I'm not going to overreact about the bullpen either

On the extremely rare occasion of having an afternoon with no competing responsibilities, I was free to watch the Tribe and follow some entertaining Twitter handles.

As we know, it didn't go like we planned, and we head to SoCal at 1-2. Saturday morning Merritt Rohlfing wrote a way to overreact after we only scored 1 run in game 1. Sunday provided an opportunity to overreact about the bullpen after a disastrous 7th inning where Dan Otero gave up a home run to Dee Gordon, of all people, and Tyler Olson gave up his first runs as an Indian on a 2-run shot by Mitch Haniger.

Some mild debate broke out on Twitter, as some Let's Go Tribe writers lamented the state of the Bryan Shaw-less Tribe bullpen. I refused to buy in. I have been reading piece after piece for the last 2 months that, while the Tribe is still a good team, they are unquestionably worse than last year, with Shaw moving on to Colorado cited as the top reason why, and I'm really getting tired of it. Hey, Shaw was terrific for us, and losing him hurt. I get that. But that doesn't mean the guys we have - especially the ones we had last year - are suddenly clueless dolts. We still have Miller & Allen, so 95% of the time the game is over if we have the lead at the tend of the seventh inning. So what happens on a day like this, when Dr. Drone is done after 5 innings? Well, Shaw didn't pitch ALL those innings last year. He usually took care of either the 7th or the 8th, whichever one Tito didn't give to Miller, and he did very well. But Otero, McAllister and Goody did just fine when they were called. And Olson didn't give up a single run in 30 appearances. We saw more of that on Saturday, when our bullpen took care of business after Cookie got roughed up a bit.

Today it didn't go so well, thanks to those 2 gopher balls. But I believe in these guys, if for no other reason than they did great last year. We haven't seen Matt Belisle in a real game yet, and Ryan Merritt is waiting in the wings on the DL. The 'pen had 1 bad inning out of nearly 7 innings this weekend. I'll take that ratio all year.

And how about this for a radical reaction - we tip our caps to the Mariners? Felix, Paxton and Leake make a very nice front 3. We now know that their outfield defense is really good. And they have a few guys that are very good hitters. I didn't think much of them coming in, but now I'm pretty sure they will finish second in the AL West - unless the Angels beat the snot out of us this week, at which point I will change my mind. :-) Sometimes you do your best and the other guy beats you, and you just have to tip your cap.

So no, I don't think our bullpen is a total wreck. They may yet prove me wrong, but 3 games isn't enough to prove it.