Corey Kluber.

Sunday’s start against Washington marked the sixth time that Kluber has taken the mound following a Tribe loss this season. In those six starts, Kluber has gone 4-1 with an ERA of 2.38 and 40 strikeouts in 41.2 innings of work. In the other game, (May 26 against Boston), he earned a no-decision despite giving up just one run and striking out 10 as the Tribe bullpen fell apart in the ninth inning.

In his last two starts, Kluber has given up just one run in 16 innings of work, earning him American League co-Player of the Week honors for the week ending June 16. Kluber is sharing the honor with teammate Jason Kipnis, who batted .524 (11-for-21) with two doubles, a home run and four RBIs in six games.

“Right in front of our eyes, we’re seeing a kid mature into a really good pitcher,” Francona said in published reports following Sunday’s win.

Kluber pulled off the win against the Nationals despite repeatedly finding himself in trouble. In both the fourth and sixth innings Washington had runners on first and third with no outs, and they loaded the bases with no outs in the seventh, but Kluber (and the Tribe defense) found a way to shut them down.

On the day, Washington was 0-for-7 with a runner on third base, a number made even more remarkable when you consider that heading into Sunday’s start, batters were hitting .556 (10-for-18) Kluber with a runner on third, the second-worst mark in all of Major League baseball out of 233 pitchers with at least 10 batters faces with a runner on third (according to ESPN Stats & Information).

“Once we got into those jams, I was just trying to take it pitch-by-pitch and not get ahead of myself,” Kluber said in published reports. “Not get too far into the inning, just worry about executing each pitch and kind of pitch the situation. I think I’m making adjustments quicker, now. Making adjustments pitch-to-pitch now, where it might have been making adjustments after an inning last year.”

So while Kluber is trending in the right direction, two key pieces of the Tribe offense – Nick Swisher and Mark Reynolds – continue to trend the wrong way.

Swisher was held out Sunday’s game with a sore shoulder. During Saturday’s game, Swisher could be seen having an Al Czervik moment (“oh my arm, I think it’s broken!”) as he repeatedly was shaking his arm. Swisher is batting just .125 in June and is just 6-for-64 (.094) with 18 strikeouts in his last 15 games.

“I just don’t feel like I have that thump in my swing, and that’s a frustrating thought for me, because I like to let it rip every now and then,” Swisher said on the team’s website. “We’re just doing our treatments, man, trying to get better every day. We met with the doctors and this and that. We’re just going to see what tomorrow brings.”

All kidding aside, the Tribe needs to find out what is going on with the player who they signed to the largest free-agent contract in franchise history.

“It’s something that may be there, at least partially, all year,” Francona said. “You just don’t know. That’s why we’re getting it looked at again and trying to get some more knowledge about it to see the best way to attack it.”

On Monday afternoon, Swisher received a cortisone injection in his aching shoulder and he will be out of the lineup until at least Friday. Hopefully a few days off can help, but how likely is that?

As for Reynolds, he is in a major funk – a .128 batting average in June with 23 strikeouts, and just one home run and two RBI. Since hitting a three-run home run against Seattle on May 18, Reynolds has hit just two home runs and had just six RBI in 26 games.

“I’ve done it so much in my career, I knew it was going to happen at some point,” Reynolds told The Plain Dealer when asked about his slump. “I was hoping it wasn’t. But sometimes I feel I get a little too jumpy at the plate. I get a little timid. I’m not able to take the quality swings that I want to take.

“Then it starts snowballing on me and the confidence goes down. But that’s just the way it is sometimes. But at the end of the day, I know in my career I’ve done it before, I’ve bounced back. And all it takes is one good swing and you’re right back in there.”

Whatever is going on with Swisher and Reynolds, the Tribe better hope they can get if fixed pretty soon. Despite their recent streak of losing 16-of-20, the Indians are still a manageable 4.5 games behind Detroit as they get ready to host Kansas City and then Minnesota this week.

If Francona can find a way to keep things moving in the right direction – the Indians have now won four-of-five – there is still time for them to put some pressure on the Tigers.

