Jenny Lew, I’ve Saved You

Wow.. Quick and Painless..

Jensen Lewis’ quick save was a sight for sore eyes of Tribe Fans.

After the lead-off walk, Lewis got two ground ball outs and the strikeout of Alex Rios to end it. Thank god. Give him another shot.

Anthony Reyes pitched gooood. I like what I saw from the kid. He was getting ahead of just about every hitter he faced. 20 of 27 hitters faced got first pitch strikes. He allowed 7 hits but just one walk and all the hits were singles. Not to mention some of them were bloops and dribblers up the middle. He was simply just getting ahead, had them at two outs, the hits were harmless.

He pitched real well, I was real impressed with him. Lookingforward to more.. 6.1 innings, 7 hits, 1 walk, 1 run, 4 k’s and the win.

Offensively it was all the 4th inning. Francisco and Choo with back to back doubles knocked in the first two runs and then Gutierrez with a single knocked in the third. That would be it until Francisco and Choo did it again with back to back singles to knock in two more. Shoppach went 1-3 with two runs and a walk hitting in the three hole again. Guess it wasn’t just for one game Shoppy. Choo went 3-4 with the one run and two RBI

Tomorrow it’s Paul Byrd and Roy Freaking Halladay, not cool. Day Baseball and FOX doesn’t knock us out for once!

[BOXSCORE]

MU: David Dellucci is about as relevant as Brett Favre on this Blog

Brett Favre’s back and the defense is in trouble… Oops Sorry.. Not Really important.. But Neither is David Dellucci, yet we will still talk about him.

“He’s had pitches to hit, but he’s just a tad off. He’ll get pitches that he fouls back or pitches that he just misses. Hopefully, as we keep moving here, he’ll start to square some of those baseballs up and help us.” (Indians.com)

That was Eric Wedge on David Dellucci.. I’m done wasting my breath. Him being on this roster just makes me want to SCREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

“Everybody judges you by numbers,” he said. “Our goal is to hit the ball hard. You can’t control where it goes or what happens after it leaves the bat. There has been a lot of games where I hit the ball good and had nothing to show for it, and [if] you read the box scores or look at a batting average, you wouldn’t be able to tell.” (Indians.com)

This sounds like a broken down veteran who has no future. Oh WAIT!

Someone who does have a future is Kelly Shoppach who says that this is best stretch he’s ever swung the bat.

“I had a stretch last year where I swung the bat well, but it was over a month and a half,” he said. “I wasn’t playing every day and no one noticed.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Please keep it up Kelly..

Ryan Garko and Jhonny Peralta think the Twins have what it takes to win the division.

“They are built around Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau,” said first baseman Ryan Garko. “They’re two of the best hitters in the big leagues and I don’t think they get a lot of credit. They also have a great bullpen. They win the games they’re supposed to win. That makes a big difference.”

“I think they have a chance to win the division,” said shortstop Jhonny Peralta. “They don’t have the big power hitters that some teams have. But they can run, they can bunt and their starting pitching is really good.” (Plain Dealer)

In case you haven’t heard, The Boston Herald is reporting Joe Borowski was offered a contract. By who? The Red Sox.. No Joke.

You saw what David Dellucci said.. Now look at what Ben Francisco has to say.

“Baseball is baseball. You’ve got a job to do and you’ve just got to go out there and do it,” he said. (Indians.com)

yeah, DO YOUR JOB DELLUCCI! Stop making excuses that you don’t have control over where the ball goes.. Of course you do. JERK.

I’m tired.. The game yesterday was exhausting. Just awful.. Just Awful..

LOLTribe: Ben Francisco’s Grady Impression and Masa’s Gift To Sal Fasano

Leading off is Masahide Kobayashi’s gift to Sal Fasano.

Next it’s Ben Francisco’s best Grady Sizemore impression. Mark Out

Grady tells Drubes to RAISE THE ROOF!

Asdrubal Cabrera’s Rikishi Impression from the other day.

He got Ichiro better a few weeks ago.

Tribe Bamboozle the Rays

I think I deserve some credit for fitting the word Bamboozle in there.

Eric Wedge had a closed door meeting with the Tribe returning back home today before the game. He wanted to get guys like Hafner in on it since they were around.

I’m just quite shocked at how well they put together those hits.

Let’s run down the box score… Pitching wise though, OUTSTANDING..

Aaron had the one two run home run hiccup, but other than that was in control. Six innings, four hits, two runs, and four punch outs. Rafael Perez was HUGE. In what was a close game, he came in and threw two perfect innings and did it in just 12 pitches.. Talk about dominating.

