Money Can’t Buy Me Runs

Can someone please explain to me how the Cleveland Indians can go from one of the best run-scoring offenses in baseball to putting up two runs in two days against the Kansas City Royals?  This brings our run total to five in the last 32 innings.

Say what you want about C.C. Sabathia’s 10-hit, less-than-dominating performance last night.  Sure, four earned runs isn’t great.  The loss, I can live with.  In fact, it brought down his ERA even more, currently sitting at 7.51.  However, there’s a good chance that Sabathia doesn’t go out there in the seventh inning – where all four runs were scored – had he had some run-support that could be considered ample enough for our bullpen to handle.

Don’t forget, given the one-run lead against Seattle in the ninth, we ended up having to win the soccer-esque game in the 11th.  If you don’t think the bullpen woes are taken into account these days as well, I have a Joe Borowski rookie card I’d like to trade you.

But today brought yet another tough loss for youngster Aaron Laffey.  Unlike the game against the Yankees, Laffey is credited with the loss despite allowing ZERO earned runs though his seven innings.   Zero.   A four-hitter usually garners a win, but it’s a tough call when your team scores three runs or less in 16 of 31 games on the season.

The only run to cross the plate did so on a Casey Blake error – coinicidently the same player to have an error in the blown save against the Mariners.  Also a coincidence is that the other run scored against Rafael Betancourt, the pitcher on record during said blown save.  But what did the bats do?

They tallied four hits.  Total.  Two of which came from Ryan Garko, who has been recently moved to the seventh spot in the lineup.  Travis Hafner, our new sixth hitter went 0-for-3 to take his average down to .209.  Hafner went 0-for-3 last night as well, striking out twice to take his K total to 30 in 28 games played.

Victor Martinez went 1-for-4 today, but his .347 average means next to nothing when surrounded by struggling bats.  Asdrubal Cabrera, Casey Blake, Hafner and Johnny Peralta all have batting averages less than .225.  And these are all everyday players.

We can continue to plead for runs all we want, but it’s obvious that Eric Wedge can no longer just sit back and hope for things to come about.  Moving Hafner and Garko down the lineup is a start…I guess.  But is the answer a new hitting coach?  Recall back when Eddie Murray was relieved of his duties a few years back during a similar drought.  The bats came alive within days.  As much as we’d like to point the finger at our struggling slugger, the water runs a lot deeper than #48.

Something that we’re all going to want to watch this week is the series between the Yankees and the Tigers.  While we can hope that they just beat up on each other, possibly splitting the series for record purposes, these two teams can put up a lot of runs.  Our pitching will only be able to take us so far if these bats do not come alive soon.  I just hope that we don’t look back at games like yesterday’s and today’s wishing we could get them back.  It’s not every day that you’ll get a  seven-inning, four-hit, five-strikeout game from your fifth starter, only to walk away with another loss.

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