While We’re Waiting… Air Max LeBron VII, Delonte’s Lyrics, and Comparing Stallworth/Vick
August 10, 2009Browns Notes: Recapping the Weekend
August 10, 2009Does any manager get his team to play harder when there is nothing at stake than Eric Wedge? The Grinder’s crew won it’s third straight series over a division rival this weekend in Chicago, taking two of three from a White Sox team who had just won back to back series against the Yankees and Angels. Go figure. How exactly are the Indians pulling this off?
Friday, they dealt yet another veteran, Carl Pavano, to the Minnesota for a Player to be Named Later. That night, they opened the series with Jeremy Sowers on the hill against the perfect game man himself, Mark Buehrle. Sowers has been very good in his previous two starts, while Buehrle has been off his game in his past two. As I told someone I work with on Friday, “I don’t bet baseball, but if I did, this would be the night. The White Sox are lock city.” I mean, Sowers was due for a reality check, while Buehrle was ready to snap back into his all star form.
That, my friends, is why they play the game.
Led by Kelly Shoppach’s two opposite field home runs, The Indians offense jumped all over the White Sox ace for 11 hits and six runs. Shop loves hitting at U.S. Cellular Field. He went 3-4 with four RBI’s and his homer in the second was his first since July 9th, which also came at “The Cell.”
Meanwhile, Sowers was, dare I say, dominant during his seven plus innings of work. Chris Perez and Tony Sipp worked Sowers out of a scary eighth which saw the Sox loaded the bases with nobody out and fail to score. Kerry Wood closed the door on the 6-2 win.
Oh, did I mention the Indians hit into a major league record-tying six double plays and still won?
Give Shop credit for saying something that we all think as Tribe fans in the current situation: “Sometimes when you get guys coming up here and there’s no pressure on them, they get an opportunity to get comfortable real quick. If we were at the top of this pennant race and we have a bunch of young guys in the lineup, they’re going to feel some pressure to perform.”
Here’s a running theme you will see the rest of the way. The bottom of the order during Friday night’s win was Jamey Carroll, Shoppach, Trevor Crowe, Andy Marte.
On to Saturday night the Indians went carrying a four game winning streak with the newly acquired Justin Masterson making his first start for the Wahoos. GM Mark Shapiro and Grindmaster Flash wanted Masterson to make one more relief appearance to build his arm up, but the trade of Pavano pushed that up a week. The problem was, with the right-hander being in the bullpen for the Red Sox most of the year, he had a 65-pitch limit put on him. That ended up equating to just four innings.
In his four innings, Masterson looked great, allowing just one run on four hits while striking out four. “He threw the ball well. He was little erratic early but he didn’t give into it,” said Wedge. “He was more consistent with his pitches as the game went on and he had better command as the game wore on, but we needed to keep him where he was at 60 pitches. He’ll probably go 75-80 next time.”
Man do I love when The King of the Grind says “he didn’t give into it.” That phrase is right up there with Shappy’s “championship caliber club” blast.
The offense supplied reliever Tomo Ohka a 5-1 lead thanks to Jhonny Peralta’s two run double in the third, a pair in the fourth, and one in the fifth on Sweet Luis Valbuena’s two out double that scored Chris Gimenez. However, that was it for the Tribe bats as DJ Carrasco, Matt Thornton, and Bobby Jenks blanked them the rest of the way. They certainly had their chances, but left 11 on base. “We scored five and we very easily could have scored three or four more,” Eric Wedge said. “We’ve had moments where we’re not putting the ball in play and taking advantage of our situation.”
The worst of all was Peralta’s eight inning K with the tying run on base and two out. I literally told the people I was with as the count reached two strikes “here comes the high fastball and Jhon cannot lay off of it.” Sure enough, there it was. Way out of the zone, and Peralta bit to kill the rally.
I can’t kill Johnny too much, the guy is second in the AL in RBI’s since the break.
Ohka entered in the fifth and poured gasoline all over the fire. By the time he exited, the score was tied at five as he gave up four runs on four hits, recording just one out. Jim Thome’s 500 foot blast got the crowd right back into the game and opened the flood gates. Jess Todd and the recently recalled Rafael Perez each gave up a run during their relief work in the 8-5 loss.
Sunday’s rubber match didn’t seem promising. Jose Contreras, who owns the Tribe, took the hill for the Sox against up and down rookie David Huff. On a steamy day on the South Side, the home team put a three spot on the board in the second when four straight hitters reached base. It started with an AJ Pierzynski solo homer which literally hit Grady Sizemore in the glove and caromed over the fence.
“I think the fence ran up on him sooner than he thought,” said Wedge. “It look like he head-butted the wall.”
Contreras, who hadn’t won an after the all star break start since September of ’07, looked well on his way to breaking that slump until the fifth. Peralta and Valbeuna started the inning with back to back singles. Crowe followed with a walk. So the bases are now loaded with nobody out for that vaunted duo of Marte and Wyatt Toregas. Marte hit a knubber down the third base line and beat out an infield hit to score a run. Toregas did his part, driving in Valbuena with a sacrifice fly.
After Sizemore’s fly out, Jamey Carroll stepped to the plate. With Contreras on the ropes, JC laced a double down the right field line, scoring two and putting the Tribe on top 4-3. “Anytime you get a chance to take the lead after being down, 3-0, it’s exciting,” said Carroll. “There’s nothing wrong with showing a little enthusiasm. We’ve had that here lately. Winning can do that.”
