While We’re Waiting… Rebuilding Cleveland.
May 17, 2011Re-Sign or Release: Alonzo Gee
May 17, 2011Those two days without baseball in Cleveland seemed like a month. With the weather so miserable here that I didn’t want to go outside, the one thing that can always bring a smile to my face is first place Tribe baseball.
So what the our Wahoo Warriors do for us after the mini-hiatus? They put up a whopping 19 runs on 20 hits in Kansas City, disgracing poor Vin Mazzaro in the process. To put this offensive explosion into context, Mazzaro, tonight’s originally scheduled starter, gave the worst relief performance in the history of modern day baseball.
The Indians tagged Mazzaro for 14 runs on 11 hits, walking two in two and a third innings. I hate to go all Matt Underwood on you, but Vin made 77 pitches. Just brutal. Statistics like this have been kept since 1919, and nobody has been worse than Mazzaro. Â
The one thing you can say about him – he is a stand-up guy. How many players would have a night like that and stand in front of his locker and face the media right after.
“I came into a tough situation and I was a little unprepared. But you’ve got to go out there and attack the zone and try to eat up innings and save the bullpen,” Mazzaro said.
The situation came about because KC starter Kyle Davies left after just four batters due to injury. Royals manager Ned Yost turned to Nathan Adcock for a couple of innings to allow Mazzaro time to get warm. The Tribe did their best to thwart that plan. They got three off of Adcock on an Orlando Cabrera two-out bloop single in the first and a Michael Brantley RBI single in the second. At that point, nobody knew they were just getting started.
Yost yanked Adcock after he walked Carlos Santana to lead off the first. That is when he turned to Mazzaro. The right-hander got through the third unscathed, but little did he know what was around the bend.
The fourth inning began with a Matt LaPorta single to right. Asdrubal Cabrera singled him in to stretch the Tribe lead to 4-0. After Shin-Soo Choo flied out to the track in Center for the second out, advancing Brantley to third, the hope was that the Indians could come up with some two-out lightning to bring Brantley and AC in.
They did more than enough.
Santana walked to load the bases. Travis Hafner followed by hitting a liner to left-center. Melky Cabrera took a bad route to the ball and Pronk ended up with a bases clearing double. OC singled to right scoring Hafner. Travis Buck, back in left field after his recall from Columbus, reached on an infield single. LaPorta, batting for the second time in the inning, doubled in Orlando and Buck. Jack Hannahan singled, moving LaPorta to third. Brantley then capped off the scoring with a three-run bomb to right.
For the second time this season, the Tribe scored 10 runs in an inning. This time, nine of the runs came with two men out.
“You see a couple of guys in front of you get a hit and you want to be right there, you want to be able to drive them in,” LaPorta said. “And I think it’s the same way, guys behind you want to drive you in.”
But they weren’t done.
Just one inning after scoring 10 runs and sending 13 men to the plate, the Indians scored four more while sending eight to face Mazzaro. They loaded the bases with one out and a 13-1 lead. Buck singled home the first run, finally chasing Mazzaro. In came Jeremy Jefress for more of the same. LaPorta, who is swinging an extremely hot stick, doubled in two more for his third hit in two innings. Hannahan’s RBI groundout brought the Tribe lead to 17-1.
The final two runs came on a Shelley Duncan double in the sixth.
Now for the final rundown:
- Of the Indians 19 runs, 11 came with two out.
- The Indians were a whopping 13-26 with runners in scoring position.
- Every Indians starter had at least one hit, and all but Carlos Santana drove in at least one run. Yet, Santana reached base four times on a single and three walks.
- It was a big night for the CC trade: Matt LaPorta reached base a career high five times and drove in four runs. Michael Brantley reached base four times and drove in four runs as well.
The 19 runs were obviously more than enough for starter Josh Tomlin, who won his fifth game of the season. He went six innings, allowing just one run on five hits. Manager Manny Acta decided to keep his work to a minimum since the previous two days, he had gotten himself warm and ready to pitch. During Saturday’s long delay, he was going to replace Alex White after White pitched one inning. The game never resumed. Tomlin was then Sunday’s scheduled starter and even made it out to the mound before the tarp was pulled on for the second time.
“I’m proud of Tomlin,” said Acta. “I can’t say enough about this guy. It’s been three days in a row where he had to prepare himself mentally to pitch, including Sunday when he warmed up. Nothing seems to bother him.”
Justin Germano, Chad Durbin, and Vinnie Pestano each pitched a scoreless inning to end this thrashing at Kauffman Stadium.
Lets hope the Indians didn’t blow all of their offense on Mazzaro and company last night. They’ve got another game to play tonight in KC. Righty Shawn O’Sullivan (2-2, 3.79 ERA) is going to have to take one for the team and go as long as possible to save a tired Royals bullpen. The Tribe has a fresh bullpen and will send Carlos Carrasco (1-2, 5.29 ERA) to the face him.
(AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)
26 Comments
Pretty mad at myself for going to bed after the sixth inning. Turns out I had a missed call from Manny Acta this morning. According to the voicemail he left for me, I was in line to get an AB or two in the late innings. Sorry, skip: I’ll be sure to stay up for all nine innings from now on.
unless it’s against Boston or NY, mixed feelings about these blowouts. Cheap thrill of a night of binging, and the next night you almost always lose.