Juan Rincon made his Indian Debut and it was a little rocky. His fastball was hitting 93 though and his arm is still there.. But his control was a little out of walk.. Cut him some slack since it was his first game. I’m really hoping we can get this guy on track.

Anyway..

Grady 2-4 with a walk and a run.. Really wasn’t in the middle of all the scoring. Carroll didn’t get a hit yet he managed to score two runs and knock in a run.

The big nights belonged to Ben Francisco. He was 3-5 with the big two run home run and the two run single in the 8th. Peralta continued to rake with the two hits and RBI.. Casey was 2-5 with a home run and three rib-eyes.. Choo had a line drive shot into the visitor bullpen.

I was getting ready to say..

Why is David Dellucci still in this lineup? Then he goes deep and has three runs batted in.

Whateverrrr

Andy Marte man.. 1-3 with a walk and a run scored.. Come on damnit! Keep playing him.. DH Garko and play Blake at first if you have to.

Big Big Big Big Win…. Just Big… Great to see it.. Let’s go out and get another one with our Acey making his final plea to start the All-Star Game.

Cliff Lee, James Shields.. Should be a great one to watch if you have nothing to do on Saturday.. Go to the Game!

[BOXSCORE]

Morning Update: Casey Blake, master of the deadpan

Hey here’s a neat little tidbit.

Despite not starting the year on the active roster, Ben Francisco leads the entire American League in outfield assists with 9.. Benny, your thoughts..

“I didn’t know it was that many,” he admitted.” (Indians.com)

Yeah, neither did I. From the department of great quotes, I now give you Casey Blake’s thoughts on playing shortstop the other night.

“Omar was taking some notes,” Blake said. (Indians.com)

I swear, between Hafner and Blake, we have two of the most dry humored guys ever. No wonder those two are good friends.

Wedge in all seriousness praised Blake for being an athlete.. He then openly admitted how much of a man-crush he has on his fellow Wichita State Shocker..

Kidding.

We will have some updates on Fausto Carmona and Travis Hafner today, yay!

The Lord of the Flies will be playing catch today.. Eric Wedge said in his presser he hopes to have a schedule for Carmona down fairly soon.

Pronkilicious will be doing some more strength exercises and Wedge was pretty adamant that was all he was doing.. In other words.. NO SWINGING :blink blink blink blink BUGEYE:

Speaking of Pronk, and rerally there is nothing today so far.. Which is why I’ve got silly quotes from Casey Blake….

The Pronk Bar has made a reapperance..

Rick Bauer and C.C. Sabathia snagged a few at the top of Haf’s locker.

Oh.. Yeah and of course.. C.C. The daily grind here of reporting the latest rumors.

Buster Olney says Rays could be a sleeper.. I hope so. Give me Dave Price, no kidding, but really they got a deep farm system.

There was a rumor the Angels could pursue a Sabathia deal.. Well wait, that just contradicts the rumor that they would stand pat…. That’s Rumors for Ya!

and of course San Francisco had to ask C.C. if he would consider San Francisco… I think he would if they didn’t suck.. But his answer surprised me.

From the same place of the Angels rumor, which is Jayson Stark of ESPN. He speculates that the Indians could make Rafael Betancourt, Rafael Perez and Franklin Gutierrez available. I don’t think Perez will be, left-handers in the pen are too hard to come by. I really wonder if Betancourt wouldn’t be a bad guy to shop. Like I mentioned, I love Jeff Stevens, we have Jensen Lewis, Perez. He hasn’t displayed that control he did last year, maybe it was a one year fluke?

I’m Done Sticking Up For the Offense

The offense blows…

I’m pretty fed up sticking up for them at this point.

Ben Francisco gets it going in the first inning with a two run blast, so I’m starting to think, okay we’re finally starting to get those hits falling in. Cause last night, if you read, I thought he got a few good rips in there.

Yet.. After that there wasn’t much.

Casey Blake went deep in the 6th to tie the game up, but guess what.. There wasn’t much after that. Blake had the three hits, including a ninth inning double. But aside from the Grady hit in the first and the Francisco homer that same inning, there was SQUAT!

10 strikeouts at the hands of JORGE DE LA ROSA?!

That is unacceptable. This team has killed the guy in the past, and for some reason, 10 strikeouts?

The pitching was no better. I’ll go with Sowers and the 3 earned.. But I don’t know.. I’m still not sold on him.. Kobayashi had his bad day this time out.

