The series:  Visited the Royals (win, win, win) and hosted the Yankees (win, win, loss, loss).

The big story:  There were several, and perhaps the biggest was simply that we had a strong week, winning five of seven to move into second place.   But the most significant development for the 2008 season going forward was C.C. Sabathia's total U-turn from trainwreck to dominant starter.  Sabathia gave up just one run over 14 innings, striking out 11 hapless Royals in the first game and tossing an 8-inning gem in which only five Yankees reached base in the second.  This pair of consecutive starts was one of the best of Sabathia's career, surpassed in 2007 only by his back-to-back shutouts in June.  At the same time, his first four starts were so horrendous (13.50 ERA) that even after the extreme two-start bounce-back, his ERA is still the worst in the majors at 7.88 – even worse than Barry Zito's.  Sabathia's excellence ended up being of no real immediate consequence, as the Indians turned the first one into a 15-1 rout, then handed Sabathia a tough 1-0 loss in the second.

In other news:  Jake Westbrook unexpectedly went on the Disabled List with a lower-back muscle strain.  Initially expected to miss only a few starts, he's now expected to be out for a full month after his symptoms persisted for a full week.  His injury, combined with a rain-delay-induced double-header, resulted in a flurry of call-ups and send-downs as the Indians played with an extra outfielder for a few days (Ben Francisco), swapped out for a spot starter (Jeremy Sowers) on Saturday, swapped out for another extra outfielder (Brad Snyder) on Sunday, and finally on Monday swapped out for Aaron Laffey, who will join the rotation at least for the following week.  Both starters made fine 2008 debuts against the Yankees, with Laffey looking significantly stronger than Sowers even though the box scores will claim the opposite.

Lee deepened his improbable run as the game's most effective pitcher with a complete game shutout, as the national media joined Indians fans in collectively dropping their jaws.  The lineup blew up for 24 runs in the first two games but then fizzled with just 14 runs in the next five, a trend led by Casey Blake, who posted a 2125 OPS in two games against the Royals but just a 350 OPS starting all four games against the Yankees.  The post-Borowski bullpen started to come together as Kobayashi asserted himself with a few strong setup performances while Betancourt breezed through his first two Save opportunities, making the closer's job look suspiciously un-different from his old setup-man gig.

Adam Miller finally made his official 2008 debut in Buffalo, following a few weeks rehabbing a blister and a few weeks in extended spring training.  Miller pitched nine scoreless innings in two starts while continuing to build up his pitch count, and his velocity was intact even if his peripherals weren't.  Miller's return, coupled with Brian Slocum's solid start, suggests that the Indians remain an absurd eight-deep in big-league-ready starting pitchers, even after putting Westbrook on the DL and shipping Sean Smith off to Colorado.  At the same time, David Huff, 39th overall draft pick in 2006, overcame a rocky first two starts to pitch his third straight gem for the Akron Aeros, allowing just one run (on a solo shot) and 13 baserunners against 19 strikeouts over the three games, and he picked off a couple guys, too.  If Huff continues to emerge, that may further tempt the Indians to move Miller into the big-league bullpen.

Post of the week:  Now taking nominations.

Who fed it: Sabathia dominated in two starts while Lee was near-spotless in his one.  Julio excelled in two low-leverage outings, while Kobayashi and Betancourt settled into their new roles; the three relievers faced 32 batters and got 29 outs, including two erased on double-plays, and allowed no one past first base.  Blake had the best all-around numbers of any hitter on the week but was abysmal against the Yankees.  Victor batted .375, achieving a 902 OPS on the week with (once again) no home runs.  Dellucci and Peralta each combined a solid average with a pair of home runs.  Seemingly competing for at bats, Michaels and Gutierrez both accounted for a major chunk of our otherwise anemic offense against the Yankees, the former batting .400 while the latter slugged .600, and they looked damned good in the field, too.  Special mention must be given to Aaron Laffey, who no-hit the Yankees for five innings and, through sheer horrendous luck alone, gave up four runs in the 6th when he deserved to give up, at most, one. Absolute Best:  Sabathia.  Relative Best:  Lee.

Who ate it:  It's hard to say what the worst part of Ryan Garko's week was, the .042 average, the .115 OBP or the .083 slugging.  I'm going with the .042 average, because he was just one walk short of decent walk rate, and hey, his isolated power is almost 2.0!  Unfortunately, even those minimal contributions were mostly confined to last Tuesday's game, and Garko's line for the last five games was .000/.048/.000.  Aside from Garko, the rest of the Indians put up a more-than-respectable .302/.360/.451 line for the week.  Hafner continued his harrowing march to the bottom, with week-by-week OPS totals of 824, 761, 592 and (this week) 512 — or, if you prefer, he has a 559 OPS over his last 17 games.  Absolute Worst:  Garko.  Relative Worst:  Garko.  Twenty Other Kinds Of Worst:  Garko.  And Yet The Guy Who Really Makes Me Suicidal Is Still:  Hafner.

The other guys:  We made Wang look like Bob Gibson.  The rest of it, pretty fuzzy, maybe I'll fill it in later, does anybody really care about this section?

False alarms:

• Cliff Lee, greatest pitcher in the universe.
  
• Chien-Ming Wang, second greatest.
• C.C. Sabathia, third greatest (he's actually about tenth).
• Ben Francisco in a Cleveland uniform.
  
