Indians 4, Royals 9
Indians fall to 45-53
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Do not let the score fool you, this game was not that close. Despite a three-run Francisco Lindor home run late, the Cleveland Indians continued their streak of being dominated by division opponents. This time the bad night came courtesy of Edinson Volquez who went 6.0 innings with only allowing a single solo home run from Carlos Santana.
The other three Tribe runs – two of which were credited to Volquez – came on the first pitch Royals reliever Joe Blanton threw. Lindor hit a towering home run of Blanton that brought at least a little bit of excitement to an otherwise dreary night of baseball.
Early on in the game, it did almost look like the Indians would put up a fight offensively, but no runs came of it. Two singles in the first inning ended up resulting in nothing thanks to a double play brought on by an ill-advised sacrifice fly attempt by Jason Kipnis. Kudos for being aggressive I guess, but when Lorenzo Cain catches a ball just a shade past shortstop, you do not try to run home and beat his cannon arm.
Similarly, in the top of the second, the Indians were presented with a chance to score but failed. Carlos Santana led the inning off with his 11th home run of the season, followed by a Brandon Moss walk. Two straight fly outs from Yan Gomes and Michael Bourn, then two straight singles from Giovanny Urshela and Kipnis put the Indians in the dreaded position of having bases loaded with no outs. Predictably, Lindor grounded out and the inning ended with nothing more than a single run.
Volquez looked on edge for the much of the game, even requiring a few long discussions with his catcher despite being up 7-1 at one point, but it did not stop him from mowing down Tribe batters after those first couple of innings.
Unfortunately, Cody "probably still not done regressing" Anderson continued just about where he left off from his last start against the Milwaukee Brewers. This time around, he allowed seven earned runs on two hits in 5.2 innings. The only thing keeping him in the game as long as he did was how efficiently he sucked. Through those five innings, he only threw 81 pitches, 54 for strikes.
The bullpen did not help matters much either, with Marc Rzepbcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz giving up two runs on three hits in his ever-so-short appearance.
It was nice seeing the Indians make a tiny blip in their win expectancy chart late in a game for once, but it still was not a pretty one. The three first-inning runs were a crushing blow to a team that is about as low as you can get in baseball in a five-game stretch, and they could not dig themselves out.
And we get to do it all again tomorrow.
Win Expectancy Chart
Source: FanGraphs
Roll Call
Total comments: 124
Total commenters: 26
# | Commenter | # Comments |
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1 | PyroKinesis | 25 |
2 | JulioBernazard | 10 |
3 | bschwartz | 9 |
4 | wraith_ | 8 |
5 | DomDomDom5 | 7 |
6 | Tribe2013 | 7 |
7 | BuenosAires_Dawg | 6 |
8 | brownsblue45 | 6 |
9 | westbrook | 6 |
10 | NCTRIB | 4 |
11 | Andrew Kinsman | 4 |
12 | Keezus G | 4 |
13 | V-Mart Shopper | 3 |
14 | Ryan Y | 3 |
15 | Matt R. Lyons | 3 |
16 | PaduaDSP | 3 |
17 | Denver Tribe Fan | 2 |
18 | Schneau | 2 |
19 | LosIndios | 2 |
20 | palcal | 2 |
21 | mainstreetfan | 2 |
22 | odradek | 2 |
23 | weareallkipnisses | 1 |
24 | ihavenothing | 1 |
25 | Zaza Braggins | 1 |
26 | Ron Y. | 1 |