“Every Indians starter had at least one hit, and all but Carlos Santana drove in at least one run.”
Choo did not drive in a run either. How many teams can score 19 runs without their 3 and 4 hitters driving in a run? 🙂
@harv21 Yankess or Boston? Who cares? Wouldn’t you rather beat the team in your own division? Or at least atop the AL east like TB?
As good a place as any to mention that the game tonight (8:10pm) is the MLB.tv free game of the day.
@ Harv21- is it safe to assume you have been called a “Debbie Downer” before?
I really need to purchase MLB extra innings. Watching the yellow dots navigate the diamond on my phone is just not the same.
Just win, baby. The next two weeks are going to be interesting. White Sox, Reds, Red Sox and Rays…. and the Rangers the next weekend.
@4, Agreed. It’s great to pound a team in our division. Hopefully they finish off the 2-game sweep tonight.
It’s a shame that after forcing KC to use so much of their bullpen in the first game of the series that we aren’t scheduled to play a 3 or 4 game series with them.
Probably not being clear. I want to rip the division rivals’ hearts out – like a couple relentless comebacks, maybe a walk-off after their ace pitched his behind off. 19-1 just never seems to do that. The Mariners would not have beaten us in the remainder of that series had we played. This is not Cleveland Battered Fan Syndrome. This is Immutable Truth. Jon Steiner can provide the statistical analysis to back me up, but you’ll see it tonight for yourselves.
@ Kevin- You rule. Thanks!
Is there a schedule for that? Was not aware they even did that.
Regarding the the free game on mlb.tv, they black out the home and away TV markets for games on there. Can’t let the customers desires get in the way of the cable/sat $$$.
But if you buy the MLB Extra Innings, every game is free! (Using my 5-year old’s impeccable logic.)
If you want to take my MLB Extra Innings, you’ll have to pry the remote from my cold dead hand. It’s baseball crack.
(Fixin’ to drop the NFL Sunday Ticket, however . . . )
i’m with harv. great game and all, but all things equal i’d rather beat the snot out of a payroll over 100MM. added benefit is that we might even make the front page of espn.com if we were to do this to the redsox.
@kanicki – well, ESPN would probably talk about the collapse of said power much like all the talk today is about how the Royal’s pitcher gave up the runs rather than the Indians who scored them. Imagine if a Yankee or Red Sox pitcher had *ghast* given up those runs. The Mayans may have been right!
For a thread about a Indians/Royals game, there sure is a lot of talk here about the Sox and Yankees.
look at this crap. redsox with five nationally televised games in a row this weekend.
http://redsox.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/broadcasts/national.jsp?c_id=bos
the only reason the tribe is being broadcast is because they happen to be playing the redsox next monday.
so. yeah. if we could run up 19 or 20 runs against them and on espn and would be about a million times better.
of course, this could be affirmation that the mayans were right because the world IS likely to end before espn broadcasts the indians.
@15-nj:
when the indians have the best record in baseball,
and with the best starting rotation payroll which is that is HALF of ONE redsox starter (carmona/white/carrasco/masterson/talbot = 8.5M, lackey = 16M),
and when the redsox have been shown nationally 6-7-8 times already,
and will be shown FIVE times this week,
and when the redsox are a .500 team with a payroll 3x greater than the indians…
i dunno. seems like a noteworthy thing to comment on.
TV schedules are put together to maximize viewership, not to reward teams that are playing well. Sad, but true.
We’ll get our nationally televised games in October.
I agree NJ, but keeping the same teams on all the time prevents other clubs from drumming up a national interests and the cycle repeats.
NY and Boston are on all the time becasue NY and Boston are on all the time.
ya know there is another story here that seems to not be being brought up….
Mazzaro gave up the most runs ever by a reliever —-> why did Yost leave the kid in there getting BOMBED?
seems to me that Yost is as much to blame for that score as Mazzaro is.
i feel badly for mazzaro also. the infield hits by buck and OC cost him six runs. melky’s misplay of hafner’s double cost him NINE runs.
i thought he was being a good soldier taking bullets for the royals bullpen. truly, it just counts as one loss… why fry the bullpen just to keep the score under 15? kinda sucks that he got in the record books for it.
BTW, Mazzaro was scheduled to pitch tonight and was the good soldier. His reward? He was sent to the minors after the game.
What a great message to send to your players. In my book, the Royals are now officially done.
Re: MLB.tv – Didn’t know about the home market blackouts, but I’m in North Carolina and far from Tribe TV coverage, so it’s good to have an option. I think my home market is technically Baltimore and Washington.
As for a long-term schedule, I have the At-Bat app for my Android and can walk through one day at a time to see the game of the day – looks like they list it about two weeks out. I haven’t been able to find an online schedule. Next one with Cleveland is Sunday, 5/22 (1:05pm, v. Cincinnati). It’s a reasonably good mix of markets – the remainder of the week is Braves @ Arizona, Angels @ Seattle, and Dodgers @ CWS.
thanks for heads-up about the free mlb.tv game! YES, this is the first game I’ll watch live this season over here in Philly.
The Red Sox being on national TV all the time is all about ratings. It would be cool to see Indians-Royals on EPSN tonight, but who outside Kansas City or Cleveland is going to watch that game?