Indians news: Progressive Field has the best beer in baseball

Last Night

Friday night brought the Indians their fourth loss in a row, and put them on the brink of irrelevance, in terms of the 2014 playoff race. Trevor Bauer struggled with his command, the defense behind him turned in another awful game, and a rally in the 7th inning was not nearly enough to overcome what had grown into an eight-run deficit.

Let's Go Tribe recap (Phil Kehres)

MLB.com recap (Jordan Bastian)

Cleveland.com recap (Paul Hoynes)

Other Tribe Items

The Washington Post has a very detailed look at the beer selection at all 30 MLB stadiums, and ranks Progressive Field at #3, behind only Seattle and Cincinnati's ballparks. Dead last in the rankings: Yankee Stadium. There are four categories, and under "quality," Progressive is #1, which means there is a way to survive watching the Indians play defense.

Chris Antonetti says Nick Swisher will prepare to return to the outfield for 2015. All the good beer in Cleveland might not be enough to get me through watching Swisher stumble around out there for a full season. He wasn't good out there two years ago, or last season, and he's looked awful anywhere he's been put in the field this year. I'm hoping this was just Antonneti's way of saying Carlos Santana isn't going anywhere, so Swisher can forget about playing first base more than once every week or two.

Jason Giambi expects to be activated from the disabled list in September. The team will almost certainly be out of contention and the rosters will be expanded, so what do I care if Giambi gets a few at bats?

Mike Bates applauds the Indians for using private money, not public tax dollars, to fund the stadium upgrades that are on their way for next season.

Because of course, a collection of comments from Cleveland.com shows that the consensus over there on the coming improvements is that ownership is just too cheap to spend money on players instead of statues.

Mike Warsinskey caught up with #38 overall draft pick Mike Papi, who's already playing for Lake County, just weeks after finishing his collegiate career.

Around MLB

I have only one entry for this section today, but that's because its the only non-Indians baseball writing you need to read. I don't know if you've heard, but Sports on Earth is being gutted. 95% of the writers and editors there have been let go, and while something will remain, it won't be what it was, which is an absolute shame, because there have been a ton of great stories told there.

What might be SOE's last longform baseball piece is a beauty. It's written Pat Jordan (if you're not familiar with his work, you've been missing out), and it's on the decline of the curveball. Go and read it.