Indians Confidential

The Indians one-game winning streak is history, as Felix Hernandez did a very solid job against the Tribe on Friday night, throwing 8 innings allowing two runs as the Mariners beat the Indians 6-2. Hernandez isn’t an ace for nothing, he’s 9-2 in starts after a Mariners loss, which is exactly the situation he walked into on Friday night.

Hernandez allowed five hits, walked one and struck out eight in his first start since pitching a scoreless inning in Tuesday’s All-Star game. He lowered his ERA to 2.51. He was very good against an overmatched Indians team that has had issues all year long with some of the better pitchers in the AL.

The Indians offense was so lackluster, they didn’t get a runner past second base until the sixth, when Grady Sizemore tripled and scored on a sacrifice fly. Sizemore doubled home the Indians’ other run in the eighth in an otherwise light night for the offense.

“He had an outstanding fastball,” Indians manager Eric Wedge said of Hernandez. “He’s always had a great arm, but he’s really matured as a pitcher and how he utilizes his stuff. He has a special arm and he’s pitching with it.”

Other than Hernandez, the toughest thing to watch in the contest was former Indian Franklin Gutierrez hitting his 11th home run in the second inning off losing pitcher David Huff. Here’s what hurts – Gutierrez, who was moved in a three-team deal in December, entered the game with a league-best .385 average since June 18th and has hit in 23 of his last 25 games.

Think the Tribe could use him about now?

Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk, the teams will go at it again on Saturday night, as Jarrod Washburn (6-6, 2.96 ERA) goes for Seattle vs Tomo Ohka (0-3, 6.40) for the now 36-55 Indians.

Heading into Sunday the Indians stood 16 games under .500, but despite that and a team that appears headed nowhere fast, the club evidently is not going to push the panic button of firing coach Eric Wedge or any of the other coaches on the team.

The AP had the following today about Wedge’s job being safe for the rest of the season:

Eric Wedge’s job is safe for the rest of the season.

Cleveland general manager Mark Shapiro said Sunday that the manager and his coaching staff would remain in their jobs with the last-place Indians.

“As I’ve said all along, the responsibility for the disappointments of this season don’t rest on one person,” Shapiro said. “The responsibility is spread equally throughout the players, the front office, Eric and his staff.

“I thought it was important for the second half to remove a potential distraction that exists from that speculation.”

The Indians, expected to contend in the AL Central Division, are 33-49, the worst record in the league.

Wedge, in his seventh season as Indians manager, is signed through 2010. The Indians are 529-525 under Wedge. They won the Central in 2007 and came within a game of reaching the World Series and Wedge won AL Manager of the Year.

So while the rest of the city seems to want Wedge’s head for what is going to be another lost season, the club does not appear ready to do anything till at the least the offseason, and who knows even then if anything will be done?

When the Indians break a losing streak, let’s just say they really know how to break a losing streak. For the first time since May 27th, the Tribe scored over 10 runs in a single game, pouring it on the equally as awful Oakland A’s in a 15-3 romp at Progressive Field in front of 26,557.

The night belonged to outfielder Shin-Soo Choo, who belted two homers and had a career-high 7 RBI. It’s his second career two homer game, and he was 4-for-5 with a stolen base to go along with it (13-for-13 in that department this season). There’s no denying that Choo has become a bright spot in this dark season, as following Friday’s game he’s hitting .301 with 12 homers and 53 RBI.

The win for the Indians breaks their five game winning streak, and considering they scored just 13 total runs in that five-game streak, it was nice to see an offense that was supposed to be much better than what it’s showed finally round into form, even if it’s just for one night.

Oakland though are by no means world beaters, as they are now 33-45, last place in the AL West. No one mistakes this team whatsoever for those great A’s teams in the late 80’s and early 90’s with players like Jose Conseco, Mark McGwire, Terry Steinbach and pitchers like Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley.

Instead, this A’s team rolls out players like Matt Holliday, an over the hill Jason Giambi, Kurt Suzuki, Ryan Sweeney, and more real no name players that will never make Oakland into any sort of force in the American League.

Back to the Indians, the club pounded out 15 hits with their 15 runs, and other than Choo’s two dingers, Travis Hafner also got in on the action, hitting a solo shot in the 2nd inning for the Indians first run after they trailed early 2-0. For Hafner, it was his 9th homer of the season.

