After sitting through a 10-0 loss yesterday, I am pleased to bring you this recap of a 9-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox. We’re getting close to my recap descending into a cascade of gifs, or maybe posting that picture of the newspaper from Hawkeye over and over again.
Is that overreacting? I don’t know. I think the run differential of the team right now is more indicative of the way that they’ve played then their record. The team that played against the Astros last week? That I recognized as the team we’ve been expecting. This weekend and this week so far? Not so much, y’all.
Pitching and such
Trevor Bauer turned in his worst performance of the season. He pitched five innings, allowing eight runs (seven earned) on ten hits and one walk. He struck out seven, but these looked more attributable to the hitter missing rather than being fooled.
Ivan Nova of the White Sox worked his way around eight hits and a walk in seven innings. He allowed a single run. Coming into today’s game Nova’s ERA hovered higher than 8.00, and only logged two quality starts. With tonight’s game against the Indians he adds a third—the second he’s recorded in Cleveland. Nova’s two starts against the Tribe are also the only ones in which he’s managed to pitch seven innings.
I don’t get it, either.
If there is a bright spot for the Indians’ pitching it’s that the bullpen held down the fort for the last four innings. The only run they allowed came from Nick Wittgren, and that was only the second he’s surrendered this season.
I’m hoping that this is indicative of the true value of the team’s current bullpen rather than a trend that is due to regress.
Where was the offense?
You know, I’ve been wondering the same thing for much of the season
The Indians finally did something when Jason Kipnis came to the plate with two out in the bottom of the fifth inning. Prior to his at-bat, Jordan Luplow and Tyler Naquin both singled, while Roberto Pérez and Francisco Lindor flied and popped out, respectively. Fortunately for the Tribe, Kipnis stayed with a pitched low and outside. He punched it past a diving Tim Anderson, allowing Luplow to score and Naquin to advance to third.
The Indians managed to get a few other baserunners throughout the course of the game. Eleven of them made it to scoring position, too! Up to this point it feels like the team has done a good job of turnings RISPs into RBIs. The real challenge has been, you know, getting RISPs to begin with.
I’m not sure if we just chalk all of that up to sequencing or what. Maybe it’s just that the offense is this bad? I’ve seen Stars and Scrubs tossed around a few times to describe this team but you’d need to squint awfully hard on a dark night to find those stars at the moment.
Tid my Tribe
- Nick Wittgren threw twelve consecutive fastballs to James McCann. The at-bat ended with a long flyout to right field. Wittgren started the next at-bat with...a curveball.
- Roberto Perez earned an error for a perfect throw to Francisco Lindor on a stolen base attempt. I imagine that the error will be overturned by tomorrow; Lindor just missed it entirely somehow.
- Francisco Lindor put together a wonderful at-bat in the bottom of the meaningless ninth inning. He fell behind 1-2, watched a ball, fouled three off, watched another ball, and then smoked a ball past Yonder Alonso.
- They showed an absolutely disgusting helmet of nachos that a dude in the bleachers decided to chow down on anyway. Come on, man. If you’re going to pay like eight bucks for nachos just walk the extra fifty yards to the Momochos!
- The Indians now own a -14 run differential. As of this moment, that is despite allowing the third fewest runs in all of baseball.
What’s next?
The Indians play again tomorrow night at 6:10. It will also be against the White Sox. Jefry Rodriguez is slated to battle Lucas Giolito, while the Indians’ offense continues its sisyphean efforts to do anything.