The good news about the Dominican Summer League Indians/Brewers this season is that the DSL White Sox only have six wins, so they aren’t the worst team in the entire country. The bad news is that the Sox are in a different division, so the DSL Indians (18-22) and Indians/Brewers (12-26) continue to ride the caboose of the DSL North.
Making things even worse for the Indians half of the team, the current leader in at bats, Wilfri Peralta, was transferred to the regular Indians team on July 9th (that he still has more at bats than anyone else on the team is astounding). Peralta wasn’t exceptional with the Indians/Brewers, but was transferred to take the place of Brayan Rocchio, who was promoted to Arizona. Since the promotion, Peralta has essentially matched his season numbers from 23 games in his last eight. Without having someone in the Dominican to see the teams live, it’s hard to say, but it would seem that simply getting off the coop team is an extreme positive.
Since we focus on Jesus Maestre and Victor Planchart every time we look at this team, let’s just say that both are still playing at a very high level with the second baseman Maestre raising his line to .349/.500/.524 largely thanks to hits in eight of nine games from June 27th through July 17th. The catcher Planchart is hitting .300/.425/.414 with hits in 16 of 21 games this year including three doubles, a triple and five walks since July 6th.
With the two stars out of the way, we can look at Marlin Made, who has split time at all three outfield positions this year, but mostly played center. He doesn’t have a great line (.240/.339/.298), although his walk rate is positive (16 to 19 K’s). The DSL can depress power numbers and regularly we see hitters come out of the Dominican hitting significantly harder than the evidence of their numbers would show. Whether this is because they are 16/17 in the DSL and 18/19 in Arizona or because of the weather or stadium conditions is unknown, but we certainly can’t give up on a player because of poor power numbers if the rest of the package is there.
With Made, who is 17 and 5’10”, 165 lbs, there isn’t much evidence that the rest is coming as of yet. He has poor statistics defensively in center, has not been successful stealing (two for four) and doesn’t hit safely enough to make up for the lack of power. He is, however, one of the better Indians on this team, which is why we focus on Maestre and Planchart so much.
As bad as the offense has been, there isn’t a single Indians pitcher on this team with a single positive attribute. The one pitcher with an ERA below 3.80 and more than 15 innings is a Brewers reliever who has walked 16 and allowed 16 hits in 23.1, making him more lucky than good.
For the sake of looking at one pitcher more deeply, meet Robert Cruz. Cruz has played for both DSL teams this year, making seven starts and one four inning relief appearance (he earned the save for finishing the game). In his career, he has never had a game where he didn’t allow a run (outings run from three innings to five), has never had a game where he didn’t walk or hit at least one batter and only once has struck out more than two.
He currently holds a five game hit batter streak including a game against his own former teammates (the DSL Indians) where he hit three batters. This was just two starts after being transferred to the Indians/Brewers, so maybe there was a bit of jealousy. Overall, he’s allowed seven hit batters, 14 walks and 54 hits in 31 innings. In his last appearance alone he allowed 13 hits over 3.2 innings with two walks and, of course, a hit batter. Players like Cruz make me wonder why the DSL Indians/Brewers exists at all. Maybe if Maestre and Planchart were on the main Indians team they would have enough offense to get them out of last place.
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