New Way To Lose

At least you can't say it wasn't an exciting game. They came out of the gates hitting and scoring, and scored in 5 innings. They were on base in all innings but the 8th. They managed a respectable 8 earned runs but...12 left on base! The big problem today was errors.

Derek Lowe seems to maybe be out of that "wow that old man can still pitch!" juice that has been going around the league this year. It's not like he's throwing everything in the dirt but we don't need another dude with a 4+ ERA right now.

I will give it to him tho - he gave up 4 and there were 3 un-earned right along with them. Son of a bitch!

Accardo did ok in his 2/3 of an inning. Walking 2 but getting out of it. Smith came in and gave up what ended up being the tying run (GROAN!) and somehow it worked out that even tho the homer Perez (yeah Chris Perez) gave up in the 8th was the winning run, it was Smith who got the loss. Almost like Perez paid him to take that L or something.

So ... pitching? Yeah, kind of crummy today. Nobody's bullpen needs to be giving up 2 runs in 3 innings. But there were 3 un-earned runs on errors by our truly amazing infield - Asdrubal and Kotchman. Not sure why Asdrubal has 9 fucking errors this year...is there some sort of post-All-Star curse? Didn't seem to hit Chris Perez. Or it all hit him on the first game of the season and he beat the curse to death with his bare hands.

Batting was pretty great today, except for when it wasn't. I mean 5 guys had a multi-hit game and almost everybody hit (DAMON!!! *shakes fist*) There were merely 6 strikeouts which isn't bad when you consider how many at-bats we had. But everyone was leaving guys on bases left and right. A tragedy!

Choo had a great night, going 3 for 5 with 3 hits and a walk. He got 2 RBI and scored a run and you know what? All that on no doubles or homers! One of those RBI was an RBI walk! I caught the first inning on TV and my mom was impressed at how dirty Choo was by the time Kipnis was up. Working hard!

OMG ASDRUBAL!!! #11! He's being less disappointing at the plate right now but damn what's up with the errors, bro? He's got 9 on the year and the last 3 have been COSTLY. Ugh. Well he went 2 for 6 today but he did leave me sad when he was up in the 9th and blooped out with a man in scoring position.

Kipnis was locked in today, going 3 for 5 with 2 RBI. That's 2 TWO OUT RBI! Cool! Brantley also hit and went 1 for 4 with a walk.

Now that Santana's out for a smidge (hurt back), our top 4 guys are hitting a combined .282, and really they were the stars of the show tonight getting 6 of the 7 RBI (one run was a fielder's choice). Not to totally discount the bottom of the lineup, though - they scored 6 of those runs!

Kotchman scored 2 of those runs today, from being on base twice. But like Asdrubal he also made a run-costing error today. My friend was joking about the number of errors Asdrubal has made, and wondered why Kotchman was erroring too. Do you think they are erroring way too much (18 for Hannahan. Asdrubal and Kotchman) or do you think we notice it way too much because they are - all other times - awesome? Kipnis only has 3 errors, same as Kotchman, but I think he's been exciting at 2nd this year. Because we expect him to suck.

I refuse to blame anything on the heat today, by the way, because if you recall we had a hell of a time in April and it was blamed on the cold. All these guys are from Latin America, Florida or Arizona - they can handle the heat. Except Brantley who's from Washington state, but he's Dr. Smooth so nothing flaps him.

Speaking of Arizona - Shelley Duncan had a nice night! But first he had to come in for Lonnie Chisenhall, who had a nice night! Lonnie went 1 for 2 ... and then got hit by a pitch in his arm and now his arm is broke and GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! He was just about to break out - or already had broke out - and now that's it. Surgery.

On the POSITIVE side, Shelley Duncan ended up going 2 for 2 with a double, an RBI and 2 runs. Bittersweet, yo...bittersweet.

Supermanahan and Marson both went 1 for 4 with a walk. They're both hitting about .250 which would be great to see up in the .270s soon. They both need to get their games in and stabilize at the plate and we know they can do well. Question is - how much more Marson will we see? Now that there's very little question of "how much more Lonnie?" (MOAN!) we know we'll see a ton of Hannahan...let's hope he's still got it. A nice fat .275 or .280 at the bottom of our lineup sure would be swell!

So all-in-all we made a lot of progress but had a bit of a step back. Pitching didn't get any WORSE and hitting didn't get any WORSE - it got better in that we got an early-season level of hits but we're still leaving them stranded. But fielding cost us big, which was sort of a new way to lose the game.

Tomorrow we're back to trying to figure out LHP. Let's hope there's some confidence and we can keep on with the hitting and could-be-worse pitching. Tomlin is up - he's seen worse. Don't need to see it again.

It's a 4:05 start, and it'll be damned hot. Bring your battery powered fan and enough cash for at least 3 large pops. I'll see you there!

Radio Chatter:
"When you have a pitcher who is first in the league for ground outs to fly outs, you're going to have to play good defense."
- Tom Hamilton

"The Cleveland karma is paying off for us, now that we've gotten out of New York with that engineer Paul..."
- Jim Rosenhaus on the Baltimore engineer who married a Mayfield girl

"This is an Indians ballclub that cannot stay in contention if they can't find some middle relief. Whether it's Cody Allen, or George Allen, or Marty Allen, they need some help."
- Tom Hamilton

"Adam Jones just learned that Christmas can happen even on a hot day."
- Tom Hamilton on a questionable fair ball