Not Blaming Byrd

Sure, Paul Byrd served up a few long balls.  Sure, Byrd allowed eight hits in six and one-third innings.  Sure, Byrd struck out nary a batter in yesterday’s 6-3 loss.  How can’t it be his fault that the Tribe didn’t pull a sweep of the Bronx Bloated Wallets?

Look no further than the top of the Cleveland batting order.  A three-run fourth inning is a lot easier to overcome when your one-through-four hitters do not combine to go 1-for-16 in the game, with five strikeouts.  And the strikeouts doesn’t seem like that much until you realize that they were the only Indians to strike out on the day. 

In fact, the three strikeouts via Mike Mussina actually tied Moose’s high for strikeouts in a game. 

Byrd is a pitcher that relies on locating his pitches.  He’s not overpowering, and gives up his fair share of hits.  But a lot of his effectiveness depends on the defense behind him and his ability to pitch out of jams.  He had more ground outs (10) than flyouts (nine), through 52 of his 81 pitches for strikes, and faced the minimum amount of hitters through his first three innings.  It just so happens that his support was only able to tally runs in one inning – the fifth. 

The hitting woes continue as the top of the order has a .264 batting average (Sizemore) leading the pack.  Not having Victor Martinez (sore neck) up there has made matters that much worse, as a switch-hitting, .300+ average would look a lot nicer in the four-hole than, say, Jhonny Peralta’s .221…

Good news?  I guess we can go with the fact that that Ben Francisco collected yet another hit, leading to one of our runs.  He now has a four-game hitting streak and has only not reached base once – and that was in a pinch-hitting attempt on the 22nd of April. 

Sigh.

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