MLB payrolls continue to rise
April 17, 2015Danny Salazar Recalled from Triple-A
April 18, 2015If ever a baseball game were capable of halting and reversing an entire city’s blossoming springtime enthusiasm—sending every new leaf burrowing right back into its bud and every twittering songbird fleeing for Florida—it would be tonight’s 3-2 Indians loss to the Minnesota Twins. Hyperbole? Maybe. But it’s 12:24 on a Friday night, and much like how Britt McHenry feels when a poor, unattractive person makes eye contact with her, I am both annoyed and disgusted. And presumably, so is a still winless Corey Kluber. [By the way, if you fell asleep during extra innings and woke up to a re-run of Beer Money or something, Bryan Shaw gave up a game winning home run to Trevor Plouffe in the bottom of the 11th].
Re-Capping
It was George Orwell who famously said, “the essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” But it was Corey Kluber who famously said, “I am Klubot. I am more human than human.” Just a week after Trevor Bauer and the Tribe bullpen came two outs shy of the first Indians no-hitter in 34 years, something special seemed to be unfolding through five innings at Target Field tonight. Matched up with a club currently hitting a collective .221 for the year, Kluber looked like a Little League coach trying to embarrass a bunch of 10 year-olds during batting practice. He sent down the first 15 men he faced, striking out seven of them. And after the Indians’ wheezing offense managed to tally a second run on Brandon Moss’ first dinger of the year in the top of the 6th inning, it looked like a very satisfying—potentially magical—win was going to kick off our NBA playoff weekend.
What we got instead was the bottom of the 6th inning—a disturbing 20 minutes that fluctuated from slapstick comedy to pretentious French New Wave surrealism. Here is a list of plays from that half inning, starting with Oswaldo Arcia’s leadoff base hit that ended Kluber’s perfecto. PLEASE NOTE: Three of these things DID NOT actually happen. Try to guess which ones…
A. Arcia breaks up the perfect game on a weak shallow fly ball to right field that drops in front of Brandon Moss, who had wasted a few seconds staring at the ball in the air as if he were trying to pinpoint Cassiopeia in the night sky.
B. Kluber uncorks a wild pitch that sends Arcia to second.
C. Punch-and-judy hitter Chris Herrmann singles to right field, and Brandon Moss hurls a shot-put toward home plate(ish) that Roberto Perez fails to knock down, allowing Arcia to score easily and Herrmann to move into scoring position with nobody out.
D. The camera pans to the owner’s box, where we see that Billy Heywood—the wide-eyed 12 year-old who inherited the Twins franchise from his deceased grandfather Jason Robards back in 1994—is now 33 and predictably eccentric and shitty.
E. Jordan Schafer hits a routine grounder to short, but Jose Ramirez elects to try and cut down the advancing Herrmann at third base. Herrmann slides under the tag… and then beyond the bag. But Lonnie Chisenhall doesn’t notice that there’s a loose Twin six feet off the port bow, and Herrmann is able to jab his foot back out to reclaim his safety as an exasperated Chiz suffers the pain of his own ignorance. Still nobody out.
F. With runners on the corners, Danny Santana lays down a safety squeeze bunt that Kluber quickly fields and flips home—but Herrmann had retreated to third. Everybody is safe and nobody is out, again. Bases now loaded. Wow does that perfect game scenario feel like another lifetime ago.
G. Eduardo Escobar strikes out, but the ball gets away from Perez. It’s Kluber’s second wild pitch of the inning after throwing just THREE in all of 2014. Herrmann scores on the play, nearly putting his spikes through the shins of the Indians’ ace, who was standing directly on home plate. Game is now tied 2-2.
H. Mickey Calloway comes out to talk to Kluber, and they begin a brief mime routine where Calloway feigns shutting off and rebooting Kluber’s CPU via a switch on the back of his neck. When switched off, Kluber slowly lowers his head and swings his pitching arm loosely at his side. When restarted, his head raises up abruptly and he mechanically places the baseball into his glove at chest level.
I. Joe Mauer is intentionally walked to re-load the bases.
J. Kluber gets Brian Dozier to ground into a double play to end the inning.
K. Running back out on to the field, Trevor Plouffe feels someone pat him on the back. He turns to see the ghost of Kirby Puckett standing before him. “It’s up to you, Trevor,” Kirby says, unheard or seen by the thousands in attendance. “Win this one for me.” Then he winks and transforms into a pigeon.
If you said D, H and K were the fake ones, you’re no fun.
