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June 22, 2015Here’s hoping all you dads had a very nice Father’s Day on Sunday. Or, as the late, great Hall of Famer, Ralph Kiner once said while announcing for the New York Mets, “On this very special Father’s Day, we’d like to wish all of you a very happy birthday.”
It seems like such a short time ago Cleveland fans were eagerly anticipating the inevitable transition of the Indians into the contending team that many predicted them to be before the start of the season. Now, however, Tribe fans are beginning to wonder if the team is capable of reaching .500.
The Indians are in the midst of an eight-game homestand during which they’ve gone 2-3, splitting two with the Cubs and losing two of three to the Tampa Bay Rays. They’re in fourth place in the American League Central with an overall record of 32-36, eight games behind the division leading Kansas City Royals and 5-5 in their last ten games.
Cleveland’s record for away games is a decent 18-15, but their 14-21 in Cleveland is the second worst home record in the American League — second only to last place Oakland in the AL West. The reason for their poor showing at home may be unanswerable, but then the reason most teams have a home-field advantage at all may be unanswerable, although part of the reason is that home teams are guaranteed the last at-bat. This year, though, that hardly seems to matter at Progressive Field.
This past weekend, Cleveland baseball celebrated the 20-year anniversary of the mighty 1995 Indians, the team that went 100-44 in the strike-shortened season. The Indians‘ home record at Jacobs Field that year was an astounding 54-18. They won 27 games in their last at-bat and had 48 come from behind victories.
On Sunday against the Rays, working hard to avoid a sweep, the Indians got their first walk-off win of the season, and even that was a victory without a game-winning hit.1 The Tribe lost 4-1 on Friday night, they lost 4-1 on Saturday night and they won 1-0 on Sunday afternoon. Three runs in three games. Oh, my!
Granted, the Rays have a pitching staff that is statistically near the top of the American League, but their earned run average is hardly in the vicinity of 1.00. So often, it seems, the Indians are helping struggling pitchers look good (as on Sunday) and making merely good pitchers look like Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax.
Speaking of struggling teams, the Tigers are back in town for three games, Monday and Tuesday at 7:10 p.m. ET and Wednesday at 12:10 p.m. The Tigers have had difficulty winning of late, but this season they’ve had little trouble with the Indians. Detroit has won seven of their nine games against Cleveland thus far in 2015. The two teams last met in Detroit just eight days ago. The Tigers are now only one game over .500 at 35-34. They’ve lost six of their last ten games and are now in third place, 5 1/2 games out.
We can compare the teams’ statistics if you like, but at this point the figures seem almost irrelevant. When the Indians play the Tigers it looks, for the most part, like a total mismatch. Miguel Cabrera is 0-1 in his one at-bat against Anthony Swarzak, but otherwise he has hit every other Cleveland pitcher, starter and reliever, as if it’s batting practice. Cabrera is 22-34 against Tribe pitching this season for a .647 batting average.
Just go down the Tigers batting order and look what they’ve done against the Indians this season. Leadoff batter Rajai Davis is hitting .476. Ian Kinsler, .417, Cabrera, .647, Victor Martinez, .333, J.D. Martinez, .286, Yoenis Cespedes, .282, José Iglesias, .407. Even backup catcher Bryan Holaday, filling in for the injured Alex Avila, is 2-for-4 against the Indians.
An argument has been forwarded that perhaps the Indians should just walk Miguel Cabrera, regardless, every time he steps up to the plate against them. But when almost everyone else in the Tigers lineup is mauling your pitching staff, how exactly would that help? Clearly, an adjustment is needed, perhaps with the team’s sports psychologist.
Scheduled pitchers for the three game series:
Trevor Bauer (81 innings, 6-3, 3.22) vs. LHP Kyle Ryan (16 innings, 1-1, 3.26)
Danny Salazar (73.1 innings, 6-2, 3.56) vs. LHP David Price (97.1 innings, 6-2, 2.50)
Carlos Carrasco (80.2 innings, 8-6, 4.35) vs. RHP Justin Verlander (11.2 innings, 0-1, 6.17)
Tigers manager Brad Ausmus has called Detroit pitching this year hot and cold…some good games and some “clunkers.”
Tiger lefty starter Kyle Lobstein is on the disabled list with a sore shoulder but Detroit has another lefty named Kyle in his place. Six-foot-five Kyle Ryan is only 23 years old. He had his major league debut in 2014 but pitched only ten innings in the bigs last year. He’s never faced the Indians so it’s hard to know what to expect on Monday evening, except that he’ll probably get some pretty good run support.
David Price has become the de facto ace of the staff with Justin Verlander just recently returning from an injury and not yet back to form. Price has faced Cleveland twice this season and has yet to yield an earned run to the Indians, who are batting just .216 against him.
In Wednesday’s game at noon, Carrasco and Verlander match up. Verlander seems some distance away from his old dominant self and with pitchers, especially, there’s always that question about longevity. Verlander’s last outing against the Yankees was his 300th start. He has now logged almost 2,000 innings in a career that began in 2005. On Friday night in New York, Verlander went 6 2/3 innings and gave up ten hits (one of which was Alex Rodriguez’s 3,000th career hit) and six earned runs.
On Father’s Day, I took my old, trusty transistor radio and some gardening tools and did some work in a community garden. Listening to Tom Hamilton call the Indians game, I was surprised and disappointed yet again at the degree to which advertising is increasingly intruding into the play-by-play of the game. Hamilton is now routinely reading ad copy between batters…and between pitches.
There may not be a lot left in the tank for Justin Verlander, but his bank account is another matter. In 2013 the Tigers signed Verlander to a five-year contract extension: $28 million per year through 2019. Twenty-eight million dollars … that’s roughly one-third of the Indians’ entire payroll.
In that intoxicating voice of Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country!”
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Out-of-town fans can catch the next Indians-Tigers series at Progressive Field to create an entertaining baseball getaway. Watch the Indians at home by using Hipmunk.com for Cleveland flights that can be reserved through most major airline carriers. Hotels in Cleveland can be booked too, with rates starting from $80 near both the airport and ballpark.
- They won via sacrifice fly. [↩]
5 Comments
I like me waitingfornextyear ………… ———Keep Reading
Miguel Cabrera is 0-1 in his one at-bat against Anthony Swarzak
Who is now pitching for Doosan Bears in Seoul
Will this be when we look back and say the season ended???
Are ya’ll ready for this?
Good lord this team is just bad. Just a bad team.