After all, as good as Kluber is at busting streaks, he can’t pitch every day.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)

It’s bad, obviously, as to paraphrase one of Coughlin’s Laws, “everything in Cleveland sports ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t be Cleveland.”

But just how bad is it compared to other historically bad times in Cleveland sports? (And, yes, we get that comparing poor eras is a very Cleveland thing to do.)

In a town where we know a lot about losing, it’s hard to think that right now is as bad as it has ever been, especially when you consider that the late 1970s through early 1980s seemed to be just as bad, if not worse, than the current streak we are witnessing from the Big 3 teams in town.

So how do the two eras compare?

To find out, head over to The Cleveland Fan.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)

Because the NFL Players Association does not allow for the release of the details over player suspensions, fans have been left to speculate as to why, exactly, Gordon is in trouble. To review, Gordon’s official explanation was the following:

“In February, I was diagnosed with strep throat for which a doctor prescribed antibiotics and cough medicine. Apparently, the medicine I took contained codeine, which is prohibited by the NFL policy. The policy terms are strict about unintentional ingestion, but the NFL has not imposed the maximum punishment in light of the facts of my case. Therefore, I have chosen to be immediately accountable for the situation. I sincerely apologize for the impact on my team, coaches, and Browns fans. I look forward to working hard in training camp and pre-season, and contributing immediately when I return in week three.”

There has been much written in the aftermath of the news about the suspension, with two of the better pieces coming here from friend-of-the-program Kanciki and this one from Mike Krupka at Dawgs by Nature. They both dovetail nicely with what we wrote earlier in the week, as Kanicki looks futher into Gordon’s background, while Krupka takes a look at the NFL’s drug policy.

After reading Krupka’s article we went back over the NFL’s Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse document (some title, huh?) to see if we had missed something and what we found helps makes Gordon’s suspension a little clearer.

In a footnote on Page 1 of the document, it states that:

The National Football League prohibits players from the illegal use, possession, or distribution of drugs, including but not limited to cocaine; marijuana; opiates and opioids; methylenedioxy methamphetamine (MDMA); and phencyclidine (PCP). The abuse of prescription drugs, over the counter drugs, and alcohol is also prohibited. For example, the use of amphetamines and substances that induce similar effects, absent a verified and legitimate need for appropriate dosages of such substances to treat existing medical conditions, is prohibited.

So players are not allowed to use opiates (a family of drugs that includes codeine) illegally, but what about the fact that Gordon had a prescription for the cough syrup that contained the banned substance?

The NFL covers that in Appendix E of the document, with the key line being this one:

Abuse of over the counter drugs is defined as the use of an over the counter drug in disregard for the directions for use.

Codeine is, of course, one of the key ingredients in Purple drank, a concoction that gained popularity in Houston, where Gordon just happened to grow up. Using codeine to mix up a batch would certainly seem to fall under the category of “disregard for the directions for use.”

We wonder if that explains why Gordon received just a two-game suspension when it seems that, under the NFL’s policy, his suspension should have been four games. The NFL knows Gordon tested positive for codeine, but if he produced a valid prescription the league can’t prove he did anything other than ingest it accidentally as Gordon claims. If this had been Gordon’s first offense there would have been no suspension, but absent of any further evidence the league couldn’t do more than suspend him the two games.

We may be off the mark here and the true story will probably never be known, but there is enough background and other evidence that we can at least start filling in the picture a little clearer.

While we may never know what really happen with Gordon, there is one thing we are sure of: there is no reason for the Browns to release him as we’ve heard some fans have called for.

From a practical standpoint, Gordon has too much potential for the Browns to just give up on him. It may not be fair, but talented players get more chances than ones who were drafted in the seventh round. Gordon is not going to be the difference between the Browns making the playoffs or not this season, but they need all the help they can get and releasing Gordon doesn’t make the team better.

