Usually you have a pretty good feeling when your baseball team is going up against the other team’s fifth starter. Almost by definition, that starter is someone you figure you have a decent chance of beating. You don’t expect the fifth starter to shut your team down.
Tonight the Angels sent Matt Shoemaker, their fifth starter, out to face the Indians. And Shoemaker shut the Indians down, giving up only two runs over eight innings. He walked only one batter and struck out ten. The Indians cobbled together a second-inning run on a walk, a single, and a groundout, and Lonnie Chisenhall hit a solo homer in the fourth, but that was all the damage they were able to do. At one point Shoemaker retired ten Indians batters in a row. He left the game after eight innings with the Angels up, 9-2. The Tribe tacked on a meaningless run in the ninth inning against mop-up reliever Ernesto Frieri, thus making the final score 9-3, Angels.
Indians starter Josh Tomlin was not sharp tonight. He didn’t walk a batter in his 5 1/3 innings of work, but that is mostly because the Angels were too busy batting the ball all over the outfield, and into the seats for homers, as Tomlin allowed 11 hits. He gave up a run in the first inning, but the fifth inning was his real downfall. Two singles in that frame, coupled with an error by shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, brought one run in. Then Angels slugger Mike Trout worked an 0-2 count to 2-2 before hitting a three-run homer to give the Angels a 5-2 lead. Tomlin went on to give up a single and a double in the inning, which would have brought in another run were it not for a good outfield assist by Ryan Raburn. Tomlin led off the sixth inning by giving up a homer to Howie Kendrick, making the score 6-2, and effectively putting the game out of reach, thanks to Shoemaker’s fine outing.
The bright spots of the evening: Chisenhall went 2 for 4. Each of the first five batters in the Indians lineup got at least one hit.
Sad trombone: the bottom of the lineup, David Murphy, Nick Swisher, Yan Gomes, and Raburn, went a combined 1 for 14. Swisher’s batting average is now .200. Not exactly the kind of number you want to see from a guy with the letters DH after his name in the box score. Also, Josh Outman pitched poorly, giving up two hits (including a homer), two walks, and two runs in 1 1/3 innings of work.
Tonight’s loss brought the Indians back to .500, and leaves them three games behind the Kansas City Royals, the new overlords of the AL Central following their win over Detroit. The Indians and Angels will have at it again tomorrow evening.
How many years did they sign Swisher for??
The bigger problem we face is that we have no 3B. Santana is fine at first, but Chis really needs to DH (which leaves no spot for swish), as both Chis and Santana are horrible at 3B (Chis is the worst in the league by far, with Santana 2nd worst).
All of the position players are terrible. Besides catcher, the highest ranked defensive runs saved is 21st, and that’s 1B. 2B, 3B, and SS are all bottom 5 in the league. No wonder the Indians pitchers strike out so many hitters. They can’t trust anybody to catch the ball in the field.
On the 2nd year of a 4-year $56M deal.
Is anyone concerned that the team is drawing 14,000 fans for home games in June? Weren’t they drawing 18,000-20,000 by this time last year?
Overall defense is this team’s achilles heel. Watching many of the games, the opposing team has players in the right positions, whether it be through use of the shift or just a few steps of logical positing based on tendencies. I rarely see that with the Indians (except with the over-shift). Maybe it’s time to trade Cabrera for (hopefully) a viable prospect and get Lindor up here to shore up the SS position. Because running out a team of glorified DHs in the infield isn’t helping anybody.
i’m not a huge fan of the work josh outman’s done, but he surely hasn’t been horrible enough to DFA. you’d think we could at least trade him for SOMETHING half-useful, since we traded stubbs to get him in the first place.