I need to buy a broom. After struggling at home, the Tribe had an off day on Thursday, and then traveled to KC with an ice cold offense and a 1-4 record. Rumors swirled about a Johnny Damon signing to maybe spark this offense(he is expected to sign today officially pending a physical), and the starters were on fire, but no run support to speak of. Well, the Tribe traveled to KC, and then swept the Royals while scoring 32 runs in the series, and have still homered in every game this season. Even Grimmace got 2 HRs and 2 SBs in the series. Let's get to the recap, I was busy all weekend, so I didn't have time to blog it, so instead you get a full series update. Spoiler alert: We are now 4-4.
Game 1 (Derek Lowe vs. Luke Hochevar)
The cold Indians offense set the tone for the series in the first inning by scoring 7 runs. We batted around, and Brantley who went 1 for 18 at home, had two hits in the first inning, which magically made his average all the more better. This inning was filled with hard hits, even the outs were ropes, which was nice to see finally. Every player got a hit this game except for Travis Hafner who went 0-5. However, he redeemed himself so don't judge him too much. Our gamely HR was in the 9th inning when A-Cab homered to deep left-center, and that sealed the Tribes 8-3 win. The offense hitting was amazing, but the red flag is still there. We had 1 inning where we put up runs, and then didn't do diddly until the 9th on a solo HR. A good hitting offense would be applying pressure in multiple innings, off of multiple pitchers, not just having one good inning and then going 1-2-3 with a few walks inbetween the rest of the game. So I was pumped we got 8 runs, but still a bit reserved after the game, because really we lost 2-1 if you ignored the 1st inning. However, it's a 9 inning game, so I will take a 8-3 win.
Derek Lowe looked good again. He is now 2-0 for the Tribe with a 1.98 ERA. He did give up a lot of hits in this game (11 total), but did what he does and that is get timely ground ball outs throughout the game, and the Royals really shot themselves in the foot by grounding into 3 DPs. He gave up 3 runs in 6.2 innings, and then the bullpen mafia came in (Sipp, Smith, and Pestano) and didn't allow any more runs. Tribe wins 8-3 and now on to Saturday's game...
Game 2 (Jeanmar Gomez vs. Johnathon Sanchez)
Jeanmar Gomez got his first start of the season after winning the 5th starter position, and he went 2.0innings and allowed 1 run. He looked really good actually. Why did he only go one inning? Well allow me to give you a flashback to last June, when the Indians faced the Giants and their starter Johnathon Sanchez. Sanchez hit Shin Soo Choo on the hand and broke a bone in his thumb, essentially costing him the rest of the season, because even when he came back it was an issue the rest of the year. This year Choo wears a protective guard on his hand to hopefully prevent that from happening again. Since he got pegged by Chris Sale in the hand during the White Sox series I am guessing it is working since he is just fine. Now during the 3rd inning of this game, Sanchez again plunks Choo. Choo started yelling at Sanchez and he said after the game that he knew Sanchez didn't do it intentionally, but because of last season he may have been a bit "sensitive". Well the benches cleared, and for some odd reason Jack Hanahan is the guy who comes sprinting to Sanchez and starts grabbing him on his jersey and screaming at him. This will be a theme for Hanahan, who either has some roid rage from all the Pronk bars he eats, or gets a bit too much caught up into "protection" mode. Either way, cooler heads prevailed, warnings were issued, and then Choo took his base. Well Jeanmar Gomez in the bottom of the 3rd decided that he would protect his guy and still threw at the first batter he faced. Because warnings were issued, Gomez and Acta were automatically ejected. Well because Moustakis started to yell at Gomez, in came our fearless protecter at full speed to get back in the face of about 5 Royals. This time I am positive it had to be the Pronk bars. Hanahan was also ejected at this point, I have to believe he just wanted Jason Kipnis to not have an off day, or he may be crazy. Nobody throws at Hanahan, and I could have made a few guesses as to the first guy off the bench that would stick his head in the middle of a yelling match trying to get into a fight, and he isn't close to the first on that list. After this series, he is the first guy I will assume that will try to fight somebody. Prior to this I would have assumed Lou Marson, and then Aaron Cunningham would be the first two guys to try and pick a fight. Cunningham because he needs to get noticed by the coaches somehow, he isn't hitting, he isn't getting a lot of PT, at least be the "Enforcer" of the team. And Lou Marson loves to yell at opponents, so I just assumed that he would get a fist thrown his way at some point. Luckily for us, Josh Tomlin was in the bullpen that game, because we had to skip his start, so we did have somebody to eat a few innings. Now to the actual game...
