While We’re Waiting… Holmgren’s Influence, Buckeye Records, and Second-Year WRs
July 19, 2010Report: Joe Haden “May Be Too Slow”
July 19, 2010OK seriously, who saw this one coming? Coming out of the all star break, your Cleveland Indians were scheduled for a four-game set against the Detroit Tigers, who were one of three teams within one game of first place in the AL Central division. The Wahoo Warriors in the meantime, entered with the second worst record in the American League and actually fielded a lineup on Saturday night that ended with the names Crowe, Marte, Gimenez, and Hernandez.
And you know what, they won that game, as well as the other three to sweep the Tigers out of Progressive Field.
With four games in three days, there are may things to break down. But just how did the Indians pull this off?
A loaded bullpen. I’ve been saying it for weeks. In case you hadn’t noticed (and judging by the number of comments, you haven’t ha ha), the Indians finally have a bullpen constructed with multiple options to get the job done. Over the weekend series with the Tigers, the Tribe bullpen worked 13.1 scoreless innings.
No matter who Manny Acta went to, the results were positive. Don’t believe me? Consider the two shutout innings from Hector Ambriz to close out yesterday’s 7-2 win. Acta had no choice but to use the much-maligned Ambriz with the bullpen so taxed.
On Friday night, Tony Sipp was the star, striking out Brennan Boesch with the tying runs on base in the sixth and the Tribe holding a two run lead. Sipp, Frank Herrmann, and Rafael Perez closed out the 8-2 win for Jake Westbrook.
On Saturday afternoon, Joe Smith took his turn as hero. Nursing a 4-3 lead, Smitty relieved Fausto Carmona after Johnny Damon led off with a double. He got Magglio Ordonez on a grounder to third, which did not advance Damon and then he reared back and K’d Miguel Cabrera. With two down, Acta called on Perez Left, who got Boecsh to ground out to end the threat.
“Smitty was huge,” Acta said. “You couldn’t ask for a better outing.”
Chris Perez, who is temporarily back in the closer’s role with Kerry Wood on the DL with a blister issue, got the final three outs for his eighth save.
In the nightcap, the pen needed to go overtime with no margin for error. They responded with six scoreless innings in the Tribe’s 2-1 11-inning triumph. Newly recalled Jensen Lewis was needed for the sixth with Mitch Talbot throwing 105 pitches in five innings. Jenny went two perfect innings, striking out two and really picking up his team when they needed him. Herrmann worked the seventh, lowering his ERA to 2.50. Then after the rains came, Chris Perez pitched a scoreless ninth. Smith and Chris Perez held down the 10th and 11th before Austin Kearns’s walkoff single gave them the victory.
Ambriz’s two scoreless frames finished off a perfect weekend for the Wahoo relievers. Talk about an impressive weekend. 13 and a third scoreless innings pitched against a powerful offense.
“Can’t say enough about our bullpen,” Acta said. “Just fantastic.”
Good starting pitching. I’m not going to say “great” starting pitching, but the four starters all did their part in the sweep. Friday night Jake Westbrook did his usual, battling into the sixth and giving his team a chance to win. You wouldn’t have thought that would have been the case after he struggled through the first inning. In his 5.2 innings, Jake allowed two runs on five hits, striking out five and walking one.
“I would have liked to go longer, but making 32 pitches in the first inning makes that tough,” Westbrook said. Jake has said all the right things about wanting to stay in Cleveland, but you have to believe he is on a constant audition for contenders.
Carmona, the Indians lone all star, struggled during his seven innings on a hot Saturday afternoon. Despite walking six, he came away as the winning pitcher. “I tried too much and was overthrowing,” Carmona said after the game. “The defense really helped me win.” He wasn’t kidding. Third baseman Andy Marte, filling in for the ill Jhonny Peralta, made two spectacular plays that may have saved the game. On the day, he started three double plays.
Talbot continues to defy the odds. During his start Saturday night, The Fury was not on his game, yet escaped jam after jam during his five innings. He loaded the bases with nobody out in the first and got out of it unscathed. He allowed three hits in the second, but only gave up one run. He worked his way through a one out double in the fourth. Pretty amazing considering Talbot just did not have it on this night.
A frustrated Jim Leyland summed it up best after the game. “We didn’t execute. We let them off the hook in the first inning. We didn’t do enough to win the game. We didn’t execute. We stunk the joint up, plain and simple.”
Then on Sunday, out of nowhere, the Tigers were floored by the most unlikely of all sources; Jeanmar Gomez.
The 22-year old rookie right-hander made the absolute most of his one-day call up by completely dominating the Tigers. It was real hot, by Gomez stayed cool by pounding the strike zone and getting ahead of this hitters. With the bullpen completely gassed from the long weekend, the kid from Venezuela came strong. He threw just 93 pitches in seven innings, allowing two unearned runs (via an Marte error) on five hits and one walk. Quite the debut for someone who wasn’t even supposed to be here.
“We couldn’t have scripted it any better,” said Acta. “This kid was lights out basically for his first time in the big leagues.”