C-Cap Recap Custom Box Score
April 17, 2015
Twins 3, Indians 2
Green Highlight: Corey Kluber is the least disappointing thing about the 2015 campaign thus far, despite the fact that he’s yet to produce a win in his three starts. A 2.49 ERA and 25 Ks in 21.2 innings is pretty acceptable.
Yellow Highlight: Michael Brantley played. The two hits were nice, too, but let’s just focus on the fact that he was in the line-up, even if it was as the DH. The dude is DESPERATELY needed.
Red Highlight: More ugly defensive miscues paint an all too familiar picture. This team was already projected to be only marginally better with the leather than last year, and with Yan Gomes out for two months, you now have a fairly raw youngster behind the dish, too. This isn’t to say Roberto Perez should have or could have prevented Kluber’s wild pitches or stopped Brandon Moss’ terrible throw before it skimmed into the danger zone. Perez did commit another throwing error of his own on top of those things, though. So, however you slice it, it wasn’t a stellar evening.
16 Comments
I keep coming back to this thought – the Indians made the playoffs in 2012 because of some great production from the core, not too many injuries, a productive bench and a fearsome bullpen.
Let’s talk about the state of the Indians’ bench. in 2012, that was Gomes, Aviles (having a career year), Raburn (ditto) and Giambi. Gomes is now the starter, obviously, but everyone else got predictably worse last year. Because guys who are on the fringe like that are inherently prone to boom and bust seasons. Relievers, too, are especially prone to being volatile. But the Indians decided to lock up those guys to long-term contracts and they spent last year playing guys who probably should have been let go, because they had contracts.
Ryan Raburn is worthless if he can’t at least hit, and he hasn’t shown he can do that yet. Mike Aviles is a decent glove who was a worthwhile guy to have around when you had Asdrubal being an awful defender at SS and needed a platoon partner for Lonnie at 3B. He is now pointless to this team, since he’s a bottom 20 hitter in the big leagues year after year, and his defensive talents aren’t needed with JRam here and Lindor on the way. It certainly makes no sense to be starting him in LF where he isn’t even a good defender, and he certainly doesn’t have the bat to play there.
This team needs to find guys on the fringes that can do things for them. Jerry Sands seems to be one of those guys. When Swisher gets back, they need to keep Sands and dump Raburn because he’s a waste now. They also should find replacements for David Murphy and Mike Aviles, hopefully they have some internal options for those guys. Because replacing them with free agents, waiver wire pickups or trade options won’t be easy.
Pretty much the same point goes to the bullpen. But the fix there is more perplexing – you can’t just give up on Shaw, Hagadone, Scrabble or Allen. Those are guys that need to stay and hopefully bounce back. But man, you have to wonder if there’s any guys down in AAA that could come in and be like Crockett last year or Allen the year before that… we could really use the boost.
So many wasted opportunities. Sigh.
It’s the Twins..
Klubes,
I know how it feels. Hang tough.
– Masty
P.S. That’s some very entertaining writin’, Andrew. Nice job.
We should be disgusted. What’s the point of locking up good pitching if your bats are JV? I’m not holding my breath for Jason Kipnis. The only guys in this lineup worth their salt are Brantley and Santana. The only thing any team has to do is trot out a lefty and it’s 1-2-3.
Should have spent to help the lineup…
Bats? don’t forget about the gloves. This Indians team is just terrible on defense. Probably not as bad as last year but just bad. Moss belongs in the DH spot. Some of these guys look like they don’t even go over situations in their heads before the at bat. It’s mind boggling that they could look so lost once the ball comes off the bat.
Poor Kluber.
Great write up of a terrible game. Turned it off briefly after the two run inning for the Twins because I knew we didn’t have the bats/offense to retake the lead. That is sad. Maybe it is time to start stringing the guys who can hit together and just give up on the other innings. (Brantley, Santana, Chisenhall) followed by the garbage hackers. At least they might score once every third inning.
Sadly, we have a bunch of “bats” on the DL currently who are going to need to platoon in the DH slot because they are trash in the field.
Yea. There was a moment when Rzepczynski was intentionally walking Mauer that I was nervous over a wild pitch.
Fragile.
Why didn’t we go after a power right-handed batter and quality starting pitching in the offseason?
We have quality starting pitching. We do not have a power right-hander…still.
Jesus will save us.
When I suggested recently we’d see a lot of 3-2 scores, I was thinking the Indians would get the three. Jeesh. Far, far more entertaining than the game, Andrew.
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I was excited for Murphy to come here. Need him to start doing something. Dump Raburn yesterday.