Nervous Night

I was pretty nervous for the ballgame tonight. I was already a bit on edge due to last night's shenanigans. "I really hope this isn't the future of this season," I thought.

Then I got a message from my friend T who was at the game with her brother and sister-in-law, who are visiting from out of town. T went with me to her first game earlier this summer (when we played the Reds and Asdrubal went 5 for 5), and then to her second game a month or so later (which was the first game where Carrasco kicked ass). She's also got a little tension in her family, and is hoping to make Cleveland her new home. So I was just really really nervous that tonight her family was going to see "those Indians" and, I dunno - make T move back to Dayton or something.

Instead they saw THOSE Indians. The team with over 30,000 fans at home. The team with some spectacular defense. The team with masterful pitching (pun!). The team that gets walk-off wins with 2 outs. And then they saw a fireworks show that might possibly be the best fireworks show they've ever seen (I am quite partial to the Rock 'n Blasts).

I was happy T and her family got to see all that, and I am pretty happy for myself for getting to see that. On TV nonetheless!

And for those of us in the know, not only did we get all that but the Tigers also lost and we might just be getting a new player in the form of 2010 All-Star starter Ubaldo Jiminez.

All-in-all, not a bad night!

Big Nasty was on fire tonight, going 8 innings with 5 strikeouts and only 2 runs. And those 2 runs were in the 1st and the 8th. He got 8 ground-ball outs too. His ERA of 2.56 has him tied for 4th in the AL, along with that guy Sabathia. Fuckin' A, Justin Masterson!


Even tho I'm excited that we pulled off a win, I'm still not blown away by our offense. Seemed like there was way too much of this going on tonight. Only 4 LOB tonight, which is better than 13. But it's about 33% of our OB.

Brantley was leading off tonight, with Carrera down at 9th (sneaky, right?) He was only 1 for 3 but he did get the game tying RBI. Definitely need that guy to turn it up juuuuust a notch.

Kipnis....still not hitting with any regularity. But check this out.  Are you surprised that Orlando Cabrera just got let go? (Traded to Giants for a hurt outfielder.) I liked Orlando ok, but he was replaceable.

Asdrubal had a spiffy play too, and looked good working with Kipnis. He also got a hit but he's just not hitting with that Asdrubalness we've come to expect this year (well I've been expecting it since 2008, but that's just me.)

RUMOR has it that Asdrubal let shit get to his head since the All Star Game. I don't know anything about Asdrubal the person, just the on-field player so I don't know if it's something he could suffer from or not.

Carlos Santana - did they light a fire under his ass again? Around Memorial Day they were telling him to stop moving his foot at the plate and he did and he exploded. Then he went back into his old ways. They reminded him again and he's wavering between multi-hit games and no-hit games. But, fuck the worry. Because he went 2 for 4 tonight AND he was catching. So Carlos Santana is not as bad as I thought he was the other day.

Fukudome. Not much to say about that cat yet but he did just enough for us for people to be excited. Actually, he did more than most of our guys would usually do lately in that he got a sac fly to score a run. How many of our guys would have hit a short pop-up to left? Probably a lot of them right now. So, good on you, Fukudome. DOMO!!

Both Lonnie and Zeke produced for us tonight. Lonnie with THREE walks - which turned in to 2 runs - and Zeke with a hit.

The BIG news tonight was Matt LaPorta. I'll admit right now that I was ready to trade LaPorta. Not because of how he fucked up on Tuesday. That sort of stuff happens to most of our guys. But, I don't think we need him if we're putting our eggs in Santana's basket. If we're sticking with Santana he needs to play more 1st base because he sucks as a catcher and needs time to concentrate on his batting. We don't need a logjam at 1st.

But then LaPorta was spiffy at 1st tonight, got a huge double, made the Royals' catcher BLEED from his FACE and then uh, won the game with a walk-off 3-run homer.

So everyone would be super-sad if he hadn't been there to wow us tonight. I think everyone would also feel REALLY awkward if we had to put him on a plane after all that.

Just realized that the 2 games I saw on TV this week were the 9th inning on Tuesday with LaPorta fucking the fuck up, and the 9th tonight with LaPorta the hero. Fun!

We're having a lot of problems with momentum lately so let's hope we learn to ROLL ON and get another win tomorrow.

What I want to see is a shitton of runs against Kyle Davies, who sucks. And I want to see Good Fausto. I want to see Fukudome get his first hit as an Indian and LaPorta have two awesome games in a row

Oh man, Ubaldo Jiminez is breaking my heart. Here's what he has to say about leaving the Rockies. Video.  I hope he feels ok here. He'll be with countrymen Manny Acta, Carmona, Raffy Perez and Santana so hopefully that makes it easy. I read earlier that he lives in Denver with "his parents." How lovely is that? I hope he has a lovely time in Cleveland.

Pending a successful physical, of course.

Ok so 1:05 PM tomorrow for us busting Kyle Davies to little pieces. Fukudome to get a hit. Mark my words.

Radio Chatter:
"Right now for the Indians every night Is a pitchers duel."
- Tom Hamilton on our lack of offense

"Treanor is up on his feet buying not sure If he knows he's in Cleveland."
- Tom Hamilton

"Let's hope this booth isn't bugged."
- Tom Hamilton after coming from a break, presumably after gossiping like girls with Hegan about pending trades

"That was a professional at bat."
- Tom Hamilton on Fukudome's sac fly to tie the game

Twitter Patter:
"Shout out to Nastyson... I meant Masterson. Sorry for constantly taking your wins!!!!"
- @SippTony (Tony Sipp)