The Goon Squad

Nice little game tonight. Finally getting back to the way it should be. Good pitching and a glimpse of good batting. Not amazing batting - they somehow managed to score 5 runs on just 5 hits and 4 walks. But they were getting hits when it mattered and it was more than enough to overcome the little bit that the pitcher gave up.

Zach McAllister was up today, and he had a quality start with just one earned run in 6 full innings. His run came in the second and while he wasn't lights-out every other inning, he was close enough! ZMac struck out 7 and only allowed 4 hits.

Next up was our new perfect storm - Allen, Smith and Perez. Those guys can be totally top-notch if they are on a good day. They've all been known to give up the runs, tho...but not tonight! Only one hit between them (Perez - it's his thing!) and 2 strikeouts for Allen. Both Allen and Smith are well under 3.00 with the ERA now. Not like Smith's 2011 season with a 2.01 but he's come way down since being well over 3.00 in July.

Even though they got 5 runs, it wasn't much of a game, hit-wise.

Brantley re-started his hitting streak at 1, and Kipnis is the lone hero at 2 games.

The guys with the biggest games today were benchers, which Aviles has told us is the "Goon Squad", which they like much better than the obvious "Bench Mob." Good call, hermoso.  

For example, Ryan Raburn is so good...

...He's so good that he's much larger on the inside than he appears to be on the outside. ALSO he hit a 2-run bomb in the 6th to put the Tribe ahead 5-1! Good timing, too, cuz the fella hasn't done anything of note since he got signed (well, except pitching a 1-2-3 inning but dude, that's not what we hired you for!) Sad that this is only his third game in a week but I guess we just can't have All Raburn, All The Time.

The other guy with a hit was Gooooooooomes who went 2 for 4 with a double! Did you know he is hitting .314? He leads the team, ahead of Kipnis's .290. Unfortunately he's not a qualifier (not enough games) so we can't compare him 1:1 with everyone but still - it's impressive for a guy who doesn't play every day to play that WELL when he does get in there!

Him and Raburn lead the team in slugging, too, because when they do get in the lineup they're getting the extra bases. And then they lead in OPS, too.

Get this - Raburn has played in about 64% as many games as the team's home-run leader, Kipnis - and he has one less home run than the Kid. Damn, Raburn!

And Gomes? He's got the fewest strikeouts of anyone on the team with more than 50 at-bats. One half of the number of games that Kipnis has played, and 1/3 of the strikeouts.

I guess we got to give a shout out to Aviles and Giambi, who may not be consistently wowing us but they always seem to find themselves in high-fiving situation one or two times a week. That counts for something.

Viva la bench!

Tomorrow is an afternoon game - don't forget! It'll be at 1:10, ol' Cookie Carrasco versus RHP 6.43. Gawd, I hope we get some runs off that dude!!

See you there!

Sorry, no Radio Chatter today. The day got away from me.