Tweet Your Tribe Deluxe Edition: Sandy Alomar, Jr.

Indians coach Sandy Alomar, Jr. took some time out of his day in Chicago yesterday to answer fans’ questions on our regular Twitter feature Tweet Your Tribe.  There were a few questions Sandy wanted to expand beyond Twitter’s 140 characters, and shared those answers here on TribeVibe.

Zach Milstead @zmilstead17  asked Sandy:  what do the different colors on a lineup card mean?

Sandy: “Blue means switch hitter, black means right hander, batter or pitcher, and red means a left handed hitter or pitcher.”

Brian C Hurt ‏ @BCorky10 wanted to know: R there any Catching prospects that will make it to the club n make n impact?

Sandy: “Right now, seems like we have a few prospects. Jake Lowery is one of them, Roberto Perez, Alex Monsalve. We have a few guys down there who are pretty good.  We also have a couple guys in AAA who are our safety net, Luke Carlin and Matt Pagnozzi, so we’re pretty set at catcher right now.”

From Facebook, Michael Bodnar was curious:  What tips have you given Santana as a player? For instance it looks like hes two different players from last year to this year.

Sandy: “He has quicker feet.  We worked on his feet in spring training a lot. He’s also quicker to the ground but we have a much more difficult pitching staff to catch this year. We have a lot of guys who are burying the breaking ball, so he’s improving at that. At times he tries to come up on a breaking ball in the dirt and we’ve tried to push him to stay down at all times.”

Facebook fan Bob Warner asked: I love watching you play catcher one reason the position. But my question is when your knees were going bad why didn’t switch to first base?

Sandy: ” Well, I didn’t have the power Santana has so I stayed behind the plate. I enjoyed catching and I felt that as long as I could do it, I’d go there as a starter or as a backup.  It is the position that I love and I felt like I was a catcher – if I was going to play baseball I didn’t want to play anywhere else.”

Finally, Twitter Tribe fan Tyler Schlaich ‏ @tyguy_216 asked: sandy, do you see any similarities between this Tribe team and the ones you were on in the 90′s?

Sandy: “Well we have the guys who have the passion. Talent wise, we’re getting there, we have some guys like Brantley, Santana, Kipnis, guys like that, that are similar to the guys when we came up.  But the passion is there, the work ethic is there and hopefully we grow together and those guys sign multi-year contracts and we’ll be here for a long time.”