Skinner to Akron, Sarbaugh Promoted to C-Bus

Tribeinsider's twitter account delivered this piece of information around 10:30 today. Announcing that Mike Sarbaugh has been promoted to Columbus. Very deserving. Sarby has done great things in just a few seasons with Akron and at every stop he's been to.

Taking his place is not another promotion, but rather a re-hiring. I talked about the idea of Joel Skinner managing the Columbus team because I didn't know if we could keep him by putting him in Akron, but apparently, that worked. Skinner will take over the Akron squad. A fine decision if you ask me. Joel is a good guy and he's had tremendous success in the minor leagues as a manager. And if Sarbaugh gets to a point rather soon where he's in line for a big league staff job in a year or two, Skinner can always move up.

So congrats to Mike Sarbaugh for being promoted. He's going to do a great job and like Lovullo, he's got a major league future. Not much is known about Sarbaugh like Lovullo since we didn't get to see him talk to the media and display his ideas, but just based off what he's done, he's in the same boat of Lovullo as far as his potential. With Lovullo I see managerial potential waiting to emerge. Hopefully Sarby has the same.

Can't argue with what he's done so far. Manager of the Year twice, including last year. An EL Championship, a Carolina League Championship, and a NY Penn League Championship.

Tony at IPI also has more coaching news. Ruben Niebla, another cog of that Akron coaching staff is getting a promotion as well. He's been named as an Assistant to the Major League Coaching Staff. Niebla was Akron's pitching coach for the past season when he got his hands on players like Hector Rondon, Chuck Lofgren, Jeanmar Gomez (EL Pitcher of the Year), Eric Berger and Zach Putnam.

Jeff Desjardins, who was Columbus' trainer last year is also getting a promotion to the major leagues. He'll work under Lonnie Soloff. This means if Jon Nunnally receives the hitting coach position, Columbus will have an entirely new staff starting with Sarbaugh at the top.

The hitting coach position is still the one major position on Acta's staff that has not been filled.

Alright... Yesterday almost no baseball was discussed. In fact, no baseball was discussed, because we we're busy with this whole Grady Sizemore thing.

Well let's just drop in on it real quick before we do get to the baseball discussion. I had not realized that Deadspin was one of the original sites that posted the pictures, but it appears as if they were not the original one. Editor A.J. Daulerio said he did not pay for the pictures and that he got them from another site that had already posted them Sunday morning.

I should also correct myself yesterday as Sizemore actually didn't Shiancoe us to death. Still, pretty radical if you ask me. Still, thank you for the censored pictures whoever had them, I didn't want to take the chance of seeing what Sizemore was equipped with. I still want to look at him playing baseball and not have the image of his personal equipment.

As Hoynes points out though, those images aren't going away at this point. This is not an Erin Andrews type thing where ESPN and Andrews lawyers went nut-job on any site that dared post these images. Not only are these images still up on Deadspin (despite that letter from the MLB telling Mr. Daulerio to take them down), but every site and their mom has them now.

Brittany Binger has a twitter account (that can't be good). While her tweets are protected, you have to be granted access to follow her basically, that doesn't stop some people from unprotected them. Anyway, she is claiming that this is the work of a stalker that Grady and herself have been dealing with. And that there may be even more pictures that this stalker has gained access to.

Oh and in case you ladies care, Binger and Grady are still together. You'll have to take these pictures as a consolation prize. I just have to question why Grady is with this girl in the first place. Myspace, Twitter. She's very public. He's very private (he does not have a twitter account, those ones out there are fake. Matt LaPorta is the only Indian with Twitter) and she's very public.

Then again, we didn't think Grady was capable of taking photos of himself, some nude, and e-mailing them to his girlfriend, so who knows.

Anyway, like I said, let's move onto actual baseball stories that have been neglected.. Heehaw.

Not too much from Terry Pluto this weekend, but he did touch up on Omar Vizquel. However I point you to a very revealing post from the IPI forums by Tony Lastoria.

"Vizquel was offered more to sign with the Indians... I don't know how much, but that's what I have heard... but he chose the White Sox because they simply had a better chance to win in 2010. He's not only hanging around to pad his stats and make a little more money, but he also wants to go to the best situation possible to win."

Further showing the point that Vizquel wanted to go to a winning situation THIS YEAR and I think they offered him the best combination of that, money, position, and the fact they have Ozzie Guillen as their manager is just icing on the cake.

So the Indians clearly made an effort for him, but Omar wanted no part of it.

Pluto also informs us that Sandy Alomar Jr. asked the Indians for tapes on their catchers, before they had a chance to ask him. Sandy's the man.

Jake Westbrook made his first start for Ponce on Saturday in Puerto Rico. Jake's line...

1.2 Innings, 3 H, 1 R, BB, 0 SO, 22 Pitch First inning on 35 Pitch Limit.

"It was an interleague game for us," said Ponce manager Eduardo Perez, Westbrook's former teammate with the Indians. "It's a big thing to our fans with Gigantes being from the Dominican. Jake just said 'Oh, my,' but he pitched well for not being in a competitive situation, at least at this level, for a long time."

Kind of weird because these games mean something down there. They're fans are most likely very into it and Jake was basically thrown into a competitive situation. So that's a positive going forward, at least he has that and not some meaningless spring training game or game for Akron. There's some energy there.

Perez said his cutter looked good, he had good velocity and that he thought Jake was around the plate, despite the walk of Luis Durango as his first hitter. All five outs were groundballs by the by, typical Jake.

He'll make another start for Ponce later, but it's good he's gotten one go around under his belt.

Hey Hoynsie needs to be addressed, because the leadoff question was rather infuriating.

Hey, Hoynsie: Are you concerned that it appears GM Mark Shapiro is selecting manager Manny Acta's coaching staff? He may be a good talker, but his baseball decisions have created this mess. -- Bob Paulsen, Cleveland

Hoynsie is going to say hey look, they hired three outside guys. Who cares!

They didn't hire Torey Lovullo, which means they basically were letting him walk to another organization. Shapiro loved Lovullo. Why else would he have made him a finalist for the mangers spot?

If Shapiro was picking this staff, Lovullo would have been on it.

Acta picked this staff. There was some collaboration involved, but this is Acta's work. Stop being naive.

Rafael Perez is not moving to the rotation despite the fact that he's been starting with the Dominican Republic. Perez is putting up good numbers in the starters role though, which is being done to get him more consistency with his delivery.

A New Indians Inbox is up go ahead and check it out.

Finally.. Masahide Kobayashi has returned to Japan. He has signed on with Yomiuri. Good luck to him back home in a league he was very good at. It just didn't work here.

On a side note.. I urge you to check out a new Indians blog. James Pete, formerly of the MVN's Tribe Report has started up his own digs over at Bringing Back Boudreau. James knows his stuff and if you ever need it, his link is on the side under Fellow Tribe Blogs.