Simmons vs. ESPN, Cleveland Indians attendance, Wahoo, and Big Brother: While We’re Waiting
September 25, 2014Week 3 Film Room: The Defense
September 25, 2014Through hot and cold offense, through a starting rotation that took essentially four months to figure it out, through all the horrible defense, there has been one constant group that has been the rock of the Cleveland Indians club: The bullpen.
Manager Terry Francona has set the new American League record for appearances in 2014. The dude loves making pitching changes. He would go with a 10-man pen if he could. Francona also wears guys out. It is a concern for the long term, but the Tribe skipper is trying to win every game he can and with the Indians offense usually keeping things close, Tito goes to the guys he trusts the most.
Bryan Shaw, his regular eighth inning set up man, tied the Indians appearance record with his 79th trot from the pen Wednesday night, evening himself up with the immortal Bob Howry back in 2005. He now leads the majors. Cody Allen, the Tribe’s closer, is now second in the AL with 75 appearances. Lefty Marc Rzepcyznski is close behind with 72 while Scott Atchison has 70.
Going into Wednesday night’s series finale with the Kansas City Royals, the Indians knew they needed to not just win out, but to see the Royals and/or A’s and Mariners lose the rest of their games to make a miracle happen. The Indians blew their chance to control their own destiny with losses in the first two games of the series.
Trevor Bauer was making his final start of the season and was staked to a 3-0 lead in the first. After going 19 straight innings without a run, Yan Gomes, who is having the best season by an Indians position player not named Michael Brantley, crushed a three-run homer off of lefty Jason Vargas for his 21st bomb of the year.
Why Francona waited this long to put Gomes behind Santana is beyond me and he still only does it against lefties. The guy has been a stud all season.
Bauer has been a pleasant surprise this season and has been pretty consistent since being added to the rotation in late April, but it is his inability to stay out of one bad inning that plagued him. Wednesday night it was the fifth inning that did him in. With a 3-1 lead, Bauer gave up back to back singles to Alcides Escobar and Nori Aoki to start the frame. After a sharp line out by Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer singled home Escobar. KC took the lead on Billy Butler’s double to the wall in left field. An intentional pass to Alex Gordon ended Bauer’s night. He was only able to last four and a third innings, giving up eight hits, four of which came in the fifth.
If Trevor can make the strides he did this year, there’s a really good pitcher in there.
— Terry Francona
“I thought there was a ton of growth, a ton of development,” Francona said. “I think there’s a lot left in the tank. I don’t think we’ve even come close to what he can be. He’s a pretty thoughtful kid. Over the winter, he’s going to be very cognizant and aware of everything he wants to do. I just hope that he allows (pitching coach Mickey Callaway) to kind of really (help), because Mickey is so conscious of wanting to help so bad. I just think there’s a lot there. If Trevor can make the strides he did this year, there’s a really good pitcher in there.”
From there, the Tribe’s bullpen took the game over.
First up was the newest star of the pen Zach McAllister. Yeah, I said it—the Zach Attack may have found his new role for 2015. Since coming back up on September 1, he has shown some increased velocity, hitting 97 MPH on his fastball. McAllister has always been a two pitch guy, which is much better suited for the pen. He came on with two and one out and needed to stop the bleeding. He retired Salvador Perez on a line out to short, but there was still one big out to get. Omar Infante ripped a grounder to third where Lonnie Chisenhall made a diving stop and fired to first to save another run. Lonnie is not exactly the second coming of Travis Fryman with the glove, but this was a game-changing play.
That’s because the Indians offense was about to do work. Vargas hit Bourn and was immediately lifted for left-handed rookie Brian Finnegan. Jose Ramirez greeted him with a double off the high wall in left. The speedster Bourn slid in head first just in front of the relay throw and the game was tied. Brantley’s 197th hit of the season (he got 198 later in the game) off of Brandon Finnegan’s glove set the stage for Carlos Santana. Finnegan broke Los’s bat, but he ran as hard as we have seen in weeks, and beat out the potential inning ending double play, which gave the Tribe a 5-4 lead. Watching Santana run down that line makes the decision to “rest his legs” at DH Monday and play Chris Gimenez even more aggravating to me. (Sorry, I will continue to beat that dead horse.)
The offense added an insurance run in the sixth on a sacrifice fly from David Murphy. Meanwhile, McAllister was mowing the Royals down again. He left with two outs in the seventh so that Rzepcyznski could face the Gordon, who flew out to right. ZMac went two and a third scoreless innings of work. in his last four relief appearances, the big righty pitched five and two-thirds without allowing a run with seven strikeouts and no walks.
Shaw and Allen took their customary roles and closed out the 6-4 Tribe win. The Tribe pen was the difference in this one. Neither starter made it out of the fifth inning and while the Indians were able to score two against the vaunted Royals relief core, McAllister, Rzepcyznski, Shaw, and Allen kept KC off the board.
The 30 games in 30 days trek is now over and a day off Thursday gives the Tribe a quick breather before Tampa Bay comes to town for the last series of the season. Francona announced before the game that Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and Danny Salazar will start the final three games.
“As long as we have life, we’re going to keep battling,” Murphy said. “That’s exactly what we did tonight. We’ve had some good moments. We’ve had some bad moments this season. But, hopefully, we’re going to be going into the last series of this season still alive.”
8 Comments
Salazar v. Cobb in the finale for the 2nd year in a row…
We are out of the playoff race as it’s just not happening. That is okay. I still want to get to 85 wins. End the year on a positive (winning the last series) and go into next year knowing we have a ton of youth on which to build our foundation.
And watch as the front office does little to nothing over the winter to reinforce that young talent! Wash, rinse, repeat!
Brantley, Gomes and the starting rotation are easily the biggest bright spots from this season for me. That being said there were certainly plenty of negatives to balance matters out. Those start with the two “Big” free agent signings that this front office will most likely hang it’s hat on for years to come and use as the example for “when we feel we’ll contend we’ll spend” just make sure to overlook the one small fact of them spending at the exact same time as the sale of their television network. Coincidence, I am sure! But back to those negatives…Swisher, Bourn, Kipnis, Raburn and to a lesser degree Chisenhall. I wanted to put Carlos Santana on the list due to the fact it took him nearly four months to start producing but he’s produced enough for me to give him a pass. Although I must admit for a guy who leads the league in walks you’d think his batting average might be a little better then .232 no? Maybe opposing managers don’t mind if he walks with no real power behind him. Maybe Gomes will be that guy, maybe he won’t. I wouldn’t be willing to bet on it. Which brings me to my final point. All of the positives have to do exactly what they did this season and more otherwise (1)This year was a fluke (Kipnis last season?) and (2)This team will once again hover around AAAA status. Front office are you there, are you awake, because this is where you are supposed to step up, step in and ADD to this roster. And by add I don’t mean another platoon player like David Murphy or a reliever like Josh Outman.
And that’s the bottom line ‘cuz $hamrok said so!
Way to win the meaningless game guys..
I really don’t think we’ve ever had this much young talent on our major league roster and in our farm system. For years we’ve been talking about drafting and developing. Now we’re doing it. It’s a good feeling.
There is some nice talent particularly in the outfield but it looks to be 2-4 years away at a minimum. My problem with drafting high school kids. But as you pointed out at least it appears there’s promise. If you want to talk about real minor league promise look at the Cubs and that’s right the Red Sox.
Walters, Ramsey, Moncrief are all less than two years away, and really less than one. I’ll bet we see Naquin before two years is up as well.