Cleveland Indians: Jay Bruce’s impressive first week

The Cleveland Indians needed outfield help and Jay Bruce has come in and cemented himself in an everyday role right away.

The Cleveland Indians weren’t facing certain doom without both Michael Brantley and Lonnie Chisenhall, but things weren’t looking good.

Austin Jackson continues to be one of the better offensive players currently healthy, but Bradley Zimmer has seemingly forgotten how to hit while Abraham Almonte and Brandon Guyer are average at best.

The front office responded by trading for Jay Bruce last week, a move that may go down as one of the better decisions in the past decade. I know, he has only been here a week but he is an established talent and if he helps this team win a title, he will be a hero. And all it costed was $5 million and a low-level prospect.

Bruce was in the midst of a 0-14 stretch in his final days as a New York Met, but he has seen a resurgence during his short time with the Indians.

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He is 10-27 with the Indians, and has driven in six runs in the past week. He even hit his first home run with the team on Thursday, and has settled in nicely into the fifth spot in the lineup.

He was moved up to third with Jose Ramirez out, but fifth seems to be where he will be on a normal day when fans aren’t panicking about a Ramirez injury.

Bruce is so good it creates a logjam in the outfield, with Chisenhall likely needing to slide over to left field once he returns. And once Brantley is back, Chisenhall may be on the move to center.

This is one of those problems that is nice to have, as a surplus of talent is never a bad thing.

Bruce is a career .249/.319/.472 hitter who will likely level off around those marks over the next six weeks, but perhaps he surprises us all and has an Andrew Miller-esque run in which he plays like a superstar from August through October.

Next: 3 takeaways from the series in Minnesota

Bruce enters play today riding a seven-game hit streak, so if he is going to go on such a legendary run, building up a double-digit hit streak would be a nice start.