Jon Barry: Cavs think Kyrie Irving is done for the series
June 5, 2015Kyrie Irving out three to four months with fractured knee cap
June 5, 2015The Indians are back in Cleveland after an excellent road trip during which they won three of four against the Seattle Mariners and two of three against the Kansas City Royals. The series win against the Royals was the first home series loss for the Royals this season. The Indians have impressively won four of their last five series, two of them by taking three out of four, and one, against the Cincinnati Reds, was a three-game sweep.
The Tribe, by winning 14 of their last 20 games, is now one game under .500 at 26-27; six games behind the (shall we say it again?) very surprising Minnesota Twins.
The two clubs in the AL Central that appeared to be in a two-team race for the division, the Royals and Detroit Tigers, have been in a funk. The Royals are 3-7 in their last ten and the Tigers are 2-8. Minnesota is still hot at 7-3 over their last ten, and Cleveland, as mentioned, has been heating up for three weeks.
Overall in the American League, no team seems totally hapless or hopeless. Even the team with the worst record currently in the AL, the 23-33 Oakland Athletics, are 7-3 in their last ten. Perhaps competitive balance in professional sports is not the sole property of the National Football League1 .
In the AL East, the New York Yankees are in first place at 29-25, one game ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays, four and a half games ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles, and five and a half in front of the Boston Red Sox.
The Orioles, led by manager Buck Showalter, come to Cleveland for a Friday-Saturday-Sunday series. This series will be the final three games of a seven-game road trip for the Orioles after having lost three out of four to the still-surging Astros in Houston.
In the mid 1990s the Indians and Orioles had a meaningful rivalry as serious contenders, and they played some of the most intense fall baseball in memory against each other. At this point of the season, however, both teams are still struggling to overcome mediocrity. Baltimore hasn’t had any kind of a successful streak yet this season, but they’ve been good enough in recent years that better things were expected of them for the 2015 campaign. However, this may be the most befuddling season in memory for the prognosticators. There were some high-profile predictions that Boston would win the AL East followed closely by the Orioles. Plenty of reputable sources saw the Indians as the favorites in the Central, but you may have to resort to a trip Minneapolis to look up a relative of one of the Twins to find anyone who seriously thought they would be in first place in June. Then again, who besides Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would have predicted the Astros success in 2015?
So far, the Orioles don’t look like a serious contender. They’re 24-29 and have lost six of their last ten.
Pitching matchups:
Friday, Shaun Marcum (2-0, 5.49) vs. RHP Chris Tillman (2-7, 5.94)
Saturday, Danny Salazar (5-1, 3.79) vs. RHP Ubaldo Jimenez (3-3, 3.12)
Sunday, Carlos Carrasco (7-4, 3.92) vs. To Be Announced
Statistically, the Indians’ and Orioles’ pitching staffs seem to have a lot in common. The big question is what have they done for their teams lately? The two staffs have almost identical ERAs. The Indians are at 3.95, and the Orioles are at 3.97; ranking 10th and 11th in the AL. Orioles starters rank ninth in the AL with a 4.31 ERA. The Indians are 11th at 4.38. The Orioles relievers rank sixth with a 3.32 ERA. Indians relievers are fifth at 3.20.
But, while Indians pitching seems to be looking more impressive with each passing week, the Orioles pitchers are slumping. Chris Tillman, who was the Orioles’ opening day starter for Baltimore, is 0-6 with a 6.10 ERA in his last seven starts and 0-2 with a 4.91 ERA in his last three. He’ll be pitching Friday night, while the Indians will counter with Shaun Marcum. Marcum is part of the fifth starter tag-team that is clearly the weakest link in an otherwise increasingly impressive rotation.
Old friend Ubaldo Jimenez is a respectable 3-3, 3.12 for the season heading into the weekend, but, in his last three starts he is 0-0 with a 4.76 ERA. With Jimenez, once again it’s a question of which pitcher will show up wearing his uniform?
The four Orioles pitchers who have started the most games for them in 2015 are RHP Miguel Gonzalez (5-4, 3.54), LHP Wei-Yin Chen (1-4, 3.18), Jimenez, and Chris Tillman. But, Gonzalez and Chen just pitched against the Astros, so the Indians won’t see them this weekend. After that, it’s Bud Norris with six starts, Mike Wright with four starts, and rookie Tyler Wilson, who is back in the minors. The Orioles have announced that their Sunday starter will be either Norris or Wright.
