Indians Confidential

Twins pitcher Nick Blackburn is one of those pitchers that always seems to give the Indians trouble. In six career starts, he’s 3-0 against them with a 1.71 ERA. Friday night in the series opener vs the Tribe at Progressive Field, the Indians again had their issues vs Blackburn, pushing across just one run in 7 innings as the Twins beat the Indians 5-1.

He allowed six hits, and the biggest thing was he didn’t walk a batter, this after giving up six walks in his first three starts and having command issues. He struck out four, and the Indians lineup provided little pop in their bats against him.

Fausto Carmona in the mind of Eric Wedge pitched an okay game, but he still didn’t seem to be overly commanding against the Twins. He gave up five runs, four earned in 6 innings. He also gave up 8 hits, and while he struck out 8 and walked only one, he still took the loss to fall to 1-3 on the season.

It’s amazing the Indians have even six wins on the season considering their number one and two starters – Cliff Lee and Carmona, are a combined 2-6 through the first three weeks of the 2009 season.

The only Indians real scoring chance came when they pushed their only run of the game across in the third to tie it at one apiece. Asdrubal Cabrera doubled, then Grady Sizemore slammed a sharp single to right that scored Cabrera to make it 1-1.

That tie lasted exactly one pitch into the fourth inning, as Justin Morneau crushed a Carmona pitch for a homerun to right that made it a 2-1 game. A few batters later, Jose Morales singled to score another run to give the Twins a 3-1 lead. With the Indians offense stale, it might as well been 100-1 at that point.

Minnesota added two more in the 7th off of Carmona and Rafael Betancourt to make it 5-1. Other than that, the fireworks postgame were for sure not for the Indians offense on this night.

The loss drops the team to 6-11. Carl Pavano (0-2, 9.69) goes for the Indians vs Kevin Slowey for the now 8-9 Twins.