Can we all just take a moment and admire Ryan’s prose?

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Cool. Thanks, Ryan!

I still love you baseball … even when you smack me and call me names.

ah hell.

so, wedge was holding masa in the event the indians took the late lead? indicative of his closer rankings?

Lewis pitched well. Sometimes, despite what they tell us, good hitters hit good pitches.

Hello everyone,

Another disappointing loss – it seems like all of our luck of late is bad. Every time we make a mistake (Gutz’s error in RF,) the other team scores. Every time we don’t take advantage of a great scoring opportunity, we always seem to lose the lead (Peralta’s DP.) Every mistake the other team makes, seems to work out against us anyway (Lugo’s poor bunt that moved the runners up and got him on board as well.) Every poorly hit ball by the other team, they still benefit (Lowrie’s near DP ground ball and his seeing-eye 2-run single.) Argh!

Sooner or later (preferably sooner,) we have to turn this around – it would be nice if CC finally pitched a good game.

Also, this story is not encouraging for the following reasons.

JoeBo’s weak excuse for facing the Red Sox when he knew he wasn’t 100%.

Wedge’s intentions of putting him back in the closer’s role when he returns and “is healthy.” He also wanted to see if Borowski could get out of that mess, since he’s “gotten out of worse,” which is why he left him in there.

So far, I’m not all that thrilled with Wedge’s decision-making this season, just like I often wasn’t 2 and 3 seasons ago. As I mentioned in the game thread, there’s only so far you should take “loyalty” and “decisive roles”; once it interferes with your ability to win ballgames, you should mix it up and not stick to “decisive roles” and “loyalty.”

And like I’ve said before, JoeBo is not signed beyond this year; Betancourt, Perez, Lewis, and Kobayashi are, so eventually, Wedge is going to have move past JoeBo – why not start now and stick with it, especially if it’s working?

I really can’t see why you’d take Betancourt out of the closer’s role if he’s doing well to very well in that role to put the enigmatic Borowski back in there. I’m not sure Borowski’s own teammates are that confident in his ability to get the save; I know most of the fans aren’t (not that our opinion should really matter, but even watching the other Indians, I bet they even think, “Here goes JoeBo again,” when he gets in one of his own messes and coughs up runs.)

Come on Wedge – wake up and smell the coffee! :-)

Just my 2 cents – no offense.

I’m a bit scared.

I think relief is, of all the uncharted territory in baseball, one of the scariest. The statistics don’t make any sense and don’t translate well year to year and everyone within baseball is obsessed with reliever “mentalities.”

Frankly, I’m afraid bullpen destruction is an insidious force that systematically wrecks a group of 6 pitchers once it’s taken hold, with a level of disregard to their ability or track record. I’d be interested to see if terrible bullpens aren’t sometimes composed of decent pitchers that got sucked into a spiral of doom in the first few months of the season.

I’m just scared. I think the bullpen is sick and I don’t know that there’s any cure, except for “get better, pitchers.” And I’m not sure that’s possible.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY INDIANS

My take on Jensen’s pitching tonight:
He pitched to lowrie and got him swinging on 3 identical fastballs (at the same, low/outside spot that Varitek took him deep with). Then he got one swinging strike by Varitek (or maybe it was 2) on the exact same pitch.
Before the homerun pitch, my friend and I, watching the game, had the following exchange:
Him: That’s a nice pitch.
Me: Yeah, he’s thrown that four times already and gotten them to swing over it!
Him: You gotta wonder how long that’s gonna last.
Me: Yeah, he’s gotta mix something up here, I’m not sure he could get that same pitch by him again.
[As Victor sets up at the exact same spot] Me: Uh-oh, it looks like he’s going back there..

The rest is history. Basically what I’m saying is he threw the same 88 MPH fastball (granted with what looked like some pretty nice movement) at the same spot 5 or 6 times to 2 consecutive batters and Victor should have known better than to call for it again. At least throw the batter off balance or something!
Anyone else see it the way I saw it?

Yeah, the bullpen was bad. But how about the offense? For the homestand, they were 40/164 with 5 doubles, 1 HR (.244 AVG/.293 SLG). The last extra-base hit was a double in the eighth inning on Sunday, 18 innings ago. The only HR, a solo shot by Peralta, was back on 4/11.

Meanwhile, they have 21 walks, so it doesn’t appear that the offensive miscues are a result of impatience.

Here’s how they scored their 24 runs for the homestand
On a single: 15
On a double: 2 (on 4/11)
On a HR: 1
BB: 2
HBP: 1
WP: 1

It’s probably just one of those things. Just a coincidence. A run of bad luck. A meaningless sequence of events with no common causality. Right?

I hope it’s just bad luck, but I’m unpleasantly reminded of a recent season when the Indians seemed to lose all the close games. Sometimes it’s little things that beat you in close games—a bad pitch location, a shortstop who doesn’t get to a ball (???), an error. You can call those bad luck, but it can also be the difference between a really good team (which the Sox appear to be) and one that just doesn’t quite get there (I really hope that’s not the Indians 2008 version).

Two things that really struck me last night. Victor Martinez is great (and is really trying to put the team on his back). He had some of the most brilliant at-bats I’ve seen lately and just seemed to be willing the team to win. And, he produced!!!

Travis Hafner’s at-bat in the 9th was the WORST at-bat I’ve ever seen. He looked like he’d been hypnotized.

P.S. Do we have to add “free Masa” to the “free Marte” drumbeat?

Was at the game last night. Too many annoying Boston fans, not enough Indians runs.

Hafner’s AB in the ninth was pretty ridiculous. I have no idea why his bat didn’t leave his shoulders and I don’t think I want to know.

While I realize the Cobra’s effectiveness is limited to some algorithim of times he faces each batter, he only had thrown around 80 pitches after 6 innings. Was anyone else at least a little surprised we didn’t see him come out in the 7th on account of our thin back end?

I don’t think it’s fair to crucify Travis for one bad AB (lord knows he’s had entire weeks that looked like that). He has looked much better overall the past few games.

here: http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/G/armando-galarraga.shtml
in case anyone wants to know who’s will be complete game 2-hitting us tonight. i looked at the preview and thought detroit was trotting out the big cat.

and yes, i no longer know how to post a link on this site.

The bullpen will look a lot better if CC and the offense get untracked

Too early to worry. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, yada, yada, yada… But really.