Double Headscratcher

We took the series, so that's cool. The Tribe has won 2 of their 3 series. Keep winning series and you'll be in dang good shape!

Starting pitching looked sharp these two games but...what of batting? Twelve hits in 17 innings? Grumble. I don't have very fond memories of when the Tribe previously had problems matching their batting with their pitching, where we'd lose games with tiny little scores.

But, we split the series. And we did see some good things. So let's revisit them!

- Zach McAllister did exactly what was needed and went 7.2 innings in the first game. That just gives Francona a million options for whatever the second game brings, so it was pretty big! He looked pretty tough too - he gave up 5 hits with no walks, and fanned 7. So far he's our best starter! Also good to see that our pitchers are improving with every outing - ok, even though there's only been 2 outings each.

- Trevor Bauer was hella good too. Since he's our 6th guy, numbers 1-5 are going to have to work hard to keep their jobs! He had a capital-Q Quality Start today, throwing 6 shutout innings and striking out 8. He kept up good velocity while occasionally taking off 20 MPH to throw a curveball. Yoink!

- Oh man, could our bullpen be any better right now?? They've put in a lot of work, collectively, and 5 of the guys still have an 0.00 ERA. The only ones with ERAs are Axford, Wood and Pestano. Oh...Pestano got sent down. So uh, I guess that means we have 6 guys with a 0.00 ERA, as CC Lee is here now with a clean slate. It'll be fun to watch them compete to hold on to those goose eggs!

- Kipnis goin' DEEEEEEEEEEEEP! That homer put number 22 at a .222 batting average and gives him 6 RBI over his last 4 games. Up through the first game he hadn't struck out in a while, but he didn't fare as well in the second game today. Tired boy.

- Asdrubal finally got a couple dang hits, albeit in that second game where no one else was hitting. He also got back to sharply hitting balls to where guys were playing in the field, which sounds crummy but everyone prefers that to him striking out or grounding in to a double play. Cuz one of these times he's going to hit it sharply to where some guy is playing but not paying attention!

- Ryan Raburn got 3 hits over the 2 games! One of them was a double, too. Total Goon Squad day for him. Man, he's so good...

He's so good that _____ __________ is in town to make a sports movie about him!

- New York totally got a review wrong. Here's the play and Tom Hamilton's call. This isn't a good thing that happened today but it was interesting and controversial. Also it happened in the first inning and people booed the umpire the rest of the game!

There were a lot of crummy things in the box scores today. A lot of head slappers. But since this is The Positive Tribe I won't be covering any of them. Makes my night easier!

We've got 3 coming up against the White Sox and hopefully they're the same White Sox from 2013 because we only lost 2 games to them last year. That's right - we haven't dropped a game to Chicago since April 24, 2013. We won three 4-game series against them last year too. It was just magic.

So let's hope that an extra hour of time moving over to the Central gives the Tribe plenty of time to shake the dust out of their undies and get ready to be a dominant baseball team again. The pitchers are ready - let's get them bats going!

It'll be an 8:10 game,  with Salazar facing LHP 3.86. Get ready, Chicago - we're back!

See you there!

Radio Chatter:
"The catcher came to the mound, and the infielders said 'Hey we're lonely, we want to join the conversation.'"
- Tom Hamilton

"They won't complain about cool nights anymore at PetCo Park."
- Tom Hamilton

"I wonder what they saw in New York that we didn't see here. Maybe they don't have HD."
- Tom Hamilton, on the review in the first inning

"Seth Smith never saw a snap in football, but when Eli Manning is ahead of you, welp..."
- Tom Hamilton