In this game the offense looked really good. We had one big inning that we scored 5 runs, but we also were able to score in other innings too, so this is the best game thus far for our offense. Our gamely HRs were hit by Grimmace and Kipnis. More importantly we had 7 extra-base hits, and went 5-12 with RISP. Kipnis came off the bench to replace Hanahan, and he proceeded to go 2-3 with 2 RBIs which was a good boost. Choo even got the last laugh by hitting the go ahead 2 run double in the 10th inning to deep left center.
Pitching left a little to be desired, but since this was Sandy Alomar's first game calling the shots with Acta ejected early, you got a sense of what type of manager he is. He is definitely a match-up guy, and he emptied out the bullpen using everyone except for Dan Wheeler. Pestano blew the hold in the 8th inning, which allowed Asencio to get his first win with the Tribe, and Chris Perez made quick and easy work of the Royals 4-6 hitters in the 10th for his second save. The bullpen didn't really hold much of anything as Tomlin got roughed up, and so did most of the guys who really you could tell were trying to just hold on for dear life. Fortunately one swing by Choo in the 10th completely reversed the momentum, because following a 4 run 5th inning, we were up 9-2 and then just held on until we ended up winning 11-9 in 10.
We finally got an extra inning win, and having clinched our first series win of the season it was onto Sunday, and the return of Ubaldo Jimenez from suspension....
Game 3 Ubaldo Jimenez vs. Luis Mendoza
Yes the Royals have a starter named Luis Mendoza, I am sure he can skate really fast...it's just that he has a problem stopping. The boxscore for the Tribe is below for this game since it somewhat sums up the improvements of EVERYBODY's numbers, except for the bullpen mafia. The Indians scored runs in 3 innings, but when you score 6, 4, and 3 runs in those innings, you are having a big day. The gamely homers in this game were by Grimmace, Kipnis(back-to-back for Grimmace/Kipnis), Duncan, and Pronk. Pronk's home run went to right field. Well, actually it is the first homerun to land in the bar beyond the right field bleachers, and the measurement by ESPN is 481ft, but during the game they said 454ft, but let's just agree that he was looking for a curve, got it, and then crushed it. Shelley Duncan's HR was just as clearly a no-doubter, but after Pronk hit his, like Larry Doby breaking the color barrier in the American League, it kind of gets overlooked. Everyone who got an AB in this game got a hit. Brantley, Hafner, and Grimmace led the way with 3 hits each. Santana got the game off, and Marson got his first hit of the season with a timely double that drove in a run. The Indians got runs off of every Royals pitcher, except for CF Mitch Maier who came in the 9th to pitch. Kind of embarrassing that we couldn't get a run off of him, or is it embarrassing that he was the only one that pitched that didn't allow a run? Tough call. The name of the game was 2 out hitting. The Indians scored 12 of their 13 runs with 2 outs. The only run not scored with 2 outs with the lead-off HR by Pronk in the 5th. What is even more impressive is that most of the time, the Indians started with nobody on base with 2 outs, making the manufacturing of runs all the more impressive.
Jimenez labored to say the least to get thru 5 innings. He threw 114 pitches and gave up 4 runs. Not ideal, but it was good enough for a win. The issue with Jimenez all season will be his command, he was clearly not as in control as he was in his first start, but he still got thru 5 innings, and if maybe 35% of his starts he is wild, getting a win during one of them is a nice result. Hopefully he will get it back together the next time out. The bullpen took over, and really didn't have any problems and just got outs to clinch the sweep and give the Indians a 13-7 win.
So in conclusion, here are my final thoughts on the series. Shelley Duncan is still taking leaks in LF, and has solidified himself as the starting LF barring injury or going 0-40. He has timely hitting, raw power, and is starting to get respect from managers as the Royals attempted some serious defensive shifting during his at-bats. Choo still owns the Royals, as I think he had 6 RBIs during this series alone, and Brantley had about 6 hits during the series which isn't too shabby at all. A-Cab looked good both offensively and defensively, and I am feeling really comfortable about his offense this year as he appears locked in. In three games the Indians not only hit the ball a lot, but they drew 16 walks in the process. Shelly Duncan has an OBP of .485 and Santana is at a lowly .417 OBP. Defensively the best play was seeing Santana throw out Jarrod Dyson attempting to steal on Saturday. This guy was a call-up from AAA who really made some mistakes in CF the first two games that gave the Indians a lot of runs, but he did have like 7 SBs in AAA before the call-up. So when he ran, and Santana gunned him out I was impressed, especially since we were tied at the time, and Santana needs to get some of these speedsters out that way his arm gets the respect that Marson does. That will take a lot of the pressure off our pitchers and defense.
