Indians Confidential

In their first interleague game of 2008, the Indians offense went back to sleep walking, having one big inning with fireworks, but otherwise taking the night off in a 4-3 loss to the Reds.  Falling behind early 3-0, the Tribe rallied behind three solo homers in the 6th, as Casey Blake, Travis Hafner and Jhonny Peralta all went deep to tie the game at three.

The offense managed two hits after that, but could not put a run across, as the Reds put together a rally of their own to put across the winning run vs Jensen Lewis in the 8th.  Brandon Phillips drew a walk with one out, Joey Votto smacked a double to left that put runners on second and third. Edwin Encarnacion drew a walk to load the bases and then Adam Dunn drew yet another walk to win the game.  Lewis did get out of the inning, but the walks haunted him and the Tribe was not able to generate any offense whatsoever.

Jeremy Sowers started for the Tribe, getting the call up earlier in the day.  He was not as effective as his prior start, going five innings, allowing three runs at five hits.  He gave up two homers (Phillips and Dunn), and walked two and struck out two.  The three relievers used were good minus Lewis, as Jorge Julio and Rafael Perez went 2.1 innings, not allowing a base runner and striking out four.

The offense struck out 12 times, left seven men on base, and the top four in the lineup went a combined 1-for-14 with four strikeouts and six men left on base.  It was not the best of nights at the plate to say the least.  On the positive side it was good to see Hafner hit his first homer since April 17th vs the Tigers.  The team falls to 22-20 on the season, the Reds improve to 19-23.  Saturday in game two of the three game set it’s Fausto Carmona for the Indians vs Aaron Harang at 3:55pm.