While the DSL Indians have miraculously moved into 5th in the eight team DSL North division, the DSL Indians/Brewers remain in dead last for the second straight season with about three weeks left to play.
Most of the DSL Indians/Brewers troubles have had to do with an extremely poor pitching staff, particularly the Indians contributors, so new blood seemed a good answer. With the 2018 international signing period beginning recently, the Indians were able to sign a few players and immediately add them to rosters. Of these, Tomas Reyes was the only one including on the Indians/Brewers squad, joining July 26th.
Reyes is already 18 (16 players on roster are under 18) and will turn 19 in September. He’s a 5’11” left handed reliever and the whatever evil is occupying the Indians/Brewers has already infected him. In his first four career innings (three appearances), he’s already allowed two home runs. The good news is that once Wilfri Peralta left this black hole of a baseball team he improved, so there is proof that players can survive the abyss.
Let’s still try to scrape some positive lichen off of this rock of desperation. Moises De La Cruz (2B/SS) is currently running an 0 for 8, but before that he had a four game hitting streak including a three walk game, five hits and four walks overall. That raised his batting line to .246/.326/.314 by July 30th, although it’s since fallen.
Jeikol Contreras (1B/3B) has had more sustained success recently. Since July 7th, he’s hit .265/.366/.515 with three home runs coming since July 25th. He had started the season hitting .176/.288/.235 and hadn’t hit a home run since August 19th, 2017.
While no Indians pitcher has played well enough to be considered a prospect (Moises Ruiz of the Brewers is the only pitcher with respectable traditional numbers while Alexis Ramirez, also of Milwaukee, has good peripheral stats), Jhon Vergara deserves some credit for going out there every time and putting his work in. He isn’t a high strike out pitcher, with just 17 in 41 innings, but he only has 13 walks on the year and is yet to allow a home run. Probably the most important aspect of Vergara to the Indians/Brewers is the fact that he has went at least five innings in his last three starts. He’s done so in six of nine starts this year. Unfortunately for him, his results continue to get worse and his longest start of the year was his worst as he allowed five earned runs in six innings on July 18th.
We didn’t talk about Jesus Maestre last time, as he missed from July 19th through the 31st, but he’s back now and has hits in two of his three games since returning. He is still the team’s top Indians performer with a .333/.469/.480 line. The Venezuelan infielder has committed just two errors at his primary position of second base, which is particularly impressive when you compare him to his infield teammates Joseph Paulino (Indians, 15 errors) and Elian Gonzalez (Brewers, 13 errors). It continues to be the case that Maestre and Victor Planchart are the only two players of real concern on this cooperative team.
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