Game 45: Reds 4, Indians 3 (11 Innings)

by Ryan on May 24, 2009 6:16 PM EDT in Game Threads

Cliff Lee made a couple mistakes that turned out to be the be the difference in the game. He hung a change to Jerry Hairston in the first inning; that pitch ended up in the left field seats. In the fourth, he threw too good a pitch for an 0-2 count to Alex Gonzalez, who singled home the Reds' second run. Johnny Cueto went an inning longer than Lee, but otherwise had a similar outing.

Gonzalez, who would also drive in the third and fourth runs of the game, came into this series hitting .178/.227/.278. Obviously the rest of baseball knows something that the Indians don't.

The Indians tied the game in the seventh on a phantom interference call. Grady Sizemore tripled to drive in Luis Valbuena, and then tried to go home when the throw got by third baseman Adam Rosales. Grady was tagged out at home, but the third base umpire called Rosales for interefence. The replays I saw didn't show anything that I would deem interference. So the game continued, and eventually went into extra innings.

After four excellent innings from Matt Herges and Rafael Betancourt, making it ten straight scoreless innings by the bullpen, Luis Vizcaino, who had thrown two innings the night before, was called on to pitch the eleventh. Ramon Hernandez singled to lead off the inning. His pinch-runner was sacrificed to second, setting up Alex Gonzalez to double home the winning run. Gonzalez went 7-for-12 in the series; in his previous 90 at-bats, he had collected 16 hits.

Next Up: The Indians renew their contentious rivalry with Tampa Bay. Price vs. Carmona, 6:05 PM.

via www.fangraphs.com

Highest WPA		Lowest WPA
Rafael Betancourt	.286	Luis Vizcaino	-.357
Grady Sizemore	.207	Victor Martinez	-.238
Matt Herges	.200	Asdrubal Cabrera	-.185

Tweet Comment 6 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

Vizcaino didn’t have anywhere near the stuff he had yesterday, as could be seen from his very first pitch. Nowadays, my mentality is to ascribe every loss to some mistake I think Wedge has made, and so I started right away thinking, why not Rundles…. I’m in a bad karma phase. I think I’ll just have another beer.

by MTF on May 24, 2009 7:27 PM EDT reply actions

Being double digits below .500 is just depressing. At some point we have to turn that aspect of our affliction around.

by Toxicadam on May 24, 2009 11:02 PM EDT reply actions

The Indians are reaching hard decision time. The injuries make the projections for the rest of this season harder and harder.

by APV on May 24, 2009 11:13 PM EDT reply actions

Just perused the game thread and saw just a little discussion about this…did anyone else not like the way Grady went after that ball?

I know it looked like he was playing in a little to attempt to cut off the run at the plate, and I don’t think he probably could have caught it, but he did get turned around and backed off going to the wall for it. He played it as if he didn’t realize the winning run was on second base.

Again, I don’t think he would’ve gotten it, but we’ve seen him play Superman before. If that ball drops, the game is over, and it just didn’t look like he approached it with that frame of mind.

by TribeJay on May 25, 2009 10:58 AM EDT reply actions

I thought the same thing, and agree with everything you said. Probably a pretty minuscule chance that he catches it, but a bigger chance than him getting the guy at the plate once it drops.

Il faut d'abord durer.

by CU Adam on May 25, 2009 1:32 PM EDT up reply actions

I suppose he could have dove and crashed into the wall, but I still don’t think he makes the catch. It looked to me like there was a point where he realized he wouldn’t come down with it and kind of got dejected that they lost the game, so he slowed up

by Roger Dorn on May 25, 2009 10:17 PM EDT up reply actions