Indians 5, Reds 3: Choo, Santana, and The Fury – All We Got

Rejoice! Your Cleveland Indians actually won a game this week! That’s right, the seven-game skid has ended thanks to Shin-Soo Choo and the pitching of Mitch Talbot on a strange Sunday afternoon that saw the Indians sit through their second 90-plus minute rain delay of the week.

For the most part, it was an ugly weekend against our in-state brethren Cincinnati Reds, who took the “Ohio Cup” by winning two of three to close out the season series with the Tribe. As ugly as some of the play may have been over the weekend, it was all sunny skies Sunday morning for me.

Why you ask? Because after Saturday night’s 6-4 loss, the Indians finally ended the Russell Branyan 3.0 experience by trading him to the Seattle Mariners for two minor leaguers. More on that in a little.

Sunday afternoon’s win was a long time coming and badly needed for this young team that seems to be getting sloppier and sloppier each week. They were led by arguably their three best players this season – Choo, Talbot, and the incomparable Carlos Santana.

Choo hit two two-run, titanic blasts off of his personal punching bag Bronson Arroyo.  Choo now leads the Tribe with 12 home runs after a week in which he hit four jacks. There isn’t any established player on this team that is even in Choo’s ballpark in terms of talent. It’s a real shame he toils in such anonymity nationally because he plays for such a bad team. The guy is a real talent.

Speaking of real talents, Carlos Santana anyone? Seriously, Tribe fans, we may be sitting on the best young player in baseball – I’m not overstating this. As our own Jon Steiner likes to point out, Santana now has more home runs that the great Joe Mauer in 200 less plate appearances. On Sunday, he showed off his power stroke from the right-side with a moon shot off of lefty Daniel Herrera, his fourth since his call up three weeks ago. Can anyone remember a rookie coming up with all of this hype, immediately hitting third, and producing the way Santana does? Albert Pujols, that’s about it. Its good company to be in.

Choo and Santana’s homers drove in all five runs and Talbot did the rest. Unleashing “The Fury” on the Reds, Mitch again went seven strong innings, allowing just one earned run.

“I was locating my fastball, and my cutter was also pretty good,” Talbot said. “My cutter was really good. I used that as an equalizer. They were really off-balance. I got away with things because of that pitch.”

A Joey Votto two-run shot off of Chris Perez in the eighth made the Tribe sweat a little (as Rick Manning said on the telecast “can’t we ever have an easy game?”), but Kerry Wood came in and slammed the door shut.

Yes, you read that correctly. Wood came in to preserve a 5-3 lead in the ninth and struck out the side for his sixth save of the year. It was badly needed W as the team ended a horrific road trip through Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati 2-7. The Red, White, and Blue now come home for a four game stand with the Toronto Blue Jays.

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Only the Mariners, the team that Mark Shapiro rooked by turning the “Benuardo” first base platoon (major kudos to Indians.com beat write Anthony Castrovince for coining that genius phrase that I just swiped) into Shin-Soo Choo and Asdrubal Cabrera, would take Branyan off of our hands. Truth be told, they loved him last year when he hit 31 homers and tried several options this year to replace him at first with no success (including ex-Indian Ryan Garko). Anyone who watched Branyan’s defense over the last two weeks knew that Russ’s time here had to be up.

I’ve been beating the “get rid of Russ” drum for months. I still don’t understand why the Indians brought him in to begin with. Sure, they needed power, but who didn’t see a last place season coming? This is the year to develop the youngsters and see what you have for the future. Instead, Shappy gave Russ $2 million and Manny Acta gave him the first base job while the future of the position (Matt LaPorta) was shuffled between left field, first base, and the bench. Now we can finally get a look at LaPorta every day uninterrupted to find out if what we saw in the minors can translate to the bigs. His stint earlier this year was unimpressive, but he was clearly pressing and not fully recovered from his offseason toe and hip surgeries.

Up next for Shapiro and Chris Antonetti should be finding a taker for Austin Kearns so Michael Brantley can be brought back to play left field every day – the sooner the better.

I like Kearns. He has done a nice job here and can play, but it’s pointless to keep him here when he clearly is not in the team’s plans for 2011. Many people are calling for Jhonny Peralta to follow these two out the door, but the team really has nothing ready at third base as future hot-cornerman Lonnie Chisenhaul is still in AA. Not to mention, who is going to want to trade for a below average defensive third baseman with little power or plate discipline? It’s amazing to me that Jhon has fallen so far considering how good he looked as a kid shortstop in 2005. Remember, the Indians were the hottest team in baseball until the last week of the season when they finished 2-5 to miss the playoffs by one game. Peralta was hitting third and spraying the ball all over the field. Nobody complained that the Indians let Omar Vizquel during that 2005 run. But that was five long years ago, and Jhon’s game hasn’t been the same since.

Kerry Wood and Jake Westbrook could easily be next as well.

The house cleaning has begun, not a moment too soon.

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(AP Photo/Al Behrman)