After Oakland scored single runs in the first and second off of starter David Huff, the Indians offense caught fire, scoring the single run in the 2nd, three in the 3rd, four in the 4th, five in the fifth, and then single runs each in the 6th and 7th for the 15 spot on the scoreboard.

Huff went 6 innings, allowing three runs on 8 hits to earn his 4th win against 3 losses. He walked one and struck out four in the win.

Saturday at 7:05pm the team will celebrate the 4th with another fireworks display (Friday night’s was a Michael Jackson tribute that lasted about 14 minutes). Oakland will go with Vin Mazzaro (2-3, 2.95) vs Carl Pavano (6-7, 5.56) for the Tribe.

There was a slight ray of hope after watching Jeremy Sowers last Friday set down the Cincinnati Reds at Progressive Field. Sowers didn’t have that usual mid-game slump, and finally showed that he could throw more than five good innings of baseball. It was back to reality on Wednesday night, as Sowers had his usual “off” inning, allowing four runs in the 6th inning of a 1-1 game as the Indians were swept with a 6-2 loss.

Sowers lasted six innings, allowing five runs on 11 hits with one walk and two strikeouts. The big blow of the contest was a three-run bomb by catcher Ramon Castro to break open a tie game. Sowers is now 0-5 with a 6.23 ERA in six lifetime starts against the White Sox. Ouch.

Chicago used the three games here in Cleveland to batter Indians pitching, out scoring the Indians 23-9 in the sweep. It was the 5th time this season that the Indians were swept by the opposition. The team has now lost five in a row, 13 of 15 and 8 of their last 9 at home. They are now 1-5 in this 9-game homestand.

They scored their first run of the game in the 3rd, as a Grady Sizemore ground out got a run in. After Chicago went up 5-1 in the 6th, the Indians came back with a run on a Shin-Soo Choo double to make it 5-2. It was over after that, as the offense went into the shell that has killed them most of the year. They managed just five hits and left five on base.

The team now sits at 31-49, and are 13.5 back of the Tigers in the Central. The team gets an off day on Thursday, and then welcome in the equally as bad Oakland A’s for a July 4th weekend series.

The question now should not be IF the Indians are going to make a change at the manager spot – it’s WHEN.  Tuesday night not even their Cy Young award winner from a season ago, Cliff Lee, could stop the bleeding of a losing streak that just keeps growing, as Lee allowed a season-high-tying 7 runs in three and a half innings as the Indians fell to the White Sox 11-4 in a rain shortened game.

The team has now dropped 12 of their last 14, and 7 of their last 8 at Progressive Field, which saw another sparse crowd of just 14,793, most of which left during the second rain dealy.  The Tribe should really thank Mother Nature for ending this debacle, as there was a 32 minute waste of a dealy to start the game, a 30 minute dealy at about 8:45pm, and then the final dealy which was 57 minutes starting in the top of the 7th which in the end was the nail in the coffin.

You have to wonder just how many runs and hits the White Sox would have had off Indians pitching, as off of Lee, Mike Gosling and Matt Herges, Chicago put up 11 runs, 17 hits and pounded out three homers.  They scored in every inning except the 2nd and then the 7th, when the rains hit again and the game was called.

The only thing the team has left to do is get rid of manager Eric Wedge and GM Mark Shapiro’s spot with the franchise should also be carefully looked at, as this team is in one of the ugliest tailspins we’ve seen for some time.  Lee, their MVP from last year, was awful.  He got pounded for 7 runs on 11 hits with one walk and three strikeouts.

The Indians offense was paced by Travis Hafner, who homered, and Asdrubal Cabrera, who hit a double to score three runs to make it a 9-4 game in the fifth.  Hafner has hit in 9 of his last 12 games and has three homers and 9 RBI over that stretch.

The likely White Sox sweep will come Wednesday night at 7:05pm as Jeremy Sowers tries to follow up his solid previous Friday night outing vs the Reds.

Boy, that Chris Perez-Mark DeRosa deal sure looks like a winner.

Not.

At least not on Perez’s first night as an Indian, as the teams newest “pitcher” hit two batters and allowed four runs on two hits in his Indians debut in the latest version of the Bad News Bears – a 6-3 loss to the White Sox. Don’t let the final score fool you, as the White Sox never really broke a sweat after going up 2-0 after two innings.

They held the Indians offense at bay, and then in the 9th up 2-0 the team turned to Perez, who came over in the DeRosa trade late Saturday night. He started the inning by plunking Alexei Ramirez in the head, then hit Jermaine Dye on the hand. He then walked Jim Thome, a proceeded to allow a force out for a run, and a Chris Getz double to score a run, a wild pitch to bring a run home, and a single to finish off the fiasco.

