April 10Th, 2017 While Indians Ma
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Indians to celebrate AL pennant in home opener By Scott Merkin and Jordan Bastian / MLB.com | April 10th, 2017 While Indians manager Terry Francona wants his team focused on the season at hand, he also hopes the players take time on Tuesday to appreciate all that was achieved in last year's incredible run to the World Series. Prior to the Tribe's 4:10 p.m. ET home opener against the White Sox, the Indians will have a ring ceremony, a flag raising and a banner unveiling to celebrate the franchise's 2016 American League championship. It marked Cleveland's sixth pennant in team history, and the first since 1997. "Tuesday's going to be a fun day," Francona said. "It'll be the last time that we talk about last year, but I want our guys to enjoy it. I think the fans will and I know we will. It'll be a special day." As part of the team's "Rally Together" theme, Cleveland sports greats Jim Thome (Indians), Austin Carr (Cavaliers) and Jim Brown (Browns) will take part in the home opener's ceremonial first pitch. It will mark the Tribe's first time home since its extra-inning loss to the Cubs in Game 7 of the World Series. The 2017 club could be a better version of that highly acclaimed Cleveland team, a team the White Sox noticed from the very beginning last season. "We saw it early," said White Sox manager Rick Renteria, who was the White Sox bench coach in '16. "Everybody talked about they hadn't gotten off to the start that everybody anticipated. But, the body of the players that they have, they compete. Our division is pretty good, actually. Even with the Twins -- they're young, they're athletic, they're aggressive. "There's no real slouch to speak of, in my opinion. You've got to play every game, play every inning, play every out. They're the reigning American League champs, so we have our [work] cut out when we get over there. We're hoping we can kind of see if we can placate them a little bit." James Shields makes start No. 2 this season for the White Sox. Carlos Carrasco gets the home-opening honors for the Indians. Both pitchers won their '17 debut. "I'm really excited for that game," Carrasco said. "There's going to be a lot of people and a lot of noise. It's going to be a bit different this year, because of what we did last year." Things to know about this game • Indians right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall (on the 10-day disabled list due to a right shoulder issue) might be activated ahead of Tuesday's home opener. If not, Thursday would likely be the next possibility for activation, considering Chisenhall plays mostly against right-handed pitching. • The White Sox finished 8-11 against the Indians last season, going 6-3 in their final nine head-to-head meetings. • According to Elias, Avisail Garcia and A.J. Pierzynski (2008) are the only White Sox players over the last 15 seasons with at least eight hits and four RBIs over the team's first four games of a season. • In the Statcast Era, Shields has thrown only 32.9 percent of his pitches within the strike zone, according to Statcast. That is the fourth-lowest rate among hurlers with at least 2,500 total pitches. But in his solid season debut, Shields threw 39.4 percent of his pitches within the zone, higher than in all but three of his 2016 outings. Q&A: Chernoff discusses Indians' motivation GM talks about path to Tribe, club's focus for new season By Mark Feinsand / MLB.com | @feinsand | April 10th, 2017 Mike Chernoff is one of a long line of baseball executives from the Mark Shapiro tree, but unlike most of them, he's trying to uphold the traditions built by Shapiro himself with the Cleveland Indians. The 35-year-old enters his second season as the general manager with an eye on the World Series, where his team fell to the Cubs in Game 7 last fall. MLB.com recently sat down with Chernoff in office at Goodyear Ballpark in the closing days of Spring Training to discuss Shapiro's impact on his career, how growing up around the world of sports radio influenced him and why the Indians won't suffer from a World Series hangover. MLB.com: You played baseball at Princeton, but you have said you knew early on that college baseball was going to be pretty much where you maxed out. When did you decide you wanted to pursue a career on this side? Chernoff: I definitely knew I was going to max out at the college level; I thought maybe it would have been in high school, but fortunately I got chance to play at Princeton. I don't think I realized that a career in baseball was possible until about junior year. My dad had been in sports and sports radio, so I had some access to the behind-the-scenes of sports, but I didn't really recognize the front-office component of a Major League team until I did an internship with the Mets between junior and senior year. It was in the marketing department, but I got to do some work for Jim Duquette in baseball ops, and that was the moment where I realized I didn't just like playing the game, I liked working in the game, too. MLB.com: What did you learn most working under Mark Shapiro? Chernoff: The thing I learned most is how important the people are. I started in 2003. "Moneyball" had just been written, and I had an economics and math background -- a playing background, too, but the sabermetric revolution, as it was happening, bringing a lot of those tools to the table and trying to integrate it into what we were doing. I think the most important thing that I learned from Mark was, whatever it is that you're focused on -- whether it's the heavy scouting side or the analytic side, whatever it is -- the people always come first. The way that you build a culture, the way that you lead people, support people and ultimately treat people, that's what's going to lead to your success. It's not about any one of those tools. Mark did an exceptional job in building that culture here, and I feel like that is the legacy that we've tried to keep in place since he left. • PODCAST: Listen to the full interview MLB.com: So many people in decision-making roles around the game worked for Mark in Cleveland. You worked with a lot of those people. Does that make it easier to deal with other clubs when you have those preexisting relationships with other executives? Chernoff: No doubt about it. It's fun to pick up the phone and call another team, because often there's somebody who I've worked with at that team. From the outside, it can maybe look like it would be harder if you know each other so well, but negotiating isn't adversarial. When we negotiate for trades or contracts or anything like that, the better relationship you have with the person on the other side of the table, the easier it is to figure out where you might have crossover. The deal ended up not working out in the end, but the deal for [Jonathan] Lucroy at the Deadline, working with David Stearns, it was an easy conversation to figure out how can we overlap on interest, because he and I are so close. MLB.com: For a city that hadn't won in a long time, the Cavaliers won the NBA title last year and you guys got to the World Series. How have you seen the sports scene in Cleveland change over the past 12 to 18 months? Chernoff: It was incredible to be a part of that. When the Cavs won, all of our baseball ops guys, Tito was up there in uniform in the upper deck because it went around our stadium, we watched the parade. There were over a million people watching it. It was hard not to feel this tremendous pride in Cleveland. Cleveland had been through a lot as a city. In the 14 years that I've been here, I've seen the economic hardship, seen what the city has gone through. I love the city. People have a loyalty to it, but I don't know that that pride has been there since I started in '03. I think that really came out when the Cavs won, and it felt like that momentum just continued to pick up throughout our postseason run. One of the coolest things I saw, was when we played on the road in Chicago, 20,000 people were in the plaza outside our stadium watching our game. To me, that was the city really embracing the team and building on that momentum. MLB.com: Your father, Mark, works in sports radio -- I interned for him, incidentally -- running WFAN [in New York] for about 25 years. Growing up around that sports radio culture, do you find yourself listening to it now? Chernoff: Now that I'm an executive, I don't listen to it. I know well enough not to listen to it. No, I shouldn't say that. I think the thing that I learned that has really helped me is that the fans that call in -- whether positive or negative -- are the most passionate fans.