Ed Puskas: Relax — Indians’ bats will warm up

This just in: The Cleveland Indians’ lineup — as currently constituted — doesn’t put the fear of God into opponents.

But it does scare the heck out of Tribe fans.

Tyler Naquin has been especially scary. He is 0 for 7 with six strikeouts. The one at-bat in which he has made contact was an infield pop-up that might have traveled 50 feet.

This seems like a good time to remind people there are 162 games in a season and the Indians are two games into their schedule.

No, it wasn’t fun to watch Minnesota ace Jose Berrios and the Twins bullpen shut out the Indians on Opening Day. And it wasn’t fun to watch the Tribe struggle to score runs again Saturday.

The Indians are hitting .102 and have struck out 26 times in two games. But four walks swelled their on-base percentage to .156.

Is my sarcasm font working?

Leave it to social media to put the Indians’ offensive woes in the proper perspective. If Facebook and Twitter are any indication (hint: they’re not), it’s going to be a long summer at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

The mood among Tribe fans on those platforms is trending pessimistic and that’s after the Indians somehow wiggled out of a couple of late jams and found a way to beat the Twins 2-1 on Saturday.

One Facebook friend is so irate that he’s actively seeking out another MLB team to follow. He is so disillusioned by the Indians’ offseason cost-cutting moves, the injury to All-Star Francisco Lindor and the resulting anemic lineup that he called for the team to fold.

Relax, people.

This is not the NFL, in which a bad few weeks can torpedo an entire season. It’s not even the NBA, in which some players don’t even start playing like it matters until April.

This is baseball, which is literally a marathon compared to other sports. So much can — and does — happen over the course of 162 games and six months. Today’s game at Target Field in Minneapolis will be the third of 162.

I’m not much of a gambler, but I’m willing to bet that we’ll soon forget that the Twins held the Indians to six hits in the first two games of a long season.

Don’t mistake this bit of optimism for blinders. There are concerns. Naquin’s bat will eventually begin to find the ball — we hope — and Jose Ramirez will break out, but these are not the 1995 Indians from 1 to 9. If Naquin and Roberto Perez each get 500 at-bats, it could be a long year at Progressive Field.

Lindor can’t get back soon enough, even if the Indians are only renting him until they decide to trade him for some prospects or he hooks a Mike Trout-like deal from the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Yankees.

But even with all these holes in the lineup, this team isn’t going to hit .102 for long. Ramirez is eventually going to hit and you’d like to think he won’t be alone. But who is going to pitch to Ramirez right now?

The Indians still have the best starting rotation in the American League Central, if not in all of baseball. Remember, the Twins had but two hits Saturday in 34-degree weather.

The bats will should warm up as the weather does the same.

But if they don’t get hot enough, the pitching-rich Indians might decide to swap a starting pitcher for a corner outfielder.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.