Offensively, the Indians are out-performing the Orioles in just about every category except for triples, home runs and (here it comes again) hitting with runners with scoring position. The Orioles are ranked third in the AL with a .297 average with RISP, while the Indians are a dismal 13th at .232. In just about every other offensive category, the Indians are ranked in the top half and the Orioles are in the bottom half.
As a team, Baltimore is fifth in the AL with 431 strikeouts, while the Indians are 13th with 347, so the Orioles propensity for striking out gives Indians pitchers an opportunity this series to pad their league-leading strikeout numbers.
Buck Showalter is not shy about experimenting with his batting order, but, third baseman Manny Machado has the most starts in the leadoff position. He’s hitting only .264, but he is second on the team with eight home runs. DH Jimmy Paredes, in his fifth year in the Majors and playing for his third team, has a career average of .259. He doesn’t play much defense, but this year he’s hitting .305 and has the most starts in the two-hole. Orioles center-fielder, Adam Jones, leads his team with a .307 average. He also has seven home runs and 27 RBIs and has been hitting mostly third in the order. At the moment, he looks like the last guy the Indians want to provide with an opportunity to beat them in crunch time.
First baseman, Chris Davis, hit 53 HRs in 2013. Last year he hit 26 and, so far in 2015, he’s hit 12 but he strikes out a ton (73 times so far this year, which is third in the American League). He’s hitting only .219 to date, but leads the Orioles in HRs (12), RBIs (32) and walks (22). Davis generally hits cleanup or fifth.
The well-traveled outfielder, Delmon Young, now in his tenth year in the big leagues is having another solid season, hitting .299. Young has batted in every position in the order except seventh.
The big news this series for the Orioles is that three-time All-Star catcher Matt Wieters is making his first appearance of the season following Tommy John surgery in June 2014. Wieters is a switch-hitter who has had excellent power numbers in his six-year career, all with Baltimore.
There’s also a possibility that Oriole shortstop J.J. Hardy might return to active duty. He’s been out with a left oblique injury. Hardy is in his eleventh season. As an outstanding shortstop, he’s won three consecutive Gold Gloves (2012, 2013, 2014) and has put up some excellent power numbers in his career.
Once again, the Indians offer their fans a variety of three different starting times: 7:10 P.M. ET on Friday evening, 4:10 P.M. on Saturday afternoon and 1:10 P.M. on Sunday afternoon. You’d almost like to see a Sunday night game in Cleveland as a spectator’s backup for periodically escaping the high-tension wires of those NBA Finals.
Buck Showalter, now 59 years old, was a terrific hitter for Mississippi State and set a single season record in 1977, batting .459. He went by Nat Showalter back then. He spent seven years in the Yankees’ minor league system, but never made it to the major leagues. He was, however, a bright student of the game and, at the age of only 28, became a single-A minor league manager. He worked his way up in the organization and, eventually, became the manager of the Yankees (1992-95). He also managed the Arizona Diamondbacks (1998-2000) and Texas Rangers (2003-2006) and worked as an analyst for ESPN.
In the game on Thursday in Houston, Showalter was ejected in the second inning for arguing ball and strike calls with home plate umpire Brian Gorman after a strikeout by Astros’ ace Dallas Keuchel of Ryan Flaherty. Showalter said, “…we had a great point. They were obviously balls.”
Hey Buck, when did that become a great point in the grand old game?
- Editor’s Note: Or perhaps the NFL does not nearly have as much competitive balance as the NFL would like everyone to believe. [↩]
4 Comments
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Oh never mind. I know the Cavs are in the Finals but I can’t let a Tribe thread go unremarked upon by an actual human being. Hopefully, the Tribe can establish a home field advantage with this homestand. I just have a feeling we’ll tee of on Ubaldo in Game 2, notwithstanding the decent numbers so far in 2015. Also, the O’s lineup is a shadow of last year’s version with no Nelson Cruz.
An off day Monday should give the tribe some time to get the shuttle bus from Columbus to Cleveland going before the Mariners hit town. Will there be one passenger or two?
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