That wasn’t Carroll’s only big hit of the day. The slap hitter took reliever Scott Linebrink deep for only his second jack of the year. While Carroll had a banner day, driving in three, the co-star of the offensive attack was Toregas, who 2-3 with three RBI from the nine spot. In fact, your bottom four of Valbuena, Crowe, Marte, and Toregas combined for six hits, five RBI’s, and six runs scored.
Said Carroll: “We’re just trying to come out and win. We have young guys who have come in here and contributed. Chris Gimenez got some big hits for us early on. Wyatt Toregas had some big hits today. So did Andy Marte. Timely hitting helps and we’ve been able to do that over the last few series.”
Huff, in the meantime, settled down nicely after the rocky second and pitched into the seventh. He was chased by an Alexei Ramirez solo homer. Credit the kid for keeping his team in the ballgame until the offense took the lead. “I think coming back after that three-spot and putting up all those zeros was real big,” Huff said. “It was one of those things where they got to me a little bit and I just had to really concentrate at the next guy.”
Once again, the duo of Sipp and Chris Perez locked down the Sox in the seventh and eighth before handing the ball to Wood, who sealed the series win and the 8-4 win. Since his rocky start, Perez hasn’t allowed a run in 10 consecutive appearances and continues to make the Mark DeRosa trade look like a steal.
Carroll, one of the lone veterans remaining in a sea of kids, was the spokesman for this team’s grinding abilities after the game. “It’s been said that we play better when the games are meaningless. To us, these aren’t meaningless games. Everybody else has to face these teams, these pitchers. So do we.”
The Tribe, now 13-9 since the all-star break, comes back home again for a quick three-game set against another playoff contender, the Texas Rangers starting Tuesday night.
20 Comments
Some mindblowing stats since the ASB:
Chris Perez: 8 IP, 10 K, 2 hits, 0.00 ERA
Jhonny Peralta: .333/.366/.511 (.877 OPS)
Asdrubal Cabrera: .340/.371/.567 (.938 OPS)
Jeremy Sowers: 20 IP, 2-0, 1.80 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, .189 BAA
Trevor Crowe: 32 AB, .344/.389/.500 (.889 OPS)
Kelly Shoppach: 34 AB, .324/.439/.588 (1.027 OPS)
keep grinding Scott
1.) What’s with Terry Pluto writing that David Puff throws as hard as Cliff Lee? Huff as a norm is 82-85MPH, occasionally 88MPH, and every now and then 90mph. Cliff Lee steadily threw 90-93 with movement, every pitch.
Cmon Pluto, get real.
2.) Can anyone explain why Eric Wedge is always madly twitching? Does he have turrets? Is he nervous? Does he have an issue with pressure?
Is there any way we can get the ASB to be, say, in April?
Isis,
According to PitchFX data, Cliff Lee’s fastball averages 90.3 mph. David Huff’s averages 89.9 mph.
I agree that Huff needs to get more consistent, but that’s what everybody said about Lee when he was younger. I’d say they make decent comps.
Jon……respectfully, whatever “pitchFX” is, that’s crap.
Did you watch yesterday’s game? If you did, tell me what Huff averaged? What did YOU observe?
If you are going to tell me Huff and Lee have the same velocity on a conistent basis you are definitely NOT watching. Don’t quote nonsense, watch the game.
There is no way Huff averaged anything CLOSE to 89.9mph (90mph) yesterday-most of his pitches didn’t even hit 85mph. I have NEVER seen Cliff Lee pitch where he didn’t consitently break 90 all the way though.
If anyone want’s to compare David Huff’s (Puff’s) are to Cliff Lee……all I can say is…….wow, how much baseball have you seen?
Good point Isis.
Jeez Isis, the kid won the game…give him a break…hes a rookie and having a decent season.
Yeah Isis is right, like an angry ranting mad scientist is right, but yeah…
Because we all know that throwing hard is the key to winning games at the big league level, right?
My favorite line: respectfully, whatever “pitchFX” is, that’s crap.
Respectful, indeed!
Does he have turrets?
Like a castle?
Cliff Lee will also turn 31 years old later this month and has 1,133.0 career MLB innings pitched along with 428.0 in the minors. David Huff meanwhile, Cleveland’s first-round pick in 06, will be 25 later this month and has 253.0 innings in the minors and 87.0 in the majors.
Add up those totals: Lee has 1,561 career professional innings pitched while Huff has 340. To even compare Lee and Huff at face value means nothing right now. For all we know, Huff could be demoted next season due to his inconsistency on the mound after getting beaten out by other lefties, then resurface better than ever and win the Cy Young. Two years ago, everyone was bashing Lee and he was 29 at the time.
Huff’s Fan Graphs velocity charts: http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=4257&position=P
Lee’s Fan Graphs velocity charts: http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=1636&position=P
I’m sure you know this Jacob, but when you use an older player to compare, you’re not comparing AS HE IS NOW, but to WHAT HE WAS THEN (at, let’s say, his 24 year old season). That’s all I meant when I said Lee was a decent comp for Huff. (And when Lee was 24, nobody thought he’d be a Cy Young winner, just an above average MLB starter.)
Randisis: “Whoa whoa, I said with all due respect”
Jon: “That doesn’t mean you get to say whatever you want to say to me!”
Randisis: “Sure, sure as heck does”
DP: “No, no–it doesn’t mean that”
Randisis: “It’s in the Geneva Convention, look it up!”
Boom. Ricky Bobby’d.
Needs more turrets!
And moats!
Just get rid of Wedge. Jamey Carroll too.
[…] and the Indians quest to win four straight series was quickly stopped. The offense looked good all weekend in the series at US Cellular Field but the bottom of the lineup consisting of Kelly Shoppach, […]