Brantley, Brantley, Brantley, Brantley!

DUDE!!! Michael Brantley has a 22 game hitting streak!!! How crazy was that 8th inning? Did you think he'd get to bat one last time? I was going to be CRUSHED if he didn't get up again...and it was up to *groan* Carlos Santana to get us to Brantley. And he DID it!! He patienced his way to a walk! What excitement...WHAT EXCITEMENT!!

Wooh!

How about that Justin Masterson? You heard me! How about him?! Two games in a row!! That's just a miracle for our guys right now. A 7-inning shutout for him and he actually got the win this time. He struck out 9 and only gave up 4 hits and 3 walks. Please oh please let this be how he is from now on!!

I was driving around the other day, I think listening to the beginning of a game in my car, and I was thinking "I miss Chris Perez." I don't know what brought that on. I think maybe because when you see Chris Perez you know it's a win, or it's close. Now I don't mind not seeing him because we're up by 7 but uhm...that's not who we are this year. Plus when you see Perez it means you get to see Vinnie too. We haven't seen either of them for 5 days now. What a treat to see them tonight!

Oh, they went 2 innings with 1 hit and 1 strikeout between them. No runs, natch. BALLGAME!

Neither Choo nor Cabrera got hits today, but they both got on with walks (Choo 1, Cabrera 2) and both turned them in to 1 run apiece. Asdrubal did a nice piece of running in the 3rd and legged it in from 1st on a shot to left field of all places! That's some heads-up running!

Kipnis didn't do anything tonight, bat-wise, but I am so in love with this play here. All Star Game. Time's running out, yo!

Santana was Classic Santana today, making shit happen. First it was a double in the 3rd that brought home a run. Then he threw a guy out in the 5th. And then the best thing of all (well I guess his original game-winning RBI was the best thing...) was the aforementioned walk to get Brantley his final at-bat. What a shot in the arm he was today!!!

Michael Brantley got his hit and it's so awesome I could just die. Why don't we have clever Brantley t-shirts? There's like 5 clever Cleveland t-shirt outlets around here. We can have OKCLE on short notice, we can have something about Brantley. Get on it!

Johnny Damon played in Cleveland today and he got a hit.

Casey Kotchman, being reliable! After a day of rest, he went 2 for 3. In fact he was the only guy on the team that got multiple hits! What would a game be like with Kotchman, Santana AND Marson be like? Crazy exciting, I bet!

Hey! Lonnie Chisenhall settled in a bit and went 1 for 2. They took him out for Lopez in the 7th, which is reasonable. Didn't work out but I can see it.

Wasn't it nice to NOT see a pitcher batting 9th? Good God, I hate pitchers batting...

Supermanahan! He was back starting at 3rd today! I was trepidations about his return because most guys can't just pop back in and get in to a groove and produce right off the DL. And he didn't. But the great thing is that we didn't need his bat today so he's one day closer to being the old Jack Hannahan and I can hang with that!

Tomorrow's going to be interesting. We have the new-and-improved Ubaldo versus AJ Burnett, who's having a good year but we've had a good history against him. I think if Santana has a good game and Jack gets something to drop we should be good, bat-wise. Ubaldo needs to keep his part of the deal. It's also a 4:05 game, so that's interesting.

Sorry about no Radio Chatter tonight. I missed the first half of the game due to a marching band coming through my neighborhood (seriously). Nothing great really happened in the second half. I feel bad because Hammy's going to be out in Omaha now for the College World Series so we'll be missing his chatter for a few days. But I can't stay up late and re-listen for you cuz I've got to get up early for the Color Run! If you're going, keep an eye out for me - I'll be the fat one in all white!

So don't forget - 4:05. See you there!