Sunday, April 10, 2011

Second Sweep of the Season

OMG ASDRUBAL! Home run #3! Hamilton pointed out that he has as many home runs as the entire Mariners team. He also leads the Indians now. While he's still racking up some strikeouts, he did rack up 3 hits today putting his AVG over .300 again.

CHOO! got two hits and is slowly and stoically climbing out of his early season hole.

Hafner was benched today, as he was three games ago. I suspect he is on some sort of bench schedule, which is good if it's needed but man do I miss him when he's gone! It's really great to be excited for Pronk at the plate again.

Jack Hannahan is climbing back up too and getting a respectable AVG. Today he hit his second home run. 

Another great start from our starter, Josh Tomlin. According to Hammy, Josh Tomlin is the only pitcher in Indians franchise history to work more than 5 innings in each of his 14 major league starts. Considering our recent history, it feels like he's the only Indians pitcher EVER to give so many innings.

Chad Durbin relieved Tomlin in the 7th, but gave up a run. Then Acta went with what now seems to be the "old reliable" bullpen succession of R. Perez, Sipp and C. Perez. Sipp again looked fantastic and C. Perez picked up his third save.

Milton Bradley didn't play today, so he didn't grate on Hamilton's nerves. However, the Mariners did put up the roof on Safeco Field in the middle of the game and roof talk dominated Hammy's banter.

So yeah, if you didn't know, the Tribe is in first place in the Central and we just swept two series in a row. TWO SERIES IN A ROW. Uh, granted, it was against one team that is 1-7 and another team that is rumored to be the worst team in baseball this year...but if nothing else it's really priming the team for the rest of the season. Acta can test his lineup and his rotation, the bullpen can find their place and the team can shake those spiderwebs out. It's almost like an extended spring. As our opponents start getting more "serious" our team will have had the chance to ramp themselves up and learn how to be winners.

Hopefully all of the winning will also bring more fans out of the woodwork, and by the time they're back home next Friday we'll have more asses in the seats!

Three more west coast games coming up, against the Angels. Two late night games and a surprise 7:05 ET start on Wednesday. I'm stoked for us to roll on to a new team and see how our guys do against another set.

Radio Chatter:
"If I told you the Indians were 16-12 in the month of April, you'd probably say 'Oh, ok.' But if your team goes 4 over .500 every month of the season, suddenly you're 24 games over .500 by the end of the season."
- Tom Hamilton

1 comment:

  1. I'm really bummed that the Tribe plays the Angels quite so early in the season. I'm too busy at work to make it out to this series, but I should be able to go to the series in May (and take my lovely bribe-to-be with me as we don our Tribe gear).

    I watched most of today's game. It is REALLY, really encouraging to see us looking solid at the plate the way we have, lately. As you say, we've definitely got some serious tests ahead of us, but the team is learning what it's like to win.

    And yes, I have MLB.TV, so I do enjoy listening to Hammy out here. Good stuff!

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