Red Sox/Rays Fight: That Didn’t Take Long
June 5, 2008Your Jason Michaels Update
June 6, 2008Rangers 9, Indians 4 (box)
Over the last few weeks, the issues with C.C. Sabathia haven’t even been with Sabathia himself; it has been the lack of run support that has been handed his way. Last night, the Tribe made up for it by putting up four runs in the first inning. While that would be all the team would score for the entire game, Sabathia gave up five runs (four earned) in six innings of work.
Rafael Betancourt came in to pitch the seventh, and proceeded to widen the gap even further by allowing three earned runs in only two-thirds of an inning. Ugh.
To borrow a phrase from Steve Buffum, Sabathia’s typical “inning of crap” came in the second inning of this one, where three of the runs scored after former Indian Milton Bradley was hit by a pitch. He didn’t pull a “Coco,” but the Rangers made up for it with the bats.
“I don’t think I pitched that well,” Sabathia said. “I can’t be frustrated by tonight’s game. It’s just frustrating that we’re not winning, more than anything. That’s all I care about, and we’re not doing that.”
While we hit Kevin Millwood pretty well in the first inning, the rest of the game was awful from a hitting perspective – only amassing four hits off of the starter for the rest of the game. The Rangers bullpen tossed three innings of no-hit ball, and we come away with the “L.” That’s all there is to it.
Four games under .500, we now head to Detroit for a three-game stint. Paul Byrd and Justin Verlander square off tonight. Let’s hope that it’s the same Verlander (2-8) that has pitched all season and not the one that was Cy Young-like from certain times of last season. We need all of the help we can get.
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3 Comments
At least Milton Bradley finally got hit with a pitch after all the showboating he’s done this series.
Am I the only one who finds himself yelling at Wedge to take one of our pitchers out, only to find him leaving them in and giving up runs? There seems to be a tendency to insist on leaving pitchers in to finish innings. In some cases, I can understand (Bauer’s 9th inning in the previous game – big lead, let the new call-up leave with the satisfaction that he finished the inning without blowing the game). In most cases, I can’t (C.C.’s 6th inning yesterday, in which he made it to 119 pitches – quite a lot for 6 innings of work – and gave them the lead). Granted, a one-run deficit through six innings is not insurmountable, and Betancourt was of no help to our cause, but I still feel that there is a recurrent problem with keeping our guys in too long when all the signs are there that they should be lifted.
c.c. gave up the lead, true, but it was on a pathetic infield hit… i don’t blame wedge for that one
(haha, nice plug for the facebook page scott.. way to throw a wrench in any hope i had for studying today)