Game 122: Indians 4, Mariners 3 (11 Innings)

by Ryan on Aug 22, 2009 11:18 PM EDT in Game Recaps

After giving up three first-inning runs, Aaron Laffey and the rest of the Indians pitching staff held the Mariners off the board. Aaron had his share of troubles, giving up 10 base runners in his seven innings of work. But he kept the Indians in the game, and when Michael Saunders couldn't catch a relatively routine Luis Valbuena fly ball, the Indians were in a position to tie the game.

The most dramatic change as the season has gone on has been the bullpen's metamorphosis from basket case to a genuinely promising group of young relievers. Chris Perez, who has quickly become the top setup man on the team, recovered after giving up a leadoff double to retire the next three Mariners in the eighth. All three outs (two strikeouts and a fly ball) came with a runner on third. After Wood pitched the ninth, Eric Wedge went with matchup baseball, bringing in Tony Sipp, then Joe Smith, and finally Rafael Perez. Perez has been torched by left-handers this season, gave up a hard-hit single to the left-handed Saunders, but somehow got Ichiro to pop up harmlessly on a 3-0 pitch to end the top of the eleventh.

The Indians finally broke through in the bottom of the inning, when Luis Valbuena hammered a walk-off homer down the right field line.

Next Up: Carmona vs. Hernandez, 1:05 PM

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via www.fangraphs.com

HIghest WPA		Lowest WPA
Luis Valbuena	.509	Jhonny Peralta	-.228
Joe Smith	.230	Asdrubal Cabrera	-.214
Kerry Wood	.143	Shin-Soo Choo	-.148

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on a former tribe note from right behind the rockies dugout. I saw garko have a two homer night, the second of which was an absolute bomb. Betencourt pitched one pitch for a flyout and herges stunk up the joint. But I had my eye on my blackberry and the out of town scoreboard all night. Go tribe.

by kjhill42 on Aug 23, 2009 12:20 AM EDT reply actions

Was out all day at an 8 year olds soccer tournament, boys finished runners up so still smiling from that when I checked in to see how the tribe got on.

One day I'll get over to watch the Tribe play

by new zealand tribe fan on Aug 23, 2009 12:53 AM EDT reply actions

I doubt anyone is going to lament for Eric Wedge when he is gone, but I hope the next manager works the bullpen as well as he does. I watch enough other teams to realize that there are a lot of managers that make poor decisions night in and night out (even on winning teams).

by Toxicadam on Aug 23, 2009 12:59 AM EDT reply actions

right now i’m not sure there’s a wrong approach with the bullpen outside of just running one guy too hard… you have a bunch of young guys with high k, high fb tendencies (minus jsmith and perez1)… so is there really such a thing as a BAD move? outside of throwing chris perez five days in a row?

by gorilla_baller on Aug 23, 2009 12:45 PM EDT up reply actions

Must we try to take the shine off of anything pro-Wedge? I’m with Adam: I’ll be glad when he’s gone, but I don’t think he does everything poorly.

Everybody should get ice cream every day.

by Joel D on Aug 23, 2009 12:57 PM EDT up reply actions

i’m not saying it was done poorly… i’m just saying it’s like gallagher saying do i want the HUGE sledgehammer to destroy this watermelon or do i was the HUGER sledgehammer? they’ll both get it done in most cases… i just don’t think it’s terribly difficult to make some of these decisions

by gorilla_baller on Aug 23, 2009 1:00 PM EDT up reply actions

In case anyone think Lofgren is still a prospect, I saw him get lit up in Columbus last night and looked horrible. He went 4 inning and gave up 10 runs, including a grand slam and a 3-run homer. He was getting hit hard all night and only had one strikeout. That performance brought his ERA up to 5.50 in Columbus this year. Although he’s been pretty good against lefties (2.65 ERA, 2.4 K/BB, 1 HR) he’s been getting killed by righties (6.20 ERA, 1.68 K/BB, 13 HR).

by Buckeye Brad on Aug 23, 2009 9:29 AM EDT reply actions

I was looking forward to this afternoon’s game, then I saw it was Carmona. I stumbled on the pitch f/x breakdown of Carmona’s last start, and it doesn’t look pretty. I’m not sure if this is a product of their pitch identification algorithm, but they have Fausto throwing almost exclusively his 4-seam fastball and his changeup, without a huge amount of separation between them (this was a game he gave up more fly balls than grounders). Furthermore he was wild and the velocity on his 4-seamer was showing a steady decline throughout the game. Doesn’t look too encouraging to me…maybe a go-round with the not so talented M’s offense is what he needs.

by APV on Aug 23, 2009 11:25 AM EDT reply actions

Yeah, I thought he was awful in his last start, and not much better than the previous one. In the previous one, I commented that he pretty much junked his sinker/two-seamer after 3 innings because he just can’t keep it on the plate. To me, his improvement has been limited to returning to what he was last year and early this year…nowhere near where he was in ’07.

However, keep in mind the disclaimer on the site:

Pitch classifications provided by the Gameday Algorithm and are unfortunately often inaccurate.

Not sure exactly how many sinkers he threw, but it was more than 6.

by TribeJay on Aug 23, 2009 11:52 AM EDT up reply actions

Yeah, I thought he was awful in his last start, and not much better than the previous one.

Whoops – should be “in” the previous start.

by TribeJay on Aug 23, 2009 11:53 AM EDT up reply actions

Headcase or hurt?

There is a great need for a sarcasm font

by stuart dean on Aug 23, 2009 12:06 PM EDT up reply actions

I don’t know – fangraphs actually has game chart pitch f/x data going back to a few games in 2007, so it is possible to make some comparisons to when Fausto was Ice-Cold Fausto. One of the things you can see is that recently he has been abandoning his power-sinker. But it also looks like he is having a hard time controlling the horizontal movement on his fastball. Whereas in his 2007 starts you often see a scattering of his power sinker in terms of vertical movement, they were pretty tightly clustered in terms of horizontal movement. I don’t know if this is mechanical, mental, injury related, or all three – but it does seem to be a problem.

by APV on Aug 23, 2009 12:23 PM EDT up reply actions