A Good Day For Flying

Hey! I'm back! For now, at least. Still dealing with a sick dog and a sick me but this is the first time in a while that I've found myself awake after a game in a few weeks.

Plus - how exciting was this game?!?! And it wasn't even because of Kluber or Chisenhall!

Trevor Bauer OWNED IT today. He owned it because several of his pitches bounced in front of the plate, but he still went 7 innings. He still threw 112 pitches. He still didn't give up any home runs and the FOUR hits he did give up were just singles! It took a long time - he only struck out 6 - but he did it! Bauer Outage!

Bryan Shaw came in for a beautiful 8th - no hits, no runs, one strikeout - and then Cody Allen came in for an even more-perfect save (TWO strikeouts)! Allen has 10 saves now, one more than John Axford. Still not our "closer" I guess but who CARES?? What's in a name? All it means is that fewer people pick him up to be their Fantasy closer.

So, since we been gone, Michael Bourn is hurt again. His hamstring disengaged again or something, and he's out for a while. Suuuuucks, because he was doing really great! And also because Nyjer Morgan is still only halfway through his stint on the 60-day DL.

Now Brantley is in center (uh, no problem) and Murphy et al are in right. They picked up a dude named Dickerson from Pittsburgh for left. No opinion on him yet, although I think his coming in somehow lost us Kottaras and that's not cool. This Dickerson guy owes us some homers!

Jason Kipnis is the leadoff man now and he's feelin' it. Or he's feelin' Jason Kipnis Bobblehead night.

20,000 "Yankee fans" are not feeling it.

He went 2 for 4 tonight in that top spot, and stole TWO bases. He's been pretty steady in the last 10 games - going up and down as the rest of the team does. But it seemed especially potent tonight!

Asdrubal...I guess he was wearing a Brazil soccer jersey today. Is that how the World Cup works? Once your team (Venezuela) is out, you pick your next fave? Brazil didn't work out too well for him, either. Also, he went 0-fer tonight. Sigh. He's been like Kipnis, keeping his average tight over the last 10 games but not hitting when the rest of the team isn't either.

Michael Brantley (.328) is getting there! And by "there" I mean the elusive .330 that I keep imagining him having! Of course, no one will know of this except for me and my dog and the 4 people who may have read about it here, but it's our goal! Today's key term is "five-tool player" as Brantley hit for power (his 14th home run) and had the speed to get two doubles, and leads the league in outfield assists (didn't get one today but this weekend he did), is great at chasing down balls and oh yeah - .328. He also looks good in a fedora.

How about Carlos Santana, huh? He's steady over .200. Maybe not as much over .200 as we'd like but he's back to hitting regularly and for power. He's got a lot of ground to make up! Speaking of ground have you seen him on the field lately? He's been at first a bit and he had one HECK of a game the other night, flinging himself around and making important plays. They say it's because he did so much third base work that with the bigger glove at first and stuff, it's easier. He only went 1 for 4 tonight and did strike out twice but still I'm glad he's with us!

Lonnie Baseball has cooled off a bit but he is still our every-day dude and I'm LOVIN it! The average is coming down down down after being up in the stratosphere, but as he gets closer to qualifying (maybe this week?) he is still way up there. HE has the elusive .330! Let's hope it doesn't slide too much further down, though - today he was 1 for 3 with a walk. He also made his 12th error which....yeep!

Murphy went 1 for 4, and that Dickerson dude went 1 for 3 and has a .400 batting average so far.

Gomes made his 11th error, which sucks because after an atrocious start he has been rock-solid on the field lately. I just tried to give you some cool stats after reading BaseballReference.com but I am way too lame for them. His fielding % is .985. Sounds good right? But I guess it can't be too good if you have 11 errors. And there are like 15 columns of other stats. He's got a 37% caught stealing % so that's not too bad. It's towards the top in the league, I believe.

So this pitcher they faced tonight, Tanaka, was 10-0 against teams he'd faced for the first time. Now he's 10-1. He also had not given up more than 4 earned runs in a game this year. Now he's given up 5. Dude came in with a 2.27 ERA and now it's 2.51. BOOM!! Tribe still likes those good pitchers! (Except when they totally, totally don't).

I guess tomorrow is Derek Jeter day at the Prog. That really upsets me so I won't talk about it. However, I guess Key Bank is giving everyone K signs to remind everyone to #VoteKluber. Did you vote? They need one more guy for each ASG squad, and Kluber is on their list of possibilities. You can go here and vote a bazillion times. You can also text "A2" to 89269 to vote for the Klubot. And on Thursday, between 10 AM and 4 PM, you can Tweet the hell out of #VoteKluber for a final push!

The Rockies are asking that since you are there and since it's easy, would you please #VoteMorneau too? They came up with the clever #ClevelandRox hashtag, which I do like. I've been voting for Morneau by default (I'm not text voting, just voting online) so the Rockies sent me a coupon good for 33% off tickets to some upcoming Rockies/Twins game in Minnesota. Cool?

If you #VoteKluber at least 28 times on the MLB site, you get entered into some contest and can meet Klubes so that's cool. Right?

Speaking of Twitter, in my blog absence I've been doing a lot more tweeting and following people on Twitter. I finally got myself a good list of people I like to follow during games - a fun group! And a lot more followers, since the Indians have re-tweeted me a few times. If you like my blog and do the Twitter, come follow me (@positivetribe) and check out all the people I follow during games. I do some photos and say some fun stuff. Always positive! (There's a NegativeTribe out there now....mhmm)

So yeah, tomorrow, 7:05 again at Progressive Field. It'll be game 3 of 4 against those dudes. It'll be Tomlin and his hair against a newcomer named McCarthy. RHP! Let's hope for lots of runs!

No Radio Chatter tonight. Give me a break! Check out this awesome Facebook post, though:

Post by Tom Hamilton has the Best Home Run call in all of Baseball.