Acta to take time on Tribe’s batting lineup

By Paul Hoynes

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

GOODYEAR, Ariz.

Manager Manny Acta isn’t ready to reveal his Cleveland Indians lineup for the 2011 season. He has good reasons to wait.

Spring training didn’t officially begin for the Indians until Tuesday, when pitchers and catchers reported. The regular season doesn’t start until April 1. There’s no reason to rush.

Grady Sizemore and Carlos Santana, two big parts of the lineup, are still recovering from serious knee operations. Their rehabilitation programs have gone well, but Acta wants to make sure they’re sound before deciding where they fit in the lineup.

Orlando Cabrera, who has a good chance to be the starting second baseman, has yet to pass his physical. Until he does that, his one-year deal isn’t official.

Acta went cloak-and-dagger last spring when he asked Sizemore to move from leadoff to the No. 2 spot. The full result of the move could not be measured because Sizemore’s season ended after 33 games due to his damaged left knee.

Most of the time Acta’s approach to making out his lineup is much more transparent.

“The philosophy is you have to pile up your best hitters at the top of the lineup,” said Acta. “It’s simple. you don’t put your best hitter at the back end of the lineup.

“Ideally, it would be perfect if you can balance the lineup right [handed hitter], left [handed hitter], right, left, right left. At the end of the day, you have to put your best hitters all together. That will give you the best chance to score as many runs as possible.”

Runs win games and that’s two things the Indians didn’t do much of last year. They finished 26th in runs and lost 93 games.

Injuries caused many of those problems. Sizemore, Asdrubal Cabrera, Santana, Shin-Soo Choo and Travis Hafner missed a significant number of games with injuries.

If those five players can stay healthy, along with improvement from young players such as Matt LaPorta, Michael Brantley and Jason Donald, things could be different this year.

“Even last year, if we hadn’t lost those guys, I think it was still a pretty good lineup,” Acta said.

Sizemore has spent most of his career in the leadoff spot. Last year, Santana hit third for 35 starts and fourth for 10. Still, Acta is reluctant to say where they’ll bat in 2011.

“One hitter changes a whole lineup,” said Acta, “and we’ve got two of them in Grady and Carlos.”

The safest bet is Choo hitting third. He made 105 starts in the No. 3 spot last year, while hitting .300 with 22 homers, 90 RBIs and 22 steals.