[Hello and welcome to the special director’s commentary edition of Let’s Go Tribe Recaps. I am the director, writer, and co-producer of this piece titled “Indians’ surging offense undone by bullpen implosion”. Anytime you see these little brackets [] and italicized font, I’ll be speaking directly to you, the reader, about this recap, the latest masterpiece in the Let’s Go Tribe Recaps Collection. Thank you, and enjoy.]
You could say the Indians offense found their ... spark today.
The Indians really put a ... charge into some baseballs today.
Did you see the Indians ... light up the scoreboard tonight?
Look, the Royals pitcher was named Sparkman and the Indians lit his ass up, that’s all I’m trying to get at here. This team is so fun to watch right now. Like the season as a whole, though, things were so rosey from the beginning.
[VERY IMPORTANT EDIT: Things didn’t look rosey at the end, either. Unfortunately, at the time of production no one was aware of what was coming. We were all so young and naive.]
After Francisco Lindor led off game with a double [Little did we know, Francisco Lindor would play a big part in the bottom of the ninth inning, well after Brad Hand was supposed to close out the game. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.], Oscar Mercado — leading the team in batting average and second in on-base percentage heading into the game — squared up to bunt. No outs, runner on second, first inning. No one on the broadcast was having it, save for Andre Knott putting a weak defense about bunting helping a player adjust and it being a “team-first” mentality.
That was quickly forgotten when Mercado picked up his bat and singled to score Lindor from the scoring position that he was already in. Unfortunately, not bunting meant there was no runner on third, so the inning ended three batters later. Shame, shoulda bunted.
The Indians needed offense tonight [ACTUALLY THEY NEEDED A LITTLE BIT MORE AS IT WOULD TURN OUT] because Shane Bieber labored through 5.1 innings and Tyler Olson didn’t help him much in immediate relief [But how did the other relievers do, you ask? Not important. We actually fired someone over this line, you can check the IMDB page].
Bieber’s line wasn’t terrible with two strikeouts and six strikeouts, but he teetered on the edge of disaster multiple times. Twice he shut the inning down with at least two runners on base, and the final two at-bats of the fifth came with a runner on third. Give Bieber a ton of credit for gutting out those tough spots, though. It’s easy to forget that being able to dig yourself out of holes is an important skills as much as avoiding getting in holes in the first place.
[Right about here is where it felt like we were being a bit too down a winning game while writing in the eighth inning. This is another example of a piece of art being saved in editing, because it was a disaster before it hit post. After all, the Indians were on the verge of winning 6-3. What could go wrong?!]
There were also some defensive ... oddities that worked against him, as well. “Miscues” doesn’t feel like the right word, because they involved a bit of luck on the part of the Royals. For one, José Ramírez failed to stop a ball hit 103 mph as it bounced at the last second and went off his thumb. Unfortunate, but excusable — it’s a tough play to make. Then, Carlos Santana made a spectacular diving stop on a ball hit down the first base line, but threw it every-so-slightly behind Bieber sprinting to cover the base. Bieber made a good effort to both locate the ball and the base, but it appeared his instincts to find the find and not shatter his ankle with an awkward landing took over from his desire to record a single out in a June 25 contest against the Royals. He barely missed the ball, and it bounced off his glove and landed in front of him instead of going for an out. I, for one, concur with his natural instincts in this case.
The last defensive play that stuck out was Oscar Mercado again not knowing how walls work in the outfield. Lucas Duda hit a towering shot off of Tyler Olson (the only pitch Olson threw tonight) and it hit sharply off the wall and Tyler Naquin covered, but Mercado once again misjudged the power of the wall.
[Haha what are the odds this would actually matter in the end, anyway? Big Money Brad is coming in soon, folks!]
The offense picked up the slack the rest of the way, though, including back-to-back jacks from Roberto Pérez and generic baseball man Mike Freeman. That was Roberto’s 14th of the season, putting him six dingers past his previous high of eight in 2017.
Francisco Lindor was a man on fire right from the get-go. He fired off an early pitch to open the game, added another hit later on and worked an eight-pitch at-bat to grind reliever Scott Barlow to dust in the sixth.
[RIGHT HERE IS WHERE BRAD HAND BLEW IT]
So anyway, Brad Hand blew it.