Well, that’s more like it. The Indians spoiled the Royals home opener by hammering starter Luke Hochevar both literally and figuratively. The Indians hit him for seven runs in the first inning and he later left the game after a Carlos Santana line drive slammed him in the ankle. Apparently the x-rays were negative for a break and showed a “medial contusion,” so we don’t need to feel guilty while savoring this win.

This game gave me a “finally everything is coming together” feeling. The first couple games of the season, we had the starting pitching but not the relief pitching, then we couldn’t get the offense together. Today we had a good start from Derek Lowe, who gave up 11 hits but had the defense (including 3 double plays) to prevent those 11 hits from becoming more than 3 earned runs. The bullpen did its job, and the offense put together a genuine old-fashioned two-out rally off Shelley Duncan’s checked swing single.

Perhaps the signing of Johnny Damon put the fear of God (or fear of the bench or Columbus or something) into Michael Brantley, because he started off the game exactly the way a lead-off hitter should: he got a hit. Then later in the first inning, he got another one. He’s still only batting .136.

This is only one game. Maybe a month or two from now, we’ll look back at this game as a turnaround moment, the moment when this assortment of players remembered how to put all the pieces together. Or maybe we’ll wistfully look back at it as the last time the Indians managed to scoreĀ  more than a handful of runs. For now, I’m just going to sit here and enjoy a big win.

 

 

5 Comments

  • Kevin says:

    I’m very glad about the win and the explosion in the first inning, but I did not have that “everything finally came together” feeling. This game felt much like the others because we had seven innings in the middle of the games with zero runs and only one or two hits. The explosion came off a pitcher who might have been a little too jacked about the home opener and left pitches high and over the plate in the first inning. Even though we lost, the game against Danks felt much better offensively.

  • Susan Petrone says:

    You get a lot of games with one or two big innings and nothing for the rest of the game. I like those just as much as popping in a run here and another one there over the course of the game. I think what made me happy about this game (other than the win) is that we managed to put together a series of meaningful hits, which hasn’t really happened yet this season (and was one of our downfalls last season). I was starting to wonder if the Indians remembered that you can score runs through base hits, not just homers.

  • Ben Beilstein says:

    It would be nice to sweep the series and get back to .500.

  • SeattleStu says:

    dude what is up with choo getting plunked?…again w/ KC today…did that DWI offend someone?

  • medfest says:

    The word is out that Choo will bail out on his swing if he gets crowded inside,that’s why he’s getting hit and brushed back in every at bat.
    Having a milk toast manager who won’t tell his pitchers to protect his hitters is part of the problem as well.