There is also the moral side of this (and, yes, we believe there is a place for morality in professional sports). Gordon has had problems in his life so far and he needs help. He is an employee of the Browns and they should feel an obligation to do what they can to try and help him out. If Gordon doesn’t want the help, or can’t get his life and career on the right track, that’s on him not the team. But that doesn’t mean the Browns shouldn’t try.

There’s no doubt that we haven’t heard the last of this whole story, but hopefully the suspension winds up being the start of the turnaround for Gordon, both in his personal and professional life.

(Photo by USA Today)

And that hoopla reached a higher level the past couple of days after Tebow signed a two-year contract (with no guaranteed money) with the New England Patriots, with more than 80 media credentials issued for New England’s mini-camp practice on Tuesday.

It got even better on Wednesday when New England coach Bill Belichick was asked how much “improvement” Tebow had made from Tuesday to Wednesday.

“We’re not going to get into a minute-by-minute evaluation of a player,” Belichick said. “I don’t think that’s the way to go, especially at this time of year.” (That quote right there offers some insight into why Belichick failed in Cleveland. Forget minute-by-minute, we like to evaluate our athletes play-by-play.)

So rather than be part of the solution and just ignore all the mindless noise, we decided to join in, be part of the problem, and offer up a few thoughts on Tebow the NFL player.

First off, unless he blows out his ACL again (it may even take both ACL’s being shredded), there is about as much chance of Tom Brady coming off the field so Tebow can run some plays as their is of Brian Robiskie turning into a legitimate NFL wide receiver.

With Tebow at quarterback in 2011, the Broncos led the league in three and outs and ranked 30th in the league in third-down conversion percentage. He only completed 47 percent of his passes for 1,729 yards and posted a quarterback rating of 72.9

In his career, Brady has never completed fewer than 60 percent of his passes, has averaged 4,065 passing yards per season and has not posted a quarterback rating under 95 in a full season since 2006.

“That’s a very hypothetical question,” Brady said when asked about coming off the field for Tebow, “so maybe we’ll deal with it if it happens.”

This isn’t Brady Quinn coming out of a game so Josh Cribbs can run some plays out of the Wildcat; it’s Tom Brady. It’s not happening.

Next comes the notion that the Patriots are “grooming” Tebow to take over for Ryan Mallett once Mallett is traded or leaves in free agency.

So rather than work with Mallett, who is allegedly a talent the likes of which has not been seen in decades, as the successor to the soon-to-be 36-year-old Brady, the Patriots will focus on Tebow?

Belichick may not have won a Super Bowl since 2005 and never developed a quarterback not named Tom Brady, but he’s not stupid.

There is also the idea that the Patriots can just turn Tebow into a tight end or a fullback, despite the fact that he has been a quarterback his entire career (just ask Josh Cribbs how easy it is to switch positions).

Let’s say Tebow moves to tight end; there’s still the same problem as the quarterback position. If you put Tebow on the field, who are you going to take off between Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez?

“You can say, ‘We want him to play tight end.’ I don’t  know if he can catch the ball good enough,” former Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards told The Boston Globe. “They want him to play fullback. Has he played fullback before? This is not high school or college. You have to be trained to do that.”

As The Globe story points out, Tebow never played those positions until last year with the Jets and he wasn’t very good at it when New York tried to use him at something other than quarterback. He’s not a skilled route runner (again, talk to Cribbs) and in one game against Miami the Dolphins specifically targeted Tebow on special teams and ended up blocking a punt for a touchdown.

Again, this is nothing against Tebow. Plenty of successful college players have failed to find that same success once they come to the NFL. He’s just the latest in a very long line.

In a lot of ways, Tebow is the Eric Mangini of quarterbacks – someone who’s supporters work so very hard to try and convince everyone that he is talented despite there being no statistical evidence to support their position.

The best part of all of this is that Tebow is in Boston and not Cleveland, so we can watch the circus play out for as long as it lasts without having to worry about it having any lasting impact on the Browns.

And that’s a good thing.

(Photo by USA Today)

After all, Marecic can’t really run the ball – just four rushes for eight yards in two seasons – and can’t catch ball very well – just five career receptions.