• Ryan Garko, worst hitter ever.
• Jhonny Peralta on web gems last night.
• J-Mike, serviceable big-league hitter.

Open questions:

• How long will Jake be out, and once he returns, will he be totally awesome, or merely awesome?
• How long can Chicago stay at the top of the standings?
  
• Since any blogger writing in his/her parents' basement in his/her underwear can notice when a reliever's velocity is down 3-5 mph, and might actually write about it without the team's permission, what exactly do we need newspaper columnists for?
• Too soon to start panicking about losing Cliff Lee after 2010?
• When the hell is Slider's birthday, anyway?
  
• Can Kobayashi confuse hitters with his deathballs all season like Okajima did?
• Can Julio be useful?
• How long will we keep marching Stomp Lewis out there with reduced velocity?
• Just how bad will the game have to be going before we see Mastny or Breslow again, and how bad will they be after a 15-day layoff?
• Has anyone noticed that Eddie Mujica is in his last option year?  Does anyone care?
• How much better can Laffey be than he was last year?  Is his ceiling is higher than we think?
• Can Steel Rafi get settled and find some semblance of his 2007 consistency?
• How many relievers would have to be failing completely for Adam Miller to get the call to the big-league bullpen?  Do we even want to see him there?
• Could Sowers be on the block soon?
• Is it really possible for Marte to spend 120 more days on the roster than Ben Francisco this season, and yet still get fewer at bats?
  
• Is Wedge basically just testing Marte to see how long it takes him to get an obviously bad attitude, at which point they ship him out?
• Will Shapiro fall for this kind of nonsense again?

via www.fangraphs.com

It all changed so quickly in the sixth inning. Aaron Laffey entered the sixth working on a no-hitter, and pitching very confidently in his 2008 debut. He was working both sides of the plate, breaking bats, inducing weak dribblers, and in general being unpredictable.

So what changed in the sixth? Did he suddenly get wild, or start thinking too much? Not really. The inning started with two, for lack of a better word, lucky hits. Then Bobby Abreu got the only solid hit of the inning, a line drive single. After that it was only a matter of putting the ball in play. Laffey couldn't finish the inning despite pitching fairly well, if that can be said of a four-run inning.

When playing the Yankees, and especially when facing the back end of their rotation, one has to take advantage of the starter and the middle relief, because the game essentially ends if they have lead after the seventh inning. And the Indians had opportunities all game long...until the eighth inning.

The Game

Unlike most sites, we were "lucky" in that the game we'd have been Game Threading was delayed by rain.

The game has been rescheduled for today, 6:10 p.m., with Carmona still scheduled to start.  Today's originally scheduled 8:10 p.m. game has been pushed back to 9:40 p.m., with Lee still scheduled to start.

The Rotation

Jeremy Sowers will make the spot-start on Saturday, filling in for Jake Westbrook.  This is a mild surprise, as Aaron Laffey has slightly better numbers so far this season for Buffalo.  Wedge has said that Francisco is likely to be sent down to make room for Sowers ("I told Benny it's more than likely just a couple days.")

An unfortunate side-effect of the postponement of last night's game is that, if two games are actually played tonight, the Indians will need not just one spot starter on Saturday, but also a second spot starter on Monday.  With no rest day until May 5, the Indians would have to start Carmona on short rest on Monday in order to keep the five-man rotation in order, even with Sowers added.

Instead, the Indians will need another spot-starter on Monday, and that game's starter will also be lined up to take the mound the next time he's needed, on Saturday, May 3.  In other words, if both games are played tonight, then Sowers likely will be sent down to after this Saturday's game, to be replaced by another pitcher who can start on Monday and the following Saturday.

One would think that would be Laffey, but Laffey is scheduled to start for Buffalo tonight, which would put him on short rest for a Monday start.  Tantalizingly, Monday will be Adam Miller's turn in the rotation in Buffalo.  Miller emerged from March's rehab and April's extended spring training to make his official 2008 debut last night, pitching five innings and giving up three runs, though none earned, throwing 84 pitches and looking "completely healthy."  He has never pitched in the majors.

After May 3, the fifth starter could be skipped until May 12, but if Sowers is demoted this Sunday, he will not be eligible to return until May 17.  Given the Indians' fondness for playing with a 27-man roster, with four reasonably good spot-starter options in Buffalo and on the 40-man roster – these three plus Brian Slocum – we may well see three different spot starters over the next month if Westbrook remains out that long.

Westbrook is eligible to return from the DL as early as May 6.

The Site

As you probably noticed, the site was down last night, along with the entire SBN 2.0 network.  There was a massive but intermittent failure following a significant server upgrade performed the night before, and the network couldn't be brought back online without making significant changes and diagnostic tests.  The problem turned out to be bad RAM, but as those with an IT background can attest, it's very rare to have bad RAM cause intermittent problems rather than immediate failure, which made it hard to track down.

Naturally the SBN folks are deeply disappointed and frustrated to have had these problems, and naturally we all were annoyed by it — and naturally, this whole experience has the technical team already planning out deeper redundancies and "more paranoid" upgrade processes (their words).  On the other hand, I believe there's been less than ten hours of downtime on SBN over the past 30 months since I got involved, and the technical ambition of the 2.0 network speaks for itself.

Things may be a bit spotty for the next day or two, but we're told that the major failures should be over.  For future reference, we'll post updates on the LGT Facebook group forum in the event of a significant outage.