NEOSI Indians Spring Training Roundup: Feb. 23

GOODYEAR, Ariz.– Spring baseball is back everyone! The Indians kicked things off on Friday afternoon with a 6-4 loss to the Cincinnati Reds, but more on that in a minute. First, let’s pause for some Hammy:

Music to our ears.

It’s officially baseball season.#TribeSpring pic.twitter.com/W3SrlwdL12

— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) February 23, 2018

Now onto what happened on the baseball diamond. Tucker Barnhart and Brandon Dixon each hit a two-run homer to help catapult the Reds to victory. But if we have to pick an Indians highlight from this game, it is definitely courtesy of Yonder Alonso. On the first pitch of his first at-bat in an Indians uniform, Alonso homered to deep right.

Of his homer, Alonso said, “It felt good to go out there and just be with the guys and get on a roll.”

Read more courtesy of Jordan Bastian over at mlb.com, and check it out below with Tom Hamilton’s call:

Hammy, anyone?

Launched over Yonder. pic.twitter.com/HOEJAw7M6w

— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) February 23, 2018

Mike Clevinger started the game for the Tribe, and pitched one inning. He retired the side in order. Check out Paul Hoynes’ full-game recap over at cleveland.com.

If you watched the game on TV, you saw the teams wearing hats with “SD” on them. Major League Baseball decided to honor victims of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, by having its teams wear caps with the school’s initials. Teams had the option of wearing the caps in the game, or just in warmups. Both the Indians and the Reds kept the hats on during the game. Read more from Anthony Castrovince.

Also from Hoynes, he wrote about the future of perhaps Cleveland’s brightest star, Francisco Lindor. According to Hoynes, the Indians and Lindor have not yet talked about a contract extension:

“The Indians haven’t talked to me about an extension,” said Lindor, as he prepared to open the spring-training season against the Reds on Friday afternoon. “If you want any more information, talk to my agent or the Indians.

“I’m not talking about that. Right now I’m just excited about playing this game today.”

Last year, it was reported that the Tribe offered Lindor an extension in the $100 million range that he turned down. Check out the rest of the story here.

And in other (lighthearted) Lindor news, during a break in action on Friday, he told Andre Knott that he would not be blonde during the regular season. So make sure that you get in all of your best Sisqo and Amber Rose jokes before then.

Blonde is the choice for spring training, but @Lindor12BC has all kinds of hair colors and styles for the upcoming @Indians season. pic.twitter.com/YVotuoPmoG

— SportsTime Ohio (@SportsTimeOhio) February 23, 2018

Finally, over at The Athletic, T.J. Zuppe and Zack Meisel wrote about some hypothetical ways the game could be sped up. Check it out here.