Player of the Game
Considering his long break between starts, Trevor Bauer was terrific tonight, throwing seven innings of one run baseball. He struck out three and walked three, but allowed just two hits and induced two double plays. Despite the break, tonight’s was Bauer’s 30th start of the season, the standard mark for the modern day starting pitcher. He finished the year with a 4.55 ERA and 170 strike outs.
Feathers Up
It took until the seventh, but Roberto Perez was finally able to put the Indians on the board against Tyler Duffey. The Indians had runners in scoring position multiple times earlier in the game thanks to doubles from Jason Kipnis and Giovanny Urshela, but had been unable to score. Abraham Almonte started things off that inning with a single, then Perez crushed a ball to straight center to bring them both home, erasing the Twins 1-0 lead.
Milestone Alert: Bryan Shaw made his 73rd appearance tonight, tying him for seventh in a single season in Indians history with Danys Baez (2003), Rafael Perez (2008) and Marc Rzepczynski (2014). Showing how so many appearances is not necessarily a good thing (he set the record with 80 last year and pitched in 70 games in 2013), Shaw retired one batter tonight while blowing the save. He allowed a walk, a double and an infield hit that would have been an out if he had covered first in time.
Similar Milestone Alert: Luckily for Shaw, Terry Francona also makes often use of Cody Allen, who pitched for the 348th time tonight, tying him with Tony Sipp for 30th most in an Indians career. Allen came in for Shaw in the eighth with two on and one out and was able to get Joe Mauer to ground into an inning ending double play.
Feathers Down
On the other side of Bauer, Duffey was almost as good. He threw 6.1 shut out innings before giving up the lead on a home run to Perez. He struck out six and walked just one, continuing his strong rookie season. He’ll finish the year with a 3.10 ERA in ten starts and the Twins have to be ecstatic that they’ve found a single pitcher of their eight regular starters used who can back up Kyle Gibson as a decent number two next season.
While the Indians defense has been great of late, it was very sloppy tonight. Michael Martinez and Abraham Almonte each looked bad on plays in the outfield and Shaw had his mistake of not covering first. In the ninth, Jose Ramirez committed the only official error of the game when he made a poor throw to first and when Lonnie Chisenhall had a chance at an assist at third, he hit the runner in the head and allowed the hitter to reach second on the play. After the two plays in the ninth, a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly allowed two unearned runs to score, giving the Twins back the lead.
Final Score: Cleveland Indians 2 – Minnesota Twins 4
On Deck: The Indians will begin their final series of the season Friday night against the Red Sox at 7:10 PM in Cleveland. Rookie left hander, Henry Owens will make his final start of the season against Josh Tomlin in a similar capacity.
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