Indians hitters make history with back-to-back one hit games

It wasn’t Kluber’s fault.

Corey Kluber entered the game with a streak of 10 straight scoreless innings. He was superb again, allowing just one run on six hits in six and two-thirds innings. He walked one and struck out five.

Kluber ran into a jam in the fourth. With one out, Adrian Gonzalez beat the infield shift with a grounder down the third base line. Chisenhall made a nice play to get to the ball keeping Gonzalez to a single. After a Matt Kemp double, Kluber struck out Andre Ethier and induced a harmless fly ball to Bourn in center. He escaped a man on second and third with one out situation.

Leading off the bottom of the seventh inning, Andre Ethier hit a ball to deep left center that Michael Brantley was able to get to at the wall, but couldn’t come up with the catch. He had to flip the ball to Michael Bourn after falling down hitting the wall. Ethier was able to get all the way around to third on the play. Cabrera looked Ethier back to third and threw out Juan Uribe on a grounder up the middle. Kluber then froze Ellis on a 3-2 breaking ball right on the outside edge of the plate. After an intentional walk to Hanley Ramirez, Clint Robinson pinch-hit for Haren and singled up the middle (for his first ML hit). It snapped Kluber’s string of scoreless innings at 16. It came on a 3-2 count to boot. Kluber was a strike away from pitching around a lead-off triple and keeping the game scoreless. Instead, the Dodgers scraped out a run and took an insurmountable 1-0 lead.

One hit.

The only Indians hit was one that they had to go to replay to get. Michael Bourn grounded a ball up the middle that he just barely beat out. He was ruled out initially, but following a Tribe challenge the call was overturned. Jason Kipnis struck out looking three straight times. Broken bat grounders were the norm for the rest of the line-up.

Haren wasn’t overpowering or particularly nasty, he just mixed his pitches well and was able to locate the corners and take advantage of a somewhat generous strike zone. Brian Wilson and Kenley Jansen came in and picked up where Haren left off.

The Tribe made history by being one hit in back-to-back games. They had never done that before. They became just the third American League team in 100 years to accomplish the feat.

Just amazing.

The loss dropped the Indians four games under .500 and 7.5 games behind the first place Tigers, who came from behind with a walk-off grand slam to beat the Oakland A’s.