 5:33 PM

By TOM WITHERS
AP Sports Writer

CLEVELAND (AP) -Back in the dugout after another frustrating at-bat in Chicago the other night, Indians catcher Victor Martinez vented by kicking a white plastic bucket filled with packets of sunflower seeds. He put a hole in its side - and got his foot stuck.

``I heard it,'' Cleveland manager Eric Wedge said. ``It was good contact.''

Finally.

The Indians rarely hit anything hard anymore.

They're baseball's worst hitting team, stuck in a deep, unforgiving slump that has wasted excellent starting pitching and solid defense and is threatening to sabotage a season they thought would go much differently than it has for the first two months.

Cleveland entered Friday night's series opener against the Texas Rangers with a season-high, six-game losing streak and a .231 team batting average. That's six points behind Washington, the poorest-hitting team in the NL, and a whopping 64 points behind the Boston Red Sox, whom the Indians pushed to a Game 7 in the ALCS last October.

With the exception of Martinez (.300), a cleanup hitter who has yet to homer in 140 at-bats and needed Cleveland's trainer to free his foot from the bucket, the Indians have seemingly forgotten how to hit. It's been a group effort.

From leadoff hitter Grady Sizemore (.254) all the way down to Asdrubal Cabrera (.172) in the No. 9 hole, Cleveland's bats are broken.

They hit just .192 in a six-game swing through Cincinnati and Chicago and scored just 13 runs. On Thursday, the Indians managed two hits - one a bunt single - in a 3-1 loss to the White Sox.

``It's tough, said Martinez, who was the AL's leading hitter a few weeks back but was in a 6-for-36 (.167) slide with one RBI in his last 10 games. ``But the only good thing is that we've been here before. We know we have the talent and we've all been through this before.''

Just not to this degree.

Like all teams, the Indians had their share of hitting futility last season. This year, though, they're in a rut that appears to be widening.

Through 47 games, they've scored 79 fewer runs than last season. Also, they'd scored three runs or less 26 times, compared to 12 times at the identical juncture in 2007.

What's making the offensive woes worse is that the Indians have been getting exceptional starting pitching. Cleveland's rotation recently pitched 44 1-3 consecutive scoreless innings and since April 17, the Indians have four of the five lowest ERAs in the AL.

Short of a seance or mass burning of their bats, the Indians have tried everything to awaken their slumbering offense.

Extra batting practice has yielded little. Extra video work hasn't done much, either.

``It's not anything where guys haven't been responsive,'' hitting coach Derek Shelton said. ``We're working through some things and it's just one of those stretches you go through during the year. We just happen to be going through it in the beginning of the year.

``We have to continue to stress is that it's a long season and we just have to grind through the times where we're not swinging the bats the way that we'd like.''

The season, though, could be starting to slip away. Although they entered the weekend just 4 1/2 games behind first-place Chicago in the AL Central, the Indians can't afford to fall any further back. And unless they start swinging the bats - and connecting - general manager Mark Shapiro may be forced to trade away some of his pitching depth.

Shapiro said the club remains reluctant to deal any of its young arms, but he soon may have no choice.

``We're looking at potential trades - from little to big,'' Shapiro said before Friday's game. ``But it's a tough time to do those kind of things. I continue to feel like the most probable way for this to turn around still has to be internally. But we don't have the luxury of waiting for that to happen either. We have to continue to look for any solution that we can.''

Shapiro remains perplexed by the Indians' widespread offensive descent, which has led to ``eight or nine players performing significantly underneath expectations.'' He's convinced the club will rebound, basing his faith on manager Eric Wedge's unbridled confidence.

``Eric is a strong guy, a positive guy and a consistent guy,'' Shapiro said. ``But there's no false positive there. He's not a guy who is Pollyanish and giving me the optimistic view when there's no reason to be optimistic. He feels like the guys are going to come around, that the key guys and key contributors are going to come around.

``If there's a crack, it's going to turn into a bigger crack and it's going to sink the ship. We're by no means near that sinking ship.''

Martinez set a career-high with 25 homers a year ago, and is at a loss to explain why he still hasn't hit one over the fences.

``It doesn't really bother me,'' said Martinez, who was a late scratch from Friday's series opener with a cut in his left middle finger. ``If I'm not going to hit a homer the whole year, I'm going to go out there and give my best and I'm going to make sure I put good at-bats in and see what happens.''

Martinez knew his bucket-kicking tirade would become a must-watch video on the Internet. It certainly cracked up his teammates, who struggled to suppress their laughter when he couldn't his foot without help from trainer Lonnie Soloff.

``That was a riot,'' third baseman Casey Blake said. ``You couldn't help but laugh. It's good to get some laughs at a time like this.''