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Three Reasons Why It is a Good Idea to Bring the Party Back

On Tuesday morning news came out that Mike Napoli will once again be with the Cleveland Indians. The Indians signed Napoli to a minor-league contract and will have a spring training invite pending a physical.

The Party At Napoli’s will start once again. Things are a bit different though since the last time Napoli was in an Indians uniform; Carlos Santana was still playing first base, and Edwin Encarnacion was still with Toronto.

I think it is a great idea for the Indians and Mike Napoli to reunite, here are three reasons why.

1.) Veteran Leadership/ Clubhouse Leader

In his first run with the Cleveland Indians, Mike Napoli emerged as the Clubhouse Leader and also provided veteran leadership throughout the 2016 season. Napoli became the clubhouse leader partly because their usual leader Michael Brantley only played in 11 games during that season.

Napoli brought with him 10 years of MLB experience when he came to Cleveland and also brought along 7 years of playoff experiences. Napoli was someone that was already there when it came to the playoffs and became someone to look up to and for the roster to mold themselves after.

Not many players on the Indians roster in 2016 had a taste of postseason experience yet until that season. The likes of Bryan Shaw, Dan Otero, Coco Crisp, Rajai Davis, Andrew Miller had the most playoff experience outside of the few members that played during the 2013 Wild Card game for the Indians.

For the 2018 Indians season, I expect Napoli to make the team and have a similar role as Jason Giambi did in the 2013 season. Giambi was signed by the Indians in 2013 to a minor league contract, similar situation to Napoli.

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Payton Vince is either talking about sports or watching sports. He covers sports for Metro Networks and is also a writer for LastWordOnSports.com. He grew up in Brooklyn Heights,Ohio for most of his life then around senior year of high school moved to Cleveland. A fan of the Cleveland Indians, Cavaliers, and a Pittsburgh Steelers, he graduated from Cuyahoga Heights High School (Class of 2014) and also graduated from the Ohio Center for Broadcasting in 2015. He bowled and played baseball in high school, and is a huge fan of independent wrestling and WWE, and can almost always find him at an independent show. Lastly, Payton is a backstage interviewer for Mega Championship Wrestling in Elyria, and is one of the three on ‘That Sports Show’ which airs daily from 2-4pm on AllSportsCleveland.com.

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