And he lost his starting spot last season to Alex Smith – a tight end.

According to some media reports, the third-year player out of Stanford is “under the gun to prove his lead-blocking is indispensable.”

Following last week’s three-day minicamp, the last team activity before training camp, coach Rob Chudzinski admitted he’s not sure what is going to happen at the fullback position this fall.

“That’s one position where, until you get in pads, you are out here, practicing and guys are going up to each other like they are going to block each other and take on blocks and you stop. That’s a position until, you get in pads, it’s really difficult to evaluate,” he said. “As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been fortunate to have been around all different types of fullbacks. Whether it was the guy that’s a blocker and that’s all he does, to a guy who has been a runner and more of a tailback type of guy, to the other guys who are more of a receiver-type guy.”

And there are fans who still pine away for bruising fullback Lawrence Vickers – who has rushed nine times total over the past four seasons – who has bounced from Houston to Dallas after being replaced by Marecic after the 2010 season.

Candidly, Marecic’s days appear to be numbered in Orange and Brown.

But then we read this article, which talks about how San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh was all set to draft his former player before the Browns plucked Marecic out of Harbaugh’s grasp and foiled his plans.

The 49ers have gained a reputation over the past few months as being a model NFL franchise, one worthy of praise and emulation. They are so forward-thinking that they hired a former NFL coach with a career record of 33-47, one who’s offenses were ranked 25th or lower four times in his five-years as a head coach, to work as an offensive consultant. That franchise believed that Marecic was their type of player, a “hard worker who would do whatever and embrace contact.”

If a coach like Jim Harbaugh was willing to draft Marecic well, then, who are we to argue?

We’re going to chalk up Marecic’s poor performance over the past two seasons to being misused, along with several other players, in former coach Pat Shurmur’s offense.

So get ready Cleveland, the Marecic train is getting ready to roll in 2013.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Then, after we heard more of the details, our reaction started to change a bit.

And the more we thought about the two incidents, the more our opinion changed. While we’re more disappointed in Perez and Gordon than anything else, we definitely view the two players in a different light.

The next chapters in these little dramas have yet to be written, but one thing is clear.

This past week has been one of those “only in Cleveland” weeks that we seem to get around here all too often.

For the full story, head over to The Cleveland Fan.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)

Or so we were told.

Terry Francona is not Manny Acta. The manager and the front office are on the same page together.

Or so we were told when Francona was hired last fall.

Forget the left field platoon of Johnny Damon and Shelly Duncan. And the predominately left-handed hitting lineup. This year’s lineup is better.

Or so we were told.

Don’t worry about the 5-24 stretch from last August. That can’t happen again.

Or so we were told.

Don’t worry about the collapses of 2011 and 2012. This is a different team. Things will be different.

Or so we were told.

But after Wednesday’s loss to the New York Yankees, one thing has started to become crystal clear about this Indians team:

The names on the back of the jerseys and the faces in the dugout may have changed from last season, but this is still the same Tribe.

Wednesday’s loss was the Tribe’s 12th in their past 16 games. It was also the Indians eighth consecutive road loss, a feat they last accomplished .. wait for it … last August during that 5-24 skid. And things don’t get any easier as they head to Detroit for a three-game weekend series with the Tigers then off to Texas for a series with the Rangers.

“You play a game and then you move on. You make a mistake, you try to work to correct it. You figure out why you did it and move on,” Francona said before Wednesday’s loss. “Every game is its own game, especially in our game. So much depends on the starting pitcher. I really don’t value showing up up or down, depending on what you did the night before. That doesn’t make much sense to me. If it helped us, I’d do it. But I don’t see that happening.”

The problem is there doesn’t seem to be much that Francona can do. With a couple of exceptions, most notably Jason Kipnis, no one on the Tribe is playing all that poorly. In fact, the everyday regulars are pretty much playing to their career averages – and therein lies the problem.

Even though he has been slumping lately – a .173 average with 27 strikeouts in his past 23 games – Mark Reynolds is still batting .242 on the season, six points above his career average.

