Indians 2014 MLB draft class ranks as one of the best in baseball

Last Night

The week continued to get worse and worse, despite Carlos Santana hitting another pair of home runs and David Murphy collecting three hits. Josh Tomlin furthered his case for being the team's #6 starter, but the competition for that spot is thick.

The moment when the Indians had just finished sweeping Saturday's doubleheader in Detroit now feels like it was in another lifetime. The Tribe is back in third place, back below .500, and back to inspiring little confidence in its chances of winning a playoff spot, despite still being only 3.5 games behind the second Wild Card spot (which is now in the hands of the Yankees).

• LGT recap (Phil Kehres)

• MLB.com recap (Jordan Bastain)

• Cleveland.com recap (Paul Hoynes)

Other Tribe Items

Jim Callis of MLB.com says the Indians' 2014 draft class ranks as the second best in all of baseball, and includes 6 of his top 100 signees, while no other team has more than 4.

Shane Ryan at Grantland looks at Corey Kluber, as part of their "Pitchcraft" series, which details the arsenal of various top MLB arms each week. Good stuff.

Ryan Raburn recites the Love Song of of J.Alfred Prufrock (Abridged) - This one from Mississippi Matt Smith at FanGraphs, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but don't click until you're willing to see Ryan Raburn's "throw" from Thursday night a couple more times.

Around MLB

Rob Neyer isn't in favor of rule changes to outlaw the defensive shifts that have become more and more prevalent, but he doesn't see anything wrong with thinking about such a change. The article also includes some numbers for those of you who aren't sold on the defensive shift working. Spoiler alert: The shift works.

The Lifespan of an Ace - Neil Weinberg at Beyond the Box Score looked at MLB aces (by one definition of the term anyway) and studied which ones and how many have maintained that status in recent years, and which/how many haven't. Probably half the guys we think of as the very best right now won't be seen that way in another two years.

David Simon has infinite hope this is the Orioles' year - The man best known for creating 'The Wire,' quite possibly the greatest drama in television history, is also a Baltimore Orioles fan, and while you aren't, you'll probably still enjoy his take on this season.

The Baseball Hall of Fame

Sunday is Hall of Fame induction day, and it's a class filled with Tribe killers, from Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, who (with some help from their friends in blue) ruined the ending of the 1995 season, to Frank Thomas, who hit 42 home runs and had a .984 OPS against the Indians in his career.

Earlier this year, Jay Jaffe at Sports Illustrated ranked the greatest induction classes in HOF history, and said that this year's has a case as the best since the first couple (which had the advantage of taking players from the first ~50 years of professional baseball.

Many of you are familiar with my odd position as a huge Indians fan who also adores Greg Maddux, and many of you know about the Maddux. Despite having written at least half a dozen posts relating to the Maddux, I'd never actually put together a look at the record number of them Greg pitched, so yesterday morning I woke up and changed that: The 13 Madduxes of Greg