Player of the Game
It's hard to win when your staring pitcher allows seven runs in the first four innings, but Ryan Raburn did his best to get the Indians back into things after he came in as a defensive replacement in the seventh inning. Raburn walked in his first at bat and hit a two run home run with two outs in the ninth inning in his second, to bring the score to 9-4.
Carlos Carrasco set a new personal low for the season with a score of -11.09 for his 3.1 innings pitched.
Feathers Up
If there was a bright spot today (or during the current four game losing streak) it is that the bottom of the lineup is finally starting to hit. This includes mostly Lonnie Chisenhall who has four hits and two walks in his last five games and Drew Stubbs who has five hits, a walk and four RBI in his last three games. The biggest problem now is that with the top of the lineup struggling, these players are still not scoring runs with regularity after they get on base. Any sign of life is good however, as the more often you get on base, the more often good things happen.
While the game was on the All-Star selection show occurred and Justin Masterson and Jason Kipnis were deservedly named to the American League All-Star team. They were the only two Indians worthy of making the roster and both were selected as bench players. Congratulations to Masterson, Kipnis and the rest of the AL All-Stars.
Feathers Down
Carlos Carrasco did his best to make everyone in Cleveland vomit today as he threw a couple terrible pitches to two of the greatest hitters in baseball today, giving up back-to-back home runs to Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera. In that third inning he gave up four total runs, but he wasn't quite done for the day. In the fourth inning he came out and gave up two straight hits before throwing a ball past Lonnie Chisenhall, turning what should have been a sacrifice bunt into a run scoring error. After an RBI double from Torii "girls name" Hunter brought the score to 7-1, Carrasco was told to walk the next batter and was pulled from the game. In his last three starts, Carrasco has allowed 19 runs in 13.1 innings. He has been a mess all season, starting with his suspensions and is no where near the sixth best starter in the Indians system right now. I would be more surprised if Carrasco made his next scheduled start than if he didn't.
The Indians picked an incredibly bad time to start struggling. In a whole team effort the offense has disappeared and both the starting and relief pitching has struggled, including pitchers who have been amazing all season like Justin Masterson and Cody Allen. Coming into this series the Tribe had a chance to knock Detroit down a peg and move into first place. Now they will have to sweep the final two games (a very tall task considering who Detroit has starting) just to maintain their original distance.
Hit Streak End Date: With a strike out in his final at bat, Jason Kipnis' streaks have ended at 16 games (hits) and 36 games (on base). In order to keep things interesting, we will now keep track of Mark Reynolds' strike out streak. He was lucky enough to get a pinch-hit at bat in the ninth inning at bat where he struck out to bring his current strike out streak to six games. He has now struck out 14 times in his last eight games. He has surpassed Drew Stubbs (who lead for the first couple months) and now has 106 K's on the season.
Final Score: Cleveland Indians 4 – Motor City Kitties 9
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
