Three weeks into the season and Cleveland manager Terry Francona has already called his first team meeting.
With the Indians off to a 7-10 start Francona brought the team together following Saturday’s loss and gave them a pep talk, which he described to Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
I care about them a lot and I really like this team a lot. I just felt like maybe half-reassuring and kind of explaining, “Remember who we are and how we go about things. We’re getting tested a little bit and that’s part of it. We’ve been tested before. Just continue to fight through things together.”
And then they went out an won Sunday.
Cleveland is coming off a 92-win season, but 7-10 (and now 8-10) isn’t exactly a disastrous start considering they actually started 7-10 last season and dipped as low as 8-13 before finishing the year on an 84-57 run.
It seems like there’s probably a very thin line between calling the right amount of team meetings to keep a team motivated during a long season and totally losing your audience because you’re constantly calling team meetings. Francona probably knows as well as anyone where that line is, but what happens on the meeting front if the Indians have another rough week or two?
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