Same goes with Nick Swisher. In the four full seasons when Swisher was not protected by a New York Yankee lineup, he has posted a .243 batting average, and averaged 25 home runs and 79 RBI. Project Swisher’s current production out over a full season, and he will wind up not far off those numbers with a .249 average, 22 home runs and 65 RBI.

Pretty OK numbers if you are a complimentary player who bats seventh in the lineup, but not what one would expect from a player who signed the largest free agent contract in franchise history this past off-season.

Look at the rest of the lineup and you’ll mostly find the same thing.

The pitching staff is in pretty much the same situation, with the exception of relievers Vinnie Pestano and Chris Perez who have struggled this year (with Perez possibly taking it one toke over the line while on the disabled list, unless he really didn’t do anything), but everyone else has pretty much pitched as advertised.

So what’s the team to do?

“We’ve played 20 games in a row, all sorts of hours, night games, day games … but this is what we’re paid to do and we need to find a way to go out and get it done,” Swisher told The Plain Dealer.

The good news is the Tribe is currently just two games behind the Tigers in the AL Central. Take care of business this weekend and the past couple of weeks turn into just a bump in the road.

But if the Tribe struggles? Well … everything was supposed to be different this year.

The hot starts and collapses of 2011 and 2012 were supposed to be swept out of town with the old manager and the old players.

But so far the new Tribe looks the same as the old Tribe.

And that’s currently not a good thing.

(Photo by The Associated Press)

“We don’t want his muscle strain to get any worse, so we’re going to rest him now and give him a full summer to prepare,” Browns coach Rob Chudzinski told ESPN after Tuesday’s workout. “He could have went out, if necessary, and practiced these next few days, but we just didn’t see any sense in it. I don’t know the medical (risks going forward), but he’s got a strain right now. I’m not concerned about anything else at this stage.

“My only concern, really, is Trent needing to stay into it mentally while he’s out. So far, he’s done a great job taking mental reps and getting into game shape.”

OK, so let’s summarize this for everyone.

Richardson may be out until Aug. 1 – 57 days from now.

During those 57 days (counting today), the Browns have three minicamps and, with training camp opening on July 26, six additional days of practice.

That means Richardson will miss nine days total of practice – not actual games, but practice. And three of those practice days are players running around in shorts and helmets.

Yes, it would be nice if Richardson was with the rest of the first-team offense learning offensive coordinator Norv Turner’s offense from day one.

But the only thing that Richardson needs to know, really, is that when Brandon Weeden hands him the ball he should run to daylight.

We may be over-simplifying things, but we’re talking practice. Practice.

Now if Sept. 8 rolls around and Richardson isn’t ready to go, then we have a problem.

But that is more than three months away and we all know there will be plenty of angst and agita waiting for Browns fans come this fall, so why the need to manufacture it now?

(Photo by Getty Images)

The mecurial Suárez, who this season became more trouble than he is worth despite scoring 23 goals, let it be known on Friday that he wants out of Liverpool, out of the Premier League and out of England. And as long as someone is willing to pay the price, Liverpool should do everything it can to grant him his wish.

Suárez at first blamed the British media for forcing his hand in requesting a move.

“It is a difficult moment for me,” he told The Guardian. “My coach and my colleagues know that they [the media] didn’t treat me well. Because of the paparazzi I could not go in my garden, I could not go to the supermarket. My reason for leaving is not the money. It’s my family and image. I don’t feel comfortable here any more.”

On Sunday, he added British Prime Minister David Cameron to his enemy’s list.

‘David Cameron said I wasn’t an example for the kids or something like that,” Suárez told The Daily Mail. “Why don’t you worry about English citizens?”

Things have gotten so absurd with Suárez that after receiving a 10-match ban for biting Chelsea’s Bransilav Ivanovic (an bizarre act in and of itself), Suárez was criticized by none other than Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.

When one of the world’s worst dictators is criticizing your actions, it may be a sign that you have a problem.

