The Indians got one more early season monkey off their back, by winning
their first home series of the season. They took game one in walk off
fashion as Asdrubal Cabrera played hero with a walk-off single late
Friday night. Then game two the Tribe was shutdown by Dan Haren, and
while the Indians pitching was good all series, Haren was just a bit
better. Then came game 3, where Derek Lowe is proving to be one of our
aces, his start with some bullpen help shutout the Angels, and the Tribe
won 4-0 with the help of 3 runs off of Angels errors.
HITTING:
The Angels sent Jared Weaver, Dan Haren, and Ervin Santana to the mound
over the weekend, so I give the hitters a free pass as those guys are
pretty good. After this series you will see that the Indians no longer
have a .300 hitter, but the usual suspects(Pronk and Santana) are still
getting on-base over .400. Grimmace managed to raise his average .011
points with his 2 hits this series, and is now smashing the ball at
.149, but still 0-infinity with RISP. However, you don't have to hit to
contribute, and Grimmace is still making great plays on defense, and
saving a lot of runs. He turned a couple double plays by making line
drive grabs with runners on, and with a guy like Lowe on the mound who
induced 12 groundouts, sometimes a gold glove defensive ability is just
as valuable as a hitter.
Hot Hitters:
Michael Brantley, Asdrubal Cabrera, PRONK, and Kipnis.
Coooooooold Hitters:
Grimmace, Duncan, and Mannahan.
Again, most of these guys aren't scorching it, and the cold hitters get
a free pass as most of the team still drew a lot of walks in the series.
In fact the Indians lead MLB by 12 walks to the next closest team, and
we have played the fewest games of any MLB team this season. I didn't
expect many runs this series, and unfortunately I expect the cold
hitting to continue as our next opponent is the White Sox who always
give our hitters and pitchers a lot of fits. Good news is, Mr. Choo
will be returning to the lineup on Tuesday, and that should help things
a lot.
Pitching:
Money in the bank. Nobody pitched bad, all the starters pitched about
as well as they could. Masterson, Gomez, and Lowe all deserved wins,
and were extremely accurate for the most part, but when matched up
against pitchers just as good, sometimes you don't get the W. I thought
Masterson out pitched Weaver, who was forced to pitch a lot with the
Indians drawing walks, and fouling off a lot of his pitches, but he got
the outs he needed to so he lasted long enough to prevent Masterson from
a W. Gomez was going up against Haren and we lost the game 2-1. That's
solid performances by all pitchers, bullpen included.
Hot Pitchers: Lowe, Jeanmar Gomez, Chris Perez, and Vinnie Pestano.
Nobody is cold, some are just average pitchers which looks worse when
the entire team is on fire around them.
What impressed me about the Angels? Torii Hunter still has it. Dude
was ripping the ball, playing great defense(until he had the error that
cost the Angels 2 runs on Sunday). However, even with his error, they
didn't score, so they would have lost anyways. Hunter was an Indian
killer while in Minnesota, they didn't re-sign him, and he has quietly
put up good years while in LA, and although he is in RF, it's not
because he dropped off significantly on defense, they just have Bourjus
and Trout who are pretty good at defense too. He jacked two HRs in the
series when nobody else could get the ball out of the park.
The other player to look out for is Mark Trumbo. He plays every
position and hits over .330 with power. He was a young touted prospect,
and he appears to have no problems hitting big league pitching. The
Angels are struggling right now, but with young guys like him, Morales,
and Trout now playing every day, they're not going far from contender
status anytime soon.
Tribe is in 1st place as we close the month of April. 11-9 isn't the
greatest record, but it is the best in the Central, so I will take it.
Way to go Tribe.
Hitters AB R H RBI BB SO #P AVG OBP SLG
M Brantley CF 3 1 2 0 1 1 15 .250 .321 .355
J Kipnis 2B 4 0 1 0 0 1 14 .256 .330 .436
A Cabrera SS 4 0 0 0 0 1 14 .286 .348 .460
T Hafner DH 4 0 1 0 0 0 12 .295 .450 .459
J Donald PR-DH 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 .206 .216 .206
C Santana C 4 1 3 0 0 0 15 .262 .417 .446
J Hannahan 3B 2 0 0 0 1 0 17 .290 .375 .403
S Duncan LF 3 0 0 1 0 0 8 .230 .355 .344
C Kotchman 1B 4 0 1 0 0 0 20 .149 .240 .254
A Cunningham RF 3 1 1 0 0 0 9 .243 .300 .297
Totals 31 4 9 1 2 3 124
BATTING
2B: C Santana (3, E Santana)
RBI: S Duncan (8)
S: J Hannahan
SF: S Duncan
GIDP: A Cabrera
Indians RISP: 0-8 (S Duncan 0-1, A Cabrera 0-3, T Hafner 0-2, J Kipnis
0-2)
Team LOB: 7
FIELDING
E: C Santana (1, throw)
DP: 1 (C Kotchman).
Cleveland Indians
Pitchers IP H R ER BB SO HR PC-ST ERA
D Lowe
(W, 4-1) 7.2 3 0 0 2 1 0 107-62 2.27
V Pestano
(H, 5) 0.1 0 0 0 1 1 0 10-6 2.79
C Perez 1.0 0 0 0 0 2 0 15-12 4.00
Totals 9.0 3 0 0 3 4 0 132-80
PITCHING
First-pitch strikes/Batters faced: D Lowe 12/27; V Pestano 1/2; C Perez
2/3
Called strikes-Swinging strikes-Foul balls-In Play strikes: D Lowe
19-6-14-23; V Pestano 3-2-1-0; C Perez 2-3-6-1
Ground Balls-Fly Balls: D Lowe 14-7; V Pestano 0-0; C Perez 0-1
Game Scores: D Lowe 72
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