Indians Confidential

A big part about the Indians final month or so of the 2009 season will be about seeing where the pitching will be headed for the 2010 season. Sunday saw would could be a glimpse of the future, as Fausto Carmona, a guy the Indians simply have to have pitch well now and in the future, threw well in the teams 6-1 win at Progressive Field over the Mariners.

Carmona, who has had quite the season from the teams number two starter to Arizona rookie ball to basic afterthought in the rotation, threw 7 innings, allowing one run on five hits. He walked one and struck out eight, and his only mistake was a homer allowed to future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr.

Otherwise it was all Tribe, who won the season series from the Mariners 6-4, and took two of three in the quick three-game set. They got a homer from Jhonny Peralta, and were led by a big four-run sixth that was highlighted by a couple of key hits including Matt Laporta’s double and an Andy Marte single that drove in runs.

The Indians outhit the Mariners 10-6, and with the win improve to 54-69 on the season, dropping Seattle to 63-61. The team is now out on the road for a 9-game trip, starting Monday night in KC.

The opportunities were there Tuesday night for the Indians, but has been the case plenty of times for the 2009 season, the club let them slip through their fingers. The Tribe lost 5-4 to the Angels in the first of a three-game set, but it wasn’t due to a lack of chances.

The best shot came in the 7th, as the Indians were able to take a 5-3 game and make it 5-4 with the bases loaded with one out. Enter Travis Hafner, who despite having a decent comeback year has not been the same player the team thought they were getting when he got his monster deal last season.

Hafner, who had scrapped all night, hit a slow roller to second that ended up as a 4-6-3 double play. The play at first was close, but Hafner was out, and the Indians best threat of the night was over. The team went quietly in the 8th and 9th, and the team dropped to 51-67 on the season.

LA took a 3-1 lead off Fausto Carmona with a single run in the first and two in the second, then went up 5-1 with two more runs in the third. The Indians rallied to draw within 5-3 with two runs in the third, but then the only other run came in the 7th, but it should have been more.

Carmona was not very good, allowing five runs, three earned on 10 hits in 5 innings. He gave up four strikeouts and two walks as well. He falls to 2-8 on the season, and while the rest of this year will all be about getting him right for 2010 and beyond, it would be nice to see him more consistant.

The Indians did pound out 12 hits in the loss. Asdrubal Cabrera led the way, going 4-for-5 and he’s now hit in 12 straight games, a career-high. The two teams do it again Wednesday night at 7:05pm.

C.C. Sabathia’s first 7 and a half seasons were spent hearing cheers from fans at Progressive Field, as he helped the Indians do their best to win games. Saturday night for the first time in his career, he was back in Cleveland in another uniform, the uniform of the New York Yankees.

Sabathia got some applause, but no matter how the crowd reacted, it really didn’t matter, as the Yankee offense did more than enough for him against Fausto Carmona to earn his 5th win of the season as the Yanks beat the Indians 10-5. C.C. went 7 innings, allowing three runs on five hits, walking three and striking out eight.

Carmona was pretty awful. He threw four innings, and never showed much, allowing 7 runs, four earned, on 8 hits, walking two and striking out two. He was supposed to be the number two man in the Tribe rotation, but has only one win in his last 8 outings, and falls to 2-5 on the season.

New York put up a pair in the second on two long homers that began their hit parade. The first homer was from Jorge Posada, the second a bomb from Nick Swisher that gave the team the 2-0 lead. The undoing of Carmona was the 4th, as he allowed nine Yankees to the plate as Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon and Robinson Cano all got RBI hits to make it a 7-0 lead.

After not putting up a hit in the first four innigs, the Tribe finally got on the board with two runs in the 5th. Ryan Garko and Jamey Carroll each had RBI hits to make it a 7-2 game. New York though answered right back, as Damon hit a ground out that scored Brett Gardner to make it 8-2.

A Grady Sizemore homer made it 8-3, and then the teams traded two runs each in the 9th, with the Tribe runs coming from a Shin-Soo Choo homer and Ben Francisco double to close the scoring at 10-5.

The bright spot for the Indians was the relief throwing of Tomo Ohka, who was able to save the bullpen by throwing five innings, allowing three runs on five hits with a walk and three strikeouts.

The team has lost two in a row after their four-game win streak. Sunday now at 21-30 they will put out Carl Pavano (5-4, 5.50) vs Phil Hughes at 12:40 p.m.

He was 0-for-18 coming to the plate. None of that mattered. For Victor Martinez and the Indians, it was a night of being a hero, and for at least one night, Martinez got the job done. For the Indians, it was by far their best win of the season, and for a season that appears lost, it was at least one night of happiness at Progressive Field.

Martinez’s two-out, two-strike, single between second and short scored two runs, as the Indians overcame a stunning 10-0 deficit to beat the Tampa Bay Rays 11-10 in front of a spirited crowd at the Prog. The win puts the team at 18-28, still 10 games under .500, but hey, it’s better than 12 games – right?

