Well that was ugly.
Josh Tomlin got roughed up and was knocked out of the game in the second inning. The offense struggled again. The defense was shaky. It was an all around painful game to watch.
It was a rout from start to finish and the Tribe ultimately fell to the White Sox by a score of 10-4.
There really isn’t much worth rehashing about a game like that, so rather than recap the ugly details, let’s tackle some more thoughts that were raised during the game.
Tomlin is frustrating, but he’ll be fine
When Tomlin has one of these days it’s important to remind yourself that he’s our fifth starter and all fifth starters are bad. There is literally no exception to that rule. There are 30 teams in the league, which means at any given moment there are 150 pitchers in rotations, plus a usually large group of pitchers who should be in rotations but are on the DL.
Tomlin has established himself as one of the 150 best starting pitchers in the game. He’s probably around the 100-120 range on that list, which isn’t exciting but it gets the job done.
Over the course of the season Tomlin will give us about 20 games in which the Indians have a very realistic chance to win, and maybe another 10 in which he gets roughed up. And as frustrating as that is to deal with, compared to fifth starters around the league, it’s actually a pretty good ratio.
Yan Gomes is done
I think it’s time to accept the fact that Yan Gomes’ 2014 season was the exception to the rule. He hit his first home run of the year but I’m ready to throw in the towel anyway. He’s always had some decent pop in his bat, but he doesn’t make contact enough and he doesn’t take walks. In fact, he now has the lowest on-base percentage in franchise history for a catcher—worse than Andy Allanson, Lou Marson, Chris Bando and a host of other incredible mediocre hitters.
His 8th inning home run was just his second hit of the season and the Indians really can’t afford to keep trotting him out there if all he’s good for is one big hit every 10 days or so.
Dating back to the start of 2015, he’s batting .201 with a .239 OBP and .599 OPS in 176 games—that’s not worthy of continuing to get at-bats in the majors.
I know injuries influenced some of those struggles, but there’s also a lot of healthy at-bats mixed in. I think I’m ready to dump Gomes and go with Roberto Perez for the defensive upgrade.
Other thoughts and notes….
With the game out of hand in the 9th, Francona turned the game over to Michael Martinez. In a scoreless inning, he became the older Indians player to make his pitching debut since Satchel Paige in 1948. He also became the first player in franchise history to play at least one game at SS, 2B, 3B, LF, RF, CF and pitcher.
Michael Brantley went 2-5 and hit his first HR of the year. It was probably a relief for Brantley to see that ball clear the fence, as it was his first HR since September 10, 2015.
Carlos Santana wrapped up an ugly series by going 0-4 with three strikeouts. He was 1-13 with 4 K and only one walk in the three-game series.
Totally agree on Perez. We all know he is not an offensive juggernaut but he can at least bat above .200 with being a huge upgrade defensively. It’s too early in the season to judge the starting pitching (some has been really good), but Perez’s framing ability can only help with that as well.
COMPLETELY agree on being done with Gomes–the less we see of him the better. Make Perez the starter until Meija is ready to come up from the minors (and yes, I realize that may not be until next year). Perez may not be an All-Star, but his pitch framing is great and his offense is at least slightly better than Gomes’.