So that’s what losing feels like: Cavaliers vs Raptors, Behind the Box Score
May 22, 2016Dave Matthews, Day of the Dead, and Zach Lowe: While We’re Waiting…
May 23, 2016With their 5-2 loss on Sunday, the Cleveland Indians (22-19) have not won a series in Fenway Park since 2005. The one constant through that decade-plus stretch of Boston dominance is, of course, Big Papi David Ortiz, who—despite being old enough to be a Grand Papi—continues to mercilessly mash Tribe pitching.
In Sunday’s excruciatingly long and boring rubber match (I’m pretty sure the first inning and a half took an hour and a half), the 40-year-old Ortiz went 4-for-4 with 3 RBIs, leading the video-game-hot Red Sox (27-17) past a disappointingly not-up-to-the-task Danny Salazar (4 ER, 1,276 pitches in 4-1/3 innings). Papi very nearly completed the cycle in his final at-bat—a blast to the 420 mark in dead center that bounced over the wall just before it might have rattled around and made things interesting.
https://vine.co/v/iEEIw7965J6
Way to lay out, Guy in Front Row.
Nevertheless, Salazar came into the game talking about what an honor it was to pitch in front of two of his fellow Dominican heroes—Pedro Martinez (in the crowd) and David Ortiz. A greater tribute than squaring off with his idol might have been to just intentionally walk him and help his own cause in the process.
The Indians and Red Sox still have one rainout date to make up later this summer back in Cleveland, but for all intents and purposes, we can now take stock of David Ortiz’s place in all-time Tribe Killer history. With his 6-for-11 weekend, he raised his career average against Cleveland to .275—good, but not eye-popping by any means. His three ribbies give him 86 against Tribe pitching. Going back to 1997, Ortiz’s rookie season, only nine players have driven in more runs against Indians pitching in that 20-season span. Ranking No. 10 might not sound that impressive at first, but if you filter out the divisional rivals—players we saw far more often on an annual basis—only Alex Rodriguez has produced more runs vs. the Tribe than Papi.
Somewhat surprisingly, A-Rod also ranks tops in RBI-per-Plate-Appearance rate among the players above, driving in one run every 5.25 times he has come to the plate against Cleveland. If Konerko surprises you with his enormous lead in overall RBIs, you must not have watched a lot of Tribe games during the Aughts.
The Tribe Killer homerun list, as you might guess, is not wildly different.
So in the homer department, Ortiz is outpaced not only by A-Rod, but a pair of lefty sluggers—Jason Giambi and Carlos Pena—who each took Tribe pitchers deep as many times as Papi in more than 100 fewer plate appearances.
I know what you’re thinking. Home runs and RBIs do not truly tell the tale of a Tribe Killer. Let’s at least look at some sort of percentage based statistic. Okay, here is the OPS leaderboard, from 1997-2016, for players who have tallied at least 350 plate appearances against the Indians over that period.
Not at all horribly depressing to see Victor and Thome so high on the list, is it? In any case, long story short, David Ortiz has beaten up the Indians pretty good over the years, but if they made a Mount Rushmore of modern day Tribe Killers, I’m not sure he’d make the cut. Freaking Mike Sweeney still gives me nightmares.
Out of curiosity, would you like to see the list of “Anti-Tribe-Killers”—the players with the lowest OPS against the Tribe over the last 20 years? Of course you do! We’ll set the PA requirement a little lower for this one, to make sure futility is fairly represented.
Shane Halter, who last played in the Majors in 2004, was a pretty standard utility man who retired with an OPS of .688. But for whatever reason, Chief Wahoo rendered him an overmatched junior high school hitter. A .205 BAbip probably didn’t help matters.
Anyway, getting back to more pressing matters, the Indians have sputtered back into familiar Indians-like behavior after staring themselves in a flattering fun house mirror during the Reds series. They head to Chicago Monday trailing the White Sox by 2.5 games, making this is a really important opportunity to right the ship and announce themselves as contenders heading into the summer months. Could they use Michael Brantley and Carlos Carrasco? Pretty clearly, and desperately, yes. But in the meantime, they’re going to have to figure out how to scrape by and win low-scoring games, something they haven’t exactly shown a great talent for thus far.
Positive take-aways from a mostly bad weekend in Boston:
- Though he got off to yet another shaky beginning, Corey Kluber finally looked like himself and took total command of the game on Friday, a 4-2 Indians win. It probably didn’t hurt that Jason Kipnis connected on a three-run homer to give Corey a precious early lead. Apparently, the Indians have won 32 straight Kluber starts when they give him at least four runs of support. That is straight-up bonkers, y’all.
https://vine.co/v/iEET7ZHQlvH
- Joe Kelly did NOT no-hit the Indians at hitter-friendly Fenway Park. It kind of felt like it was going to happen on Saturday, didn’t it? But with two outs in the seventh, Juan Uribe (naturally) broke up the no-no with a double to center field, totally making up for that earlier defensive error of judgment, when he went home with a ball that could have been an inning-ending double play. Carlos Santana, for good measure, killed the shutout with a meaningless ninth-inning home run, a category he’s got to be leading the league in over the past few seasons.
- Mike Napoli did NOT strike out nine consecutive times. It was just eight. He flew out in his last at-bat Sunday. I’m not really too bothered by Napoli’s insane K numbers, I just wish he was hitting lower in the order, as he would be in a Brantleyful universe.
- Danny Salazar doesn’t appear to be injured after taking a line drive off the leg in the midst of an inning in which he threw roughly infinity pitches. Similarly, Frankie Lindor managed to perform one of his patented swim slides at home plate on Friday night without tearing anything up—besides the league.
https://vine.co/v/iEEtZ7pLYnt
- Welcome back, Austin Adams—two shutout innings to stop the bleeding on Sunday. With Kyle Crockett demoted, however, the Indians somehow don’t have a single southpaw in their bottomless pit of a bullpen. Too bad Rich Hill is in Oakland with a 2.54 ERA and 11 K/9 rate as a STARTER. We all saw that coming a couple years ago, right?
Sorry, that was all supposed to be positive.
8 Comments
Meanwhile, at the Four Letter front office…
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I had to stop reading when I hit the top ten list of Tribe killers. Started seeing red… Konerko… Magglio…. Cabrera… must go smash things!!
Can’t wait for Ortiz to disappear. Not just because he kills us like Webman kills the Rangers, I’ve just never been a fan.
My biggest issue with Ortiz and the Red Sox is this notion that, in 2007, somehow Paul Byrd was this dastardly cheater, but Ortiz just hit the weight room extra hard and suddenly found his stroke. At age 27. Once he got to Boston.
It’s probably just a coincidence that, in six years in Minnesota he hit .266 with a barely-.800 OPS, and just 58 home runs in 455 games, but then as soon as he got to Boston his OPS jumped 122 points, including an almost-100-point jump in slugging.
Plus, he did test positive for PEDs along with Manny Ramirez.
http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news/david-ortiz-retiring-red-sox-ped-hall-of-fame-steroids-barry-bonds-alex-rodriguez/isjc7fyzv8dj1t96btj4a8tjk
I think I found the Brown’s new placekicker…
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That would have been good from 50. Maybe 60.
Jim Thome too.
What does Jim Thome have to do with anything I wrote?