Club officials deny they are willing to sell Suárez.

“Luis Suárez is not for sale,” a club spokesman told ESPN. “Neither Luis nor his representatives have communicated these feelings directly to Liverpool Football Club. The club remains supportive of Luis and expects him to honour his contract. The club will not be making any further comment at this stage.”

Obviously the club is going to publicly say they want to keep Suárez, but you have to wonder what they think in private.

If they do decide to move on from Suárez it is vitally important that they don’t squander the money the way they did when they let Fernando Torres leave in a transfer deal with Chelsea.

Liverpool turned the £50m they received for Torres into Andy Carroll, Charlie Adams, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson as the club’s owners tried to let the analytics guys call the shots – with less than exciting results on the pitch. Downing scored three goals this season and Henderson had five. Carroll (West Ham) and Adams (Stoke City) are no longer working the pitch at Anfield. (For a Cleveland comparison, look at the second round of the Browns NFL Draft).

The club is only going to get so many chances to reap a windfall from selling players (hopefully they will soon start winning and selling won’t be an option) and if they make a move with Suárez it has to pay off.

Because if it doesn’t, not qualifying for the Champions League may be the least of the club’s worries.

(Photo by Getty Images)

How do you root for a player that you despised when they played for a rival team?

Mike Lupica, writing in The New York Daily News, came up with the perfect phrase for Yankee fans to justify embracing Clemens through his steroid-aided years in the Bronx – Clemens was a player who was now “our guy, their jerk.”

We were reminded of that last week when the Cleveland Indians were in Boston playing the Red Sox. During Thursday night’s game, David Ortiz hit a no-doubt home run off of Zach McCallister and stood at home plate admiring his work (as batters are wont to do). That led friend of the program Brian McPeek to criticize Ortiz with this tweet.

After pointing out to Brian that Tribe fans pretty much gave up the right to criticize any other player the day the team signed Nick Swisher, we started to wonder: has there ever been a player that Cleveland fans simply would not have accepted on one of the local teams?

We would like to think the answer is yes, but the more we pondered the question the more doubt started to creep in. After all, we rooted for Albert Belle as long as he hit home runs; it wasn’t our thermostat he was smashing.

Sure, Browns fans disliked Ray Lewis, but if Art Modell had never moved the team and the Browns had drafted Lewis in 1996, would we have cared about all his extra-curricular activities?

It seems like a Pittsburgh Steeler would be an obvious choice – with Hines Ward and James Harrison easily coming to mind – but if either of them wore Orange and Brown, the first time that Ward or Harrison took out a Baltimore or Pittsburgh player with one of their cheap shots the Dawg Pound would build a statue before the game was finished. Plus Harrison played at Kent State, which would have earned him bonus points.

What about the Tribe?

Sure, Clemens was one of the biggest me-first players in the history of baseball, but if he would have had the balls to sign with the Indians in 1997 instead of Toronto, there’s no doubt the Tribe would have a couple of World Series trophies decorating the lobby at Progressive Field. And would anyone have cared about all the baggage that came along with Clemens?

Pete Rose, maybe? After he ruined Ray Fosse’s career with a meaningless cheap shot in the 1970 All-Star game, it would have been hard to see him come up I-71 to Cleveland. But those Indians teams were really bad in the 1970s and Rose may have been able to hit his way out of any lingering animosity. (Although we like to think that Cleveland fans wouldn’t be as dumb as Cincinnati fans about the whole betting on baseball thing.)

How about the Cavs?

There have been several players over the years that have been particularly irritating. From Rick Mahorn’s elbows, to DeShawn Stevenson’s “rivalry” with LeBron James to pretty much anyone who has ever played for the Boston Celtics, there are plenty of players we would like to think we wouldn’t want to see in Wine and Gold … but the reality may be a different story.

So what do you say, Cleveland? Is there a player that you simply could not see yourself rooting for if they wore a Cleveland uniform? If so, who and why?

Let us know and, if we get any responses, we’ll post them in a future column.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)