As for why Gomez got the call, we can thanks David Huff’s Twitter feed for that. On Friday night, Huff made the mistake of tweeting that he would be making the start on Sunday. That clearly did not go over well with Acta, who came back firing to the press that the decision hadn’t been made. A day later, word leaked that Gomez was getting the call, not Huff.
It was the right move. We’ve seen plenty of Huff up here and why not give Gomez a one time shot. Ironically, on Sunday in Columbus Huff pitched seven scoreless innings of two-hit ball.
Other highlights this weekend:
- Jhonny Peralta’s inside the park home run. Not many guys are slower than our buddy Jhon, but his deep fly ball in the first was misplayed just enough by center fielder Ryan Raburn and took the right bounce for Peralta to get his first inside-the-parker of his career. “We told Jhonny he sweated that fever out of him with all the running he did,” Acta said.
- Marte’s third base glove work. With Peralta sick with a high fever, Marte started the first three games of the series. His defense Saturday afternoon as we said earlier saved the game for Carmona. With two on and nobody out in the third and the Indians trailing 3-0, Marte started a spectacular double play. “Andy saved the game for us with that double play,” Acta said. “It could have been 5-0 with [Justin] Verlander on the mound, which is not a good situation.”
- Austin Kearns walkoff winner. Lost in the shuffle of the great relief pitching, was the two-out 11th inning rally by the Tribe that was capped by Kearns’s single. With two out, Jayson Nix blooped a single off of Ronnie Weinhardt. Carlos Santana worked another walk before Kearns’s big hit. Santana now has 33 walks in 30 games, amazing for a rookie.
Riding a four-game winning streak after the break for the first time since 1995, the Wahoos head to play spoiler in another AL Central city, Minneapolis. Aaron Laffey (1-3, 5.12 ERA) looks to keep the momentum going against the Twins right hander and Tribe killer Scott Baker (7-8, 4.87 ERA).
photo via PD/John Kuntz
13 Comments
Break out the brooms.. We’re Back. Illitch– keep spending that money!
I think this series was both strange and great. It’ll be nice to see whether these guys can keep it going against other teams; hopefully it’s not just that they have the Tigers’ number.
Great weekend. The funny thing about this division is if they can go on a 8-10 game win streak, you can make up 5 games in a heartbeat…who knows, maybe they put together a month of hot baseball and only be 4-5 games out heading into september?!
Wow, I am way to optimisstic for a Monday!
Thats, uh… impressive? Five innings, 105 pitches, and only 1 run.
Is this going to be another one of those seasons where we only play well when we are long out of contention? Ugh
Fun series to watch. I picked the Saturday night game to take my old man to, naturally it had the least excitement. Now, I’ve been to probably a dozen Tribe games over the past two seasons but always been in the bleachers with a bunch of friends. I figured some seats in the shade along the 3rd base line would be nice. I was pretty surprised to find that said seats have a face value of $75/ticket.
Yes, I bought them. I suppose I’m out of touch with ticket prices but those prices to see the aforementioned Crowe, Marte, Gimenez, and Hernandez seem steep. Although Marte did have a great game defensively and Hafner was on the bench so it was worth it.
“and Hafner was on the bench so it was worth it.”
lol
“On Friday night, Tony Sipp was the star, striking out Brennan Boesch with the tying runs on base in the sixth and the Tribe holding a two run lead. Sipp, Frank Herrmann, and Rafael Perez closed out the 8-2 win for Jake Westbrook.”
I was at that game. In the sixth with a runner on third and 2 outs, Cabrera was up. Acta brought in Joe Smith who walked Cabrera and was then removed for Sipp. In this case, why not just have Jake walk Cabrera before bringing in Sipp to face the lefty?
At least that’s what i thought at the time. All worked out though.
fun weekend of baseball. haven’t watched yesterday’s game yet, but the first 3 were great.
bullpen pitching, defense and timely hitting? who are these guys?
I would like to thank David Huff for his Twitter outburst; it allowed me the chance to see him pitch yesterday in Norfolk and see the Clippers win since they let me down the previous two nights. Losing 12-9 and then 4-0 sucked.
Thanks David! +1 to you sir!
The rebuilding tribe sweeps the big-time payrolled Tigers, in Cleveland, knocking them out of first place… we have now entered the twilight zone.
“Not many guys are slower than our buddy Jhon, but his deep fly ball in the first was misplayed just enough by center fielder Ryan Raburn and took the right bounce for Peralta to get his first inside-the-parker of his career.”
Are we going to call a faulty bullpen gate a misplay for Raburn? Peralta is so slow that he has to have random acts of stadium failure to get an inside the parker
@11: it’s misplayed because he missed the ball in the air,he could have played the ball off the wall.
@7: Joe Smith was brought in to strike out Cabrera. After he got behind in the count, it became more prudent to simply not throw him any good pitches. Vet doesn’t fish. Result: walk. Get the lefty platoon pitcher.
[…] he didn’t make a start in Columbus this week, he’s not really listed above. But, considering how good he looked for the big club on Sunday, he deserves a quick word. He threw 7.0 innings on Sunday, allowing just two runs—neither of them […]