The pitching left a bit to be desired, but they were all strange games. Lowe looked the best all weekend, and the bullpen really only labored thru Saturday's game. Not worried about the bullpen at all, and while Ascencio is giving up some runs, he is still new to the majors, and he looks like a very solid right-hander from our pen while he is up here. He was a closer in the Braves system, so if we can stop using him 2-3 innings at a time and get him down to 1.0 innings during outings, I think he will settle down and complement our team nicely.
You can never undervalue division wins, and sweeping the Royals is a great way to make up for the series loss to the White Sox. The Royals clearly missed Melky Cabrera and Wilson Betemit destroying us like they did last season. However Mike Moustakis had a great series defensively and offensively. I don't think anybody on their team impressed me more than him, that guy looks like he could be a gold glove caliber player at 3rd, and his bat finds a lot of gaps. Billy Butler is still a very underrated DH, and a doubles machine. Put him in a big market, and that guy would get the same respect a David Ortiz or Paul Konerko get.
Indians have an off day on Monday that will help rest the bullpen, but hopefully doesn't cool down the offense. We are going to Seattle to face the Mariners, and first up will be Masterson vs. Millwood at 10:05. Looks like we will have Johnny Damon signed by then, so expect him to join the Clippers later this week, who by the way are 8-2 I believe and just rolling as expected.
Greybeard out...
Hitters AB R H RBI BB SO #P AVG OBP SLG
M Brantley CF 6 1 3 2 0 0 19 .206 .289 .353
A Cabrera SS 5 1 1 0 1 1 22 .282 .333 .513
S Choo RF 5 1 1 2 0 1 20 .219 .390 .281
A Cunningham RF 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .111 .200 .111
T Hafner DH 4 2 3 1 1 1 16 .292 .393 .583
S Duncan LF 2 3 1 3 3 0 29 .320 .485 .600
C Kotchman 1B 4 3 3 2 1 0 22 .219 .286 .406
J Kipnis 2B 4 1 1 1 1 1 28 .188 .257 .531
J Hannahan 3B 5 0 1 1 0 1 10 .280 .357 .400
L Marson C 5 1 1 1 0 1 19 .125 .125 .250
Totals 40 13 15 13 7 6 185
BATTING
2B: S Choo (2, L Mendoza); L Marson (1, J Mijares); M Brantley (3, J Mijares)
HR: S Duncan (2, 3rd inning off L Mendoza 2 on, 2 Out); T Hafner (2, 5th inning off L Mendoza 0 on, 0 Out); C Kotchman (2, 8th inning off L Coleman 1 on, 2 Out); J Kipnis (3, 8th inning off L Coleman 0 on, 2 Out)
RBI: S Choo 2 (6), S Duncan 3 (6), J Hannahan (6), T Hafner (5), L Marson (1), M Brantley 2 (3), C Kotchman 2 (4), J Kipnis (7)
2-out RBI: S Choo 2, S Duncan 3, J Hannahan, L Marson, M Brantley 2, C Kotchman 2, J Kipnis
GIDP: S Duncan, A Cabrera
Indians RISP: 5-12 (M Brantley 1-1, S Choo 1-2, L Marson 1-2, J Hannahan 1-3, S Duncan 1-1, J Kipnis 0-2, C Kotchman 0-1)
Team LOB: 7
BASERUNNING
SB: C Kotchman (2, 2nd base off L Mendoza/B Pena)
Cleveland Indians
Pitchers IP H R ER BB SO HR PC-ST ERA
U Jimenez
(W, 1-0) 5.0 9 4 4 3 5 0 112-70 4.50
R Perez 0.2 1 1 1 1 0 0 14-7 7.36
D Wheeler 1.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 12-9 8.10
T Sipp 1.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8-4 13.50
J Asencio 1.0 3 2 2 0 2 0 29-17 5.63
Totals 9.0 13 7 7 4 7 0 175-107
PITCHING
WP: U Jimenez; J Asencio
Balk: R Perez
First-pitch strikes/Batters faced: U Jimenez 16/27; R Perez 2/4; D Wheeler 2/4; T Sipp 2/3; J Asencio 2/6
Called strikes-Swinging strikes-Foul balls-In Play strikes: U Jimenez 23-8-20-19; R Perez 2-1-1-3; D Wheeler 2-0-3-4; T Sipp 1-0-1-2; J Asencio 5-3-5-4
Ground Balls-Fly Balls: U Jimenez 7-3; R Perez 0-2; D Wheeler 2-2; T Sipp 1-2; J Asencio 0-1
Game Scores: U Jimenez 35
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