Cleveland Indians

• Cleveland has created the position of ‘Manager of Baseball Research and Analysis‘ to be filled by Baseball Prospectus writer Keith Woolner. Congrats go out to Keith. This certainly seems to be a growing trend around baseball and it’s great to see.
• Sports Illustrated Fungoes Blog says Cleveland is a bunch of April overachievers.
  

  Despite Cleveland’s early lead, the AL Central should prove to be the dogfight we all expected before the season began.

  Hey, they are only 1 game up on Detroit.

• Starting pitcher Jake Westbrook will be placed on the disabled list.
  

  Indians head athletic trainer Lonnie Soloff said Jake Westbrook will be out “three to five weeks” with a left oblique strain. Westbrook left Wednesday’s start against Toronto in the second inning with the injury.

  This won’t put them in too bad of a spot as they will re-call Fausto Carmona from Class AAA Buffalo. Fausto was just sent down last week after posting 2-1 record and 3.76 ERA in four starts.

Detroit Tigers

• Tiger GM Dave Dombrowski has offered Brian Lawrence a minor league contract. I offered my thoughts on the need for this earlier in the week, though it is low risk.

Minnesota Twins

• Sidney Ponson is in a tough position in the Twin Cities. He made the team out of spring training and has so far failed to impress. With talent such as Matt Garza waiting in the wings it really is just a matter of time until there are some big changes in the rotation.
• Michael Cuddyer still out with an injured back and going to get X-Rays done. Cuddyer is hitting .284/.330/.441 so far this season though he did slightly less against Detroit.
  

  “Not good,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “… He’s kind of your iron man, the one who wants to play every day. So you know when he tells you he can’t go, he can’t go.”

Chicago White Sox

• White Sox have taken a slide losing the last 5 games in a row which has starting to get on Manager Ozzie Guillen’s nerves.
  

  “And I’m not going to sit here and go through a long summer. I’m going to do everything in my power to get better. If I got to bench somebody, I will.”

• Not helping matters for Chicago, both Thome and now Podsednik are on the disabled list. Podsednik will likely be out until June and was one of the few White Sox hitters to not be slumping hitting .303/.378/.455 through April.

Kansas City

• Gil Meche has been earning his contract so far, says the Kansas City Star. Meche was signed to a 5-year $55M dollar contract this past off season.