The Good Kind of Chaos
May 27, 2015Why wasn’t Dwight Howard suspended for shot to Bogut?
May 27, 2015Going into Tuesday night’s game against the Texas Rangers, it had been mentioned but not truly quantified that the Cleveland Indians offense has been much improved during the month of May. Much of the offensive improvement is rightfully attributed to the outstanding month of Jason Kipnis, but the overall team statistics have risen more than can be solely attributed to one player during this time. The Indians have struck out less, walked more, hit for more power, had better fortune on balls in play1 , and even stolen more bases in May compared to their April output. In fact, the Indians have averaged more than a run more per game in May. Unfortunately, that improved offense fell short on Tuesday as the Indians lost to the Texas Rangers 4-3.
Key Factors in the Game
Early Lead:
The Indians started this game off well, as they were rocketing shots off of Ranger starter Wandy Rodriguez in the first inning. Jason Kipnis began the game with a high fly ball that just kept drifting until it found the seats beyond right center field. Carlos Santana hit a hard shot that Josh Hamilton almost missed as he had on the Jason Kipnis line drive on Monday. And, Ryan Raburn added a solo home run that stayed inside the right field foul pole.
The Indians offense disappeared in the next two innings, but Ryan Raburn may have entered another hot streak as he drilled the ball deep for a double in the fourth inning. Nick Swisher and Yan Gomes were swinging away after him, but both batters ended up with at least getting sacrifice hits down and Raburn scored to increase the lead to three.
He is Prince Fielder, you are not :
Other than Prince Fielder plate appearances, Danny Salazar had been controlling the game. He struck out two in the first inning, two in the second inning, and another in each of the third and fourth. He did walk two in the first four innings, but, other than Prince, Elvis Andrus was the only Ranger to manage a hit against him.
Then, there was Fielder. In a game in which Salazar looked to be in complete control early, Prince doubled in the first and singled in the third. When Fielder came up in the fifth, Salazar was struggling with control and messing with his fingers between pitches. The official team diagnosis was that he suffered from a cut fingernail. At that point, he had already walked Leonys Martin and hit Shin-Soo Choo with a pitch. So, it was not a surprise when Fielder hit his fifth home run in the past five games to tie the game at three.
Of course, those runs meant that when Mitch Moreland sent one off the upper deck down the right field line for a solo home run in the seventh inning off Nick Hagadone, the Rangers had the lead they needed.
Blown Opportunities:
The Indians would end up going 0-for-7 on the night with runners in scoring position, which left nine baserunners on base.
In the fifth inning, the Indians had the bases loaded with only one out. Michael Brantley struck out, and Ryan Raburn hit an infield fly ball.
Nick Swisher started off the sixth inning with a hit and hustled for one of the slowest doubles that you will see in MLB (Lonnie Chisenhall immediately came into the game to run for him). Yan Gomes then followed it up with a walk. None of it mattered as Brandon Moss struck out, Mike Aviles hit a nice line drive to right field that was caught, and Jose Ramirez ended the inning by grounding out to Mitch Moreland at first base.
The Indians seemed resigned to go quietly in the ninth inning as Jason Kipnis hit a soft grounder to Elvis Andrus with two outs. Andrus, however, somehow never came up with the ball and Kipnis was safe. The Rangers then doubled down with their gift-giving when an inside pitch to Santana from Shawn Tolleson kept coming inside and clipped him on the wrist. That left the outcome of the game up to Michael Brantley. One simple hit would likely tie the game. A hit to a gap could win it. Instead, Brantley tapped one back to Tolleson, who did not follow the example set by Marc Rzepczynski and Zach McAllister the night before and made the simple throw to first base for the final out.
Key Moment Scorecard:
Texas Rangers: 2
Cleveland Indians: 1
Old Friends; Help or Haunt
Shin-Soo Choo: He did manage to get on base by getting hit by a Salazar fastball, but he did not impact this game in any other way. HELP
The Nine
Jason Kipnis: He led the game off strong and ended up reaching base three times (HR, walk, error). Just another day at the ballpark for Jason Kipnis.
