I’m really glad that I didn’t come to California just to see the Indians play the Giants. If I had, it would have been an incredibly disappointing trip! Even though I prepared myself for the worst tonight (with Fausto Carmona pitching), I still didn’t quite expect this mess. Two more errors – the one by Grady Sizemore just seemed the pinnacle of sloppy fielding. Yes, there was sun; he just seemed rather cavalier in his approach to that fly ball. The offense has been pitiful, but I think that 16 strikeouts is a new low even for them. They must have provided quite a boost to Madison Bumgarner’s confidence, on the heels of his terrible outing against the Twins. (Maybe they could all find new careers as motivational experts to Major League pitchers! “Have trouble striking out hitters? Have trouble getting outs? Call the Cleveland Indians offense – we’ll solve all of your problems!”)
The only person in the entire Indians lineup that did not strike out tonight was Orlando Cabrera; he went 2 for 4. (To be fair, I’m not sure if his one hit was actually a fair ball. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point, but the Indians radio broadcasters seemed to think it was most likely foul). Anyway, even though everyone was pretty bad, here are my inductees into the Hall of Shame: Shelley Duncan – struck out four times in four at-bats and looked pretty bad doing it. In fact, from my seat he looked so bad in the first two at-bats, I pretty much already wrote off his last two. Grady Sizemore – he did manage to go 1 for 4, but he struck out twice and dropped a routine fly ball. Carlos Santana – 0 for 4, with 2 strikeouts. Swung at what appeared to be terrible pitches and just generally looked awful. Adam Everett – 0 for 3, with 2 strikeouts. The Indians actually had a few opportunities, but were 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. (If I had a $1 for every time I saw the Indians go 0 for whatever with runners in scoring position, I could’ve purchased quite a few of AT&T Park’s $9 beers).
Where do they go from here? Well, obviously they go to Arizona, where they’ll face Ian Kennedy, Daniel Hudson, and Zach Duke (I honestly had no idea what happened to him after he left the Pirates). I’m not sure how the Indians will fare the rest of this road trip, but I imagine it’s not going to be pretty until they make it back home. During this series with the Giants, it seemed like there were 4 or 5 pitchers batting at the bottom of the lineup – it was that bad. I just hope they manage to put together a few wins before the All Star break, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Maybe it was my anger at him influencing things, but on TV Grady appeared to have really bad body language after his muff.
Someone else mentioned that on the last post! (This post wasn’t up yet)
As you mentioned before, Hermann or Durbin need to go down to AAA and they need to bring up a bat to help out on the bench. They’ve known for a while that they had 9 straight NL games coming and our lineup is bad right now as it is, the bench is even worse. Acta has his hands tied and Hafner can only be used once a game which then necessitates another move in the following 1/2 inning b/c he can’t play defense. Acta’s tweets are also troubling, basically saying the “what have you done for me lately” stuff is out of control. He honestly said Kearns carried us last year before going to NY when Grady was out. Carried us? To how many wins? Also, the Carmona pitching from the stretch problem has to be fixed. I’ve never seen such a wide statistical split b/w having no runners on and having runners on base.
Amen to that! Herrmann and Buck have options left, so I’d send them down and try bringing up Eziquiel Carerra and Luis Valbuena (Valbuena may still be terrible, but he’s worth a shot at least. He probably can’t do any worse than the rest at this point). I’d just outright release Durbin and Kearns, but I know they’re never going to do that. I honestly am starting to wonder if Kearns has some kind of damaging info on Acta and he’s blackmailing him? Either that, or he’s slipping some hallucinogens into Acta’s drinks, so Acta thinks he’s doing good.
Something is just bizarre with Carmona this year – he’s terrible from the stretch, and he also seems to be using his sinker less than before. His body language just seemed different in the 2nd and 3rd innings last night (although that could be my imagination).
I was at the games on Friday and Saturday and Grady just looks discouraged. At one point during Saturday’s game he grounded out and as he walked to the outfield his head was down, shoulders were slumped and you could tell that he was asking himself, “What the heck is happening?”
Well… they designated Everett for assignment and promoted Chisenhall. I’m glad something was done.