Tribe GM Mark Shapiro was in the booth for a half inning the other night during the last game against the Red Sox. Underwood and Manning started asking him about Tony Sipp and his early dominance after being called up. Shapiro said that as he and manager Eric Wedge were discussing the roster as spring training came to a close, they agreed that they need to get Sipp up as soon as possible. In fact, Shapiro said that if they were simply bringing their 12 best pitchers from Arizona into the season, Sipp would have absolutely made the cut.
It shows. Sipp has been one of the lone bright spots in the Indians early mess of a bullpen. In three appearances, Sipp has pitched 3 innings with 1 walk, 6 K's, a 0.333 WHIP, and allowed zero runs.
So naturally it's time to read a whole bunch about Tony Sipp.
First, Anthony Castrovince has a nice profile over at Indians.com. Small excerpt below because you should go read the whole thing.
When Sipp returns to his Hurricane Katrina-devastated hometown each offseason, he doesn't see the kids playing catball — or anything else, for that matter.Instead, he sees a town in which too many kids occupy their free time with drugs and shrug off schoolwork and sports. He sees a town of less than 18,000 in which whatever faint dreams a youngster might possess of escaping are too often crushed like that home-plate soda can.
"It's almost like this invisible box that traps everybody in there," Sipp said. "My city is like a crab trap. You get close to the top and they pull you back down."
The 25-year-old Sipp got out of that trap.
Second, Kyle from Driveline Mechanics takes a look at all of Sipp's minor league numbers, his injury history, and looks at his mechanics to see if anything can be learned.
Listen, every year somebody emerges out of relative obscurity to make a substantial impact in the 'pen. With Raffy Left struggling and the multitude of other issues going on out there, a productive Tony Sipp would go a long, long way towards righting the bully ship.