Carlos Santana: He had a better day than his numbers indicate, as it took good defensive plays by Josh Hamilton and Elvis Andrus to barely get him out on each of his first two plate appearances.
More importantly, the X-rays came back negative on his wrist, meaning that he did not suffer a fracture. He still could potentially miss time if the effects bother him.
Michael Brantley: He had two opportunities in this game to be the hero. Instead, he continued his weeklong mini-slump, and is now hitting .151/.237/.242 over the past eight games.
Ryan Raburn: Raburn has had a tough month of May, but hopefully Tuesday was a sign that he is entering one of his patented hot streaks.
Nick Swisher: The hope is that he did not actually injure himself on that slow double that ended his night.
Yan Gomes: It was the first game in which he showed his patient approach at the plate. The Indians need Gomes to be the Silver Slugger hitter that he can be.
Brandon Moss: He now has 48 strikeouts and 16 walks on the season as he added another three strikeouts on Tuesday.
Mike Aviles: It was noticeable that many of the Indians players and coaches had shaved heads as they removed their hats throughout the evening. Kipnis explains in case there was any question to what was going on with it: “It’s a team thing. It started with Mike’s daughter because of what she’s going through. Unfortunately, she’s going to be losing her hair soon from chemotherapy and we all wanted to join in.”
Jose Ramirez: A non-descript day for Ramirez, as the Indians would be better served than to go 0-for-10 with two walks from their seven-through-nine hitters in the lineup.
The Arms
Danny Salazar: Prince Fielder at-bats notwithstanding, Salazar had a good night until his fingers started bothering him. Once he had issues, however, he had trouble locating his pitches in the fifth and sixth innings and was fortunate to not give up the lead. Hopefully, he is okay for his next start.
Nick Hagadone: He got Salazar out of his jam in the sixth inning by inducing a nice harmless popup from Martin. And, he managed to run through the best Rangers hitters 1-2-3 in the seventh inning. But, Terry Francona left him in too long as Josh Hamilton and Mitch Moreland both hit hard shots off of him in the eighth inning (Hamilton hit his right at Carlos Santana, thankfully).
Cody Allen: Apparently, Francona wanted Allen to get some work in as he sent him in a game where the Indians were losing by one run. Not a bad move considering that the team needed to keep it close and would have to win in walk-off fashion at that point.
Marc Rzepczynski: Scrabble pitched a clean ninth and did not have to field any hits.
- Notably, the increase in BABIP was mostly on fortunate as the team’s hard hit percentage stayed stable, only rising to 28.6 percent in May after an impressive 28.5 percent in April [↩]
8 Comments
It was painful to see Michael come up goose-eggs in two major scoring opportunities. His first time though I felt strikes 1 & 2 were questionable.
Haggardone strikes again! Why use him?
On a related but separate note: Indians staff missed a huge opportunity. The bottom of the 9th had just begun when everyone was letting out of the Q, and hundreds of people immediately walked toward the left field porch because they’d seen that it was 4-3, bottom 9, and Kipnis on base. The Indians staff should have let everyone in to the porch for those last couple batters – can you imagine if a couple thousand pumped up people had suddenly walked in with a roar in the bottom of the 9th? It would have reflected really well, regardless of outcome, and instead it was just a missed opportunity.
On another separate note, how does a 7pm game end after an 8:30pm conference championship game with long TV timeouts and including a trophy presentation? Baseball really needs to fix itself.
Before last night, Hagadone had given up 1 ER in his last six appearances (5IP) including a clean 1 1/3 IP last night against these same Rangers (w/ 2 SO).
You use to be able to go back and watch individual at bats on MLB’s game day with its pitch tracker. Can’t figure out how to do it any more.
i still don’t like him!
They also used to have the condensed game cover much more of the overall game, now it’s just a smattering of the game. It’s still the best sports-app, but it has taken a definitive step backward this season.
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