Just awful baseball played this series. This team just seems to be toying with us at this point..

I’m really getting upset at the faith I’m investing in them. I’m not giving up, but I’m getting real frustrated watching them.

Tomorrow we go out to LA to face the Dodgers. They’ve just lost two starting pitchers, so Kuroda won’t be the guy going on Saturday. However, we get to see the young stud Clayton Kershaw tomorrow against Clifford Red Lee.

[BOXSCORE]

Greg Maddux Has a Potty Mouth; Tribe Win Series

If you didn’t hear Greg Maddux yell “SHIT!” after he misplaced a curveball to Jhonny Peralta, you probably weren’t paying attention to just how awesome Maddux is.

Get it done Benny: The big blow in this game was via Ben Francisco’s bat.

His third inning, three run bomb put the Tribe up 3-0 early. He also had an infield single in the game.

After letting up 3 runs to the Padres the next inning, the Tribe manufactured a run in the 4th. Casey Blake’s ground out scored Shin-Soo Choo who had a leadoff double.

Frankie G would single home another runner in the 6th, he went 2-4.

Grady Sizemore homered once again in the 7th inning, his 17th of the year puts him one behind Josh Hamilton for the lead in the AL.

Jhonny Peralta had the final blow later that inning when he doubled to make it 7-3.

Jamey Caroll went 2-3 with 2 runs scored and a hit by pitch. He is just a on base machine lately and has just done nothing but hit since becoming part of the everyday lineup.

Ceee Ceee: Eight Strong for Sabathia today.. Only one walk, compared to 10 punchouts. Six this and three earned for the big guy.

He is not 5-8 and his ERA is inching ever so closer to below 4.00..

You just don’t realize how bad of a start he got off to now that you see how well he has pitched. Him losing 8 games already is just un-real.

Masa Kobayashi pitched a scoreless ninth.

Tomorrow is a well-needed off-day for the Tribe. They are going to use it to travel out to Colorado for the short road trip. Paul Byrd goes for the Tribe against Greg Reynolds as I watch all these goofs play catch on the field. Reynolds numbers suck, so you’d think our offensive success will continue.

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Gatorade Bath for Jamey Carroll in Indians Series Win

Looks like Paul Byrd is trying to start a little bit of a rallying cry. He dumped some Gatorade on Jamey Carroll after his 4-4 performance tonight. He didn’t do it on camera, and it doesn’t exactly have a “rally pie” effect or anything, but credit to him for actually trying.

Lose 2 Starters, Score 12 Runs: Why not?

Maybe it was the wakeup call this club needed. Your two best hitters are now on the DL, it’s time to step up.

Jamey Carroll stepped up in fact. Just in time with the interleague play starting tomorrow.

Carroll was 8-9 in the series, and 4-4 tonight with a HBP, a run and a run batted in.

In fact, I think “Sparkplug” would be a good nickname. That’s all he was tonight.

Ben Francisco handled his new role pretty well. He’ll probably see most of the time in the 3 hole, and he did a good job. He too had 4 hits, knocking in 3 runs and scoring once.

Everyone had a hit tonight, minus Garko, who is granted a little bit of a break after he carried our offense. He better get it back up there though. No more of this inconsistent stuff.

Grady was 2-5 with the home run, and of course the big jack came off the bat of Shin-Soo Choo. He was 2-4 with the 3 runs scored, the 3 runs batted in and the walk.

Most satisfying performance comes from Kelly Shoppach. We are gonna need that type of production from him(okay not quite, but every once and awhile it wouldn’t hurt) with Vic out. He went 2-4 as well with two runs knocked in.

Best offensive performance of the year, considering it was our park, not that silly field in Texas, and our highest hit total of the year. Plus the production came from EVERYONE. Garko, Dellucci and Blake were the only starters without RBIs.

Aaaaaron: I love this kid.. We need to start seeing him more. He has young and some spunk, he has some fire and he likes to yap.

I prefer him over the negative sounding Jeremy Sowers who looks like someone just stole his brownie.

Anyway, another solid outing. Six innings, five hits, one walk, one run and the four punchouts. His ERA is down to 2.83 and he is now 4-3.

Speaking of Sowers.. He pitches tomorrow as we restart interleague play. First on deck is one of my favorite National League teams, the San Diego Padres. I started a poll on the right side, and it involves a few former Indians and current Padres.