The Rays built the 10-0 lead off a wild Fausto Carmona, who couldn’t find the plate. He lasted just 1.1 innings, allowing five earned runs on just three hits. He also walked five and struck out three. He ended up throwing 60 pitches, and only got 30 over for strikes. He was pretty bad to say the least, and left the team in a bad hole. They went to Jensen Lewis, who in 1.2 innings allowing another five runs on three hits, with two walks.

The credit from the pitching has to go to Jeremy Sowers, who went five scoreless innings, walking just one and striking out one while the offense finally started getting some hits and some runs. The big inning for the Tribe was the 9th, when down 10-4 entering the inning they piled up 7 runs, mostly again due to walks.

The team sent 11 batters to the plate, drawing five walks, getting just three hits, but pushing 7 runs across. Ryan Garko hit his second homer of the night in the inning, and by the time Martinez got to the plate, the crowd was on their feet waiting for the biggest comeback of the season to be complete.

He delivered.

Off of former Mets thrower Jason Isringhausen, who was making his first all-time relief outing, Ben Francisco walked, Jamey Carroll walked, Grady Sizemore walked to make it 11-10, then Martinez singled to finish off the win with two runs to make it an 11-10 win.

Yes, at least for one night the Indians played like the team we’ve grown to love for their miracle comebacks over the years. The issues remain with Carmona, a leaky bullpen, and an offense that never seems to get runs across when they need them, but the bottom line is this – it was a win, and for this team this year – they will take it.

Indians radio voice Mike Hegan said it best in the Saturday night Tribe 4-0 loss to the Tigers.  “You’ve got offensive execution, defensive exection, and pitching execution – and right now the Indians are doing none of it right.”  And with that, the team now sits at 11-20, and I will make my first formal plea of the season:

It’s time for Eric Wedge to find employment elsewhere.  And you can take Mark Shapiro with you.

One playoff appearance in 7 seasons, and this team looks NOTHING like a playoff team in 2009.  Their starting pitching is really not that good (minus Lee and Carmona), the hitting is weaker than we all thought, and the defense stinks.  It all equals up to a team that to me has the making of a club that is nowhere near being a “championship” club, as they advertised in their marketing campaign this offseason.

Instead, this club has little to offer.  Saturday night against Cy Young, er I mean Edwin Jackson, they simply seemed to take hacks at the plate, made contact a couple of times, but in the end, had 7 hits and for the second straight night went 9 innings without pushing a run across home plate.

You go back to the last game in Boston on Thursday, and they have scored three runs in three games.  For the second straight night, they tried to put together an inning, but couldn’t get a bunt down, and after two tries by David Dellucci with two on and no outs, he hit a line drive to third that ended up doubling up Shin-Soo Choo at second base.

Fausto Carmona went 6.2 innings, allowing two runs on four hits.  He walked six and struck out four, but once again, got no offensive support, so it wouldn’t have really mattered if he would have given up two runs, or 22 runs.  If the Indians did have any hope of coming back, they of course went to the awful bullpen, where Rafael Betancourt allowed two runs on three hits on 1.1 innings.

Other than that, at least the 33,000 were able to walk out of the ballpark with a Cliff Lee Cy Young bobblehead.  Better enjoy it, there won’t be one next year.

Leave it to a former Indian minor league player to end what was yet another awful April for the Tribe. You probably don’t remember Jon Van Early, but he was in the Tribe’s minor league system for a number of years, only to never get a shot. Tonight, he took a shot against his former team, sending a Jensen Lewis pitch 420 feet into centerfield for a game-winning homer that sent the Indians to a 6-5 loss.

The loss hurt in a number of ways. The team blew what seemed to be a safe 5-0 lead entering the 6th. They had a shot in the bottom of the 10th down 6-5 as Mark DeRosa hit a long out to center that could have tied the game, and once again, Lewis couldn’t keep the ball in the park, sending the team to their toughest loss of the season.

Fausto Carmona started and looked great for the Indians. He at one point set down 12 straight Red Sox, but then with a 5-0 lead started to wither away in the 6th, as Boston got two back to make it 5-2. In the 7th, he got the first two outs, but then a single and a walk and he was out of the game.

The Indians got out of that inning, but in the 8th, the Sox made the terrible Tribe bullpen pay once again, this time in the form of Rafael Betancourt, who allowed three runs to cross, which eventually tied the game at five. Lewis saved Bentancourt that inning, but the Indians couldn’t mount a rally, and eventually Lewis gave up the game-winning HR to his former roommate in Van Early.

The game started out great for the Indians, as they looked like they were ready to win a home series, go 5-4 on the homestand, and get out of April with two straight wins. That of course is before the roof caved in on them. DeRosa and Kelly Shoppach each homered for the Indians to help them get to 5-0, but it was all for not.

The Indians outplayed the Red Sox in the three-game set much like they outplayed the Yankees before the homestand started. Just like that series though, the team was unable to pull out some tough wins, that would now have their record look a lot better than 8-14.

So about the only positive is that April is now over. The team cannot start over, but they can start fresh on Friday night in Detroit against the team that is tied for first in the division with the White Sox at 11-10.

If May is as bad as April, it’s going to be quite the long summer for Indians fans.

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.