Let’s just say the few thousand that were left at Progressive Field were not all that nice to Perez when he was pulled, showering him with a well deserved round of boo’s as he took his rightful place in the Indians dugout. The Indians did
avoid the shutout with three runs in the 9th (Shin-Soo Choo and Ryan Garko homers), but the game was well over at that point.

Of course Garko did have a chance to make it a game with the bases loaded and two outs in the 7th vs Gavin Floyd, but he ended the inning with a dribbler down the first base line that Floyd picked up and threw him out. One ump at first ruled it foul, but after a conference they made the correct call as it was fair, but just to hit the showers early, Eric Wedge argued the call and got booted.

Carl Pavano started, and allowed two runs on five hits in 7 innings, and wasn’t bad, but got no support at all. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out six, but was outdone by Floyd, who gave up five hits as well in 7.1, walking two and striking out five.

The Indians are now 31-47, their worst record this year in terms of being a full 16 games under .500. They have lost 6 of their last 7 at home, and 11 of their last 13. They will continue the homestand in front of a few friends and family on Tuesday night.

Yeah, this is yet another one that hurts.

The Indians looked like they were in cruise control Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, building a nice 7-0 lead vs a Cubs team that wasn’t exactly an offensive powerhouse. Instead with ace Cliff Lee on the mound, the club (as they have done oh so often this year) allowed the Cubs to come back, and with a Derek Lee homer in the 9th to tie it off Kerry Wood, the Tribe eventually lost in 10 to the Cubs 8-7.

There was plenty of talk in Cleveland on Thursday during the off day about Eric Wedge being shown the door, and nothing that took place on Friday afternoon in the Windy City is going to change that. The team is now 11 games under .500, and they have no answers whatsoever to solve all the issues that are making this one long summer of baseball.

After a rain dealy, the Tribe built a 6-0 lead with two three-run homers from Luis Valbuena and Victor Martinez. They went up 7-0 in the 4th, and from there it was all Cubs, as they chipped away with runs in the 5th and 6th to make it 7-2. Lee left the game after the 7th up 7-2, and it was disaster from there with the bullpen from hell.

Joe Smith allowed three runs, one earned in 0.2 in the 8th, and then Wood allowed the solo homer to Lee in the 9th to tie the game at 7. Luis Vizcaino was the loser, as he got to two outs in the bottom of the 10th, but then allowed a bad-hop single to Ryan Theriot to score the winning run.

There isn’t much you can say right now, other than the Wedge Watch is hotter than ever, and the team is simply going to be forced to make a change sooner rather than later. “It’s hard, but you can’t give in to it,” Indians manager Eric Wedge said. “Obviously, our bullpen has really been struggling on and off all year. When you have games like this, it’s about as bad as it can get.”

He’s right, it’s hard to believe this can get any worse. But then again, there’s always tomorrow.

While a 5-3 homestand vs the Rays and Yankees is a positive for the 2009 Indians, the team could have had so much more. Monday night in the series finale vs New York, the pitching staff was in self-destruct mode, allowing a season high 11 walks as the Yankees took the final game of the series 5-2.

Even Indians manager Eric Wedge said he was surprised that the Yankees didn’t score more runs in the win. Jeremy Sowers started, and looked great in the first five innings, allowing just one Yankee run. He was walking batters, but was able to get out of any danger when needed.

Then in the 6th the old Sowers must have come to the mound, as he quickly erased his good outing with walking the bases loaded. Relief pitcher Greg Aquino though came in and got the job done, not allowing a run to cross as the game stayed tied.

Not to be outdone through by Sowers, Aquino quickly gave the walks back to the Yankees, walking the bases loaded in the 7th. This time he would not escape, as he allowed a double to Nick Swisher and then a two-run single by Alex Rodriguez to make it a 5-1 game.

The Indians offense was held in check most of the night by Yankees starter Joba Chamberlain, who went a career-high 8 innings, allowing two runs on four hits, walking two and striking out five. Mariano Rivera was able to come in and dispatch the Indians in the 9th to earn his 11th save.

For the Indians, they fall to 22-31 on the season, and now will head to the road against AL Central foes the Twins and the White Sox before coming back home in just over a week to start another homestand, this time vs the Royals, Cardinals and Brewers.