Who Are These Guys?

So Ubaldo Jiminez still is no good. To be honest he's never been good for us. We know good - we've got Justin Masterson. We even know good-with-bad-streaks - we've got Roberto Hernandez. Jiminez seems to be consistently bad. But not blow-out bad just too-many-runs bad. And if he's not giving up too many runs, he's not going enough innings because he put a lot of guys on base and happened to get them out before they scored.

Plus there's the "ok he's going to be good this week!" anticipation of our big purchase from last year and then it never happens. I think that makes him even more frustrating. If he was just some dude who ended up on our roster or came up through the minors we could easily forget him every 5 days. But he came to us wrapped in a package of high hopes and so far he's not been living up to the hype (however small the hype was before we found him on our team.)

Le sigh.

So there was that - Ubaldo giving up 4 runs - which was no fun. But this was the Royals and we are the Indians and it is only natural that we're going to come back and the Royals are going to implode. That's at least the story for the 2012 Indians and Royals. HOWEVER, in the history of the Central, the story is that the Royals will beat us even if they are the worst team in baseball. Welcome to history!

Wheeler and Perez did fine in the 7th and 8th and Asencio blew the barn door open and gave up 4 runs in the 9th, giving up a 3-run and 1-run homers.

Wasn't just Asencio and Jiminez today, tho. Well ultimately it was Asencio but before he gave up all them runs, our batters did a lot of failing to get on base.

Nobody had a multi-hit game today and we only had 3 walks which is super unusual for this team. We totally owned Luke Hochevar and today he owned us!

Asdrubal got a hit and he's still up over .300. He and Santana both got one hit and one walk.

PRONK is still the man. Dude got a double and a RBI and reached on a fielder's choice. I can't tell if his OBP is under .500 now or not (stats not updated) but whatever, he's still streaking and doing what he came here to do.

Jack Hannahan was shut down today. Isn't that weird? Surely he'll get 'em tomorrow...

Casey Kotchman got hit by a pitch and I sort of cheered. I'm sorry that I sort of cheered, Casey. Do you think he maybe cheered, too? He is batting .143.

Aaron Cunningham! With an RBI single! Now is his chance to get some live batting practice in while Choo is out (hopefully having a 24/7 hamstring massage). Who knows - maybe he's good? I think we've got 3 games to find out.

I think the cool weather is starting to get guys down or something. They need a bit of a woo-ha moment here. Yeah we won yesterday but not by nearly as much as we should have. And today we did the same thing only it bit us in the butt.

The Tribe does pretty well in afternoon games (that aren't on Sundays) so maybe Josh Tomlin can get it done. He can if the bats get to swingin' and guys start connecting with the ball. Or heck - if they get back to walking more.

Noon baseball tomorrow - see you there!

Radio Chatter:
"He's never mediocre. He's either lights out or the Indians tattoo him."
- Tom Hamilton on Luke Hochevar

"Jiminez...he's become Muhammed Ali. He keeps on doing the old rope-a-dope and gets it done."
- Tom Hamilton

"When you've lost 12 in a row you'd better pay attention to details. They may come back to bite you."
- Tom Hamilton on Hochevar pitching in the dirt

"Quintero's about a 50/50 guy behind the plate. He catches half of them and lets the other half go to the back stop."
- Tom Hamilton is still not a fan of the Royals' catcher

"I wonder if Willie Jenks has the plastic up in the Royals clubhouse? They may feel like spraying each other with champagne tonight."
- Tom Hamilton after the Royals score 7