Hangin' On by a Homer

Argh! Missed Asdrubal's 20th homer! Although I missed it on a Saturday night when I had 2 different options of being out-and-about so I'd be a real loser if I complained.

And, lucky me - today's game was rained out and I was able to replace it with a re-play of last night's game in the Gameday Audio Archive. Huzzah!

Not much went on in this game - it was pretty low-scoring. Tomlin was awesome, just like the 2 starters before him and just like himself in the last game. No longer looking like the weak spot in out starting rotation, either! He went 6.1 innings and while he only struck out 2 he also only gave up 4 hits and one run. No homers and only one extra base. And he made this great defensive play, without getting hurt!

In fact, his start is the best since Ubaldo's now-no-earned-runs start on Wednesday. Fausto and Masterson looked superb and struck out more than Tomlin, but Tomlin just gave up that one run.

Smith, Raffy, Sipp! and Chris Perez came in to finish off the 7th (Smith and Raffy), 8th and 9th. Perez got his 25th save. Pitching was just STELLAR for this game!!

Hitting wasn't too shabby today either. We only scored 3 runs, and it was on a 3-run homer, but we got 10 hits and 4 guys had a multi-hit game.

Choo was leading off again, to get more at-bats. Brantley is still out nursing that wrist. Choo didn't hit but he did show patience at the plate and got a walk, then came around to score.

Jason Donald is in for Kipnis, who has some soreness (from flopping around in the infield. Srsly.) and Donald is not looking too bad. He's our original sprout, from last year (ugh - just forget about Valbuena ok?) and his batting average is an impressive .278 over 18 at-bats already. His second hit of the night was a TRIPLE!

Choo was on from his walk and Donald on from his first hit in the 3rd when Asdrubal went DEEP for his 20th homer of the season. OMG!!!! Since this post is a day late, you get to hear the call on the Tom Hamilton Has The Greatest Home Run Call in Baseball Facebook page. Yay you!

The Dunc Tank was back in again and he was DH-ing for Hafner who needed a day off. No heroics today, just a single in the 6th. Sadly, he's been sent down already as of Sunday to make room for David Huff. While I love me some Huff, I always love having Shelley around as our #1 bencher. I hope to see him again soon.

Fukudome is over in center now that Choo is back. I guess center is his main position. He had 2 singles and a nice sac bunt today, only the guys behind him couldn't make it work any further than that, even though LaPorta got 2 hits and Hannahan got 1. There were some ill-timed strikeouts for all 3 guys and Fukudome got himself caught stealing.

Stop trying to steal, y'all! Nobody on this team seems to be built for it except Carrera and maybe Brantley. Everyone else is too old or too big.

So we pulled that game out, and then today's game was going AWESOME with Huff and the helm and they yanked the rug out from under us and postponed it. ARGH! We were so gonna win. And the Tigers lost. So now we're dangling at 2.5 games behind and we have 4 makeup games now. Two versus Seattle, one versus Chicago and now one versus the Twins. All of them will be at home and at least 2 of them will be a double-header.

No more baseball until all the way at 8:10 PM on Tuesday, when Ubaldo blows past the White Sox. I don't care that it's against Gavin Floyd who shut us out last time because that was the slumpy Tribe and Tuesday will feature the re-generated Tribe.

See you there!

Radio Chatter:
"Seems like every time something big happens, Asdrubal is right in the middle isn't he?"
- Mike Hegan

"You put the ball in play Jim and many good things can happen."
- Mike Hegan

"Now if you don't have a good bullpen you have no chance of winning. And the Indians have one of the best in baseball."
- Tom Hamilton