Player of the Game
With no great pitching to speak of and only one run scored, Lonnie Chisenhall won his first Player of the Game since May 2nd tonight, his second of the year. His solo home run to right center scored the Indians only run and his assist from right field to nab Max Muncy at the plate saved one from scoring.
Feathers Up
Taking the small sample size for what it’s worth, Chisenhall had another solid game today with his first home run since returning and his first Major League outfield assist ever. He nearly had a second as well, but Carlos Santana cut the ball off and threw it into left field while attempting to catch Eric Sogard going to third. In general, Chisenhall hasn’t looked any worse than the rest of the Indians fourth outfielders this year (Jerry Sands, Ryan Raburn and Mike Aviles in particular) and he seems to have worked on his recognition of the strike zone while in AAA.
While not quite, good enough, Cody Anderson still pitched very well in his first game in his home state. After allowing 11 runs in 8.1 innings over his last two starts, he gave up just three earned in 6.2 tonight. The play by Santana was significant in this as well as he possibly could have kept another run from scoring had he let the ball go through to home. Anderson struck out four, walked two and allowed six hits.
Feathers Down
The trades of David Murphy and Brandon Moss haven’t really hurt the Tribe to this point (as can be seen by Chisenhall’s offensive output over the past two games), but the Indians still aren’t scoring runs in the fashion of a winning team. They did score 12 on Wednesday to bring their numbers up, but outside of that game have not scored more than four in the past ten games (3-7 record including the 12 run effort). The pitching staff did allow them to win their last two, but even if the rotation was made of five Clayton Kershaw clones you can’t expect a complete game with two or less runs allowed on a daily basis.
The Indians best scoring chance came late tonight when Michael Bourn singled and Jason Kipnis was safe on an error by the pitcher, Drew Pomeranz. Francisco Lindor was up and, although he has been hot lately in these situations, he swung at a pitch that was far outside for strike three. Michael Brantley also went down swinging to end the inning without a run.
Final Score: Cleveland Indians 1 – Oakland Athletics 5
On Deck: Giving those in Eastern Time a bit of a break, the Trevor Bauer and Sonny Gray will begin at 4:05 PM ET on Sunday. Gray shut the Indians out in their last match, a day before the All-Star break, but Bauer wasn’t too bad his last time either, pitching a complete game against Kansas City.
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