Brian Giles, Jody Gerut and Kevin Kouzmanoff all roll into town this weekend with the Padres. Which former Tribe player are you looking forward to seeing? Also throw in Jeff Kent and Omar Vizquel.

I’m sure Vizquel will win the vote. But, my vote goes to Jody Gerut due to my ever lasting man crush on him. I’m excited to see him doing well, and unfortunately our lefty stacked rotation might mean we won’t see much of him, but I’m glad we get to play him.

Anyway, Josh Banks and Sowers tomorrow..

[BOXSCORE]

Cliff Lee will break your face; Indians Clobbertime

The follow segment is brought to you by Cliff Lee and his dagger eyes.

Cliff Goes Five; Then Goes Off: Cliff Lee certainly didn’t have his greatest outing of the year, but Tim Timmons didn’t exactly help him out.

Cliff got upset at the very small strikezone Timmons was using. He let him know. He ended up putting another man on after a questionable call. Clifford then struck out Chris Shelton on three pitches and had a few choice words for Timmons as he trotted off the mound.

He could then be seen in the dugout ^^^, staring daggers through Timmons and pushing over Gatorade coolers.

Cliff did okay. I really dislike Texas and their stadium. Silly fly balls become home runs, and it just is a nightmare to pitch in. the entire stadium should be knocked down and reconstructed.

I know it seems harsh.. But, this isn’t baseball. The winning team is scoring 10+ runs in every game this series. It’s stupid.

Then you got the tight strike zones to boot.

Cliff went five, gave up 9 hits, a few walks, 6 runs and struck out 8. His ERA grew to 2.47, but he picked up his 9th win.

Cabrera Leaves Game: Asdrubal left the game with a “mild hip strain”. We should find out tomorrow what’s up with him, and if a DL stint is in the works, Josh Barfield will be on his way up.

Garkoooooo: The Shark had himself a night.

I had a good feeling about him tonight, so I un-benched him in every league I had him in(which is just about every fantasy league I’m in this year).

Ryan went 4-5 with a walk and six runs batted in. What’s funny is all his hits were singles up the middle or through the hole.

THAT is Ryan Garko my friends. I think it’s safe to say Garko is turning it around. He didn’t hit like 2 home runs because of the Texas atmosphere, but four singles the hard way. That gives me a good enough reason to think he is on his way back.

Victor had a hit and knocked in two runs, he just missed his first home run of the year once again. Keep it up big guy, it will come.

Benny Fresh had himself a night, and was kind of overshadowed by Garko.

Francisco did a lot of the heavy lifting. He collected five hits, almost had six on a hard line drive to Marlon Byrd, which would have equaled the Indians record of 6(which Omar Vizquel did a few years back in New York). He also knocked in a run.

David Dellucci hit a home run and knocked in three, also went 2-4. Casey Blake went 2-5 with a run batted in, and Grady had an RBI as well.

Tomorrow this insane series comes to an end.. C.C. Sabathia takes on a guy he owes a lot of his success as a pitcher to, Kevin Millwood.

[BOXSCORE]

Hey look at the offense

I’ll see what I can muster up here… If you watched the Penguins game tonight, you know exactly what I mean.

Offense Okay?: It’s pretty useless to talk about Aaron Laffey.. He pitched five innings and gave up 8 runs. His ERA jumped from the 1 range to the 3 range in just one start.

Oh well.. Texas was just hitting, and so was the Tribe, THANKFULLY.

Grady was the only one without a hit, the rest of the lineup saw everyone but Choo and Victor get at least two hits(and Choo had THREE walks). Everyone was on base at least two times in the game, and remarkably only four different people did the run producing.

The main guy was Casey Blake, of course.

He had two run home runs in the second and third inning, and then a three run double in the fourth. The guy just hits on the road, 27 RBI on the road, compared to 9 at home.

What’s scary is we’ve played way more games at home than we have the road.

Ben Francisco had himself a game, forcing in a run with a walk, and also having the big two run home run in the 7th to break the 8-8 tie.

That 8-8 tie came after Marlon Byrd hit a grand slam off Laffey in the 5th.

Dellucci also went yard to make it a 12-9 game, at the time it was huge cause the Rangers just scored.

Joe Borowski didn’t get a save, but he probably was the most painless pitcher of the night. He came in and got the Rangers on 10 pitches. Bup Bup Boooo..

Tomorrow, well later today.. Vincente Padilla has been scratched due to family issues at home, so Jake Westbrook is taking on youngster A.J. Murray. Murray has started one game this year for the Rangers and he gave up 2 ER.

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