The Indians sweep the Royals for 10 straight home wins and 4 sweeps on the season. If you watched the game or follow the Indians media on Twitter, you may have only heard this 30 times already today.
Player of the Game
Yesterday, Orlando Cabrera took his third ‘Player of the Game’ award and today Grady Sizemore took his. The only difference is that Grady has played in 9 games, and Cabrera has played in 23. Of all the home run hitters tonight, Grady was the most impressive, because he followed it up with an RBI double. Sizemore then took third on a wild pitch and scored on Asdrubal Cabrera’s double. Grady’s final ‘POG’ score was 5.83, his highest of the year. There will be more about Grady later, so don’t worry about it.
Feathers Up
The Tribe took two off of Kyle Davies early in the game with back to back homers by Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Santana. Choo started the season off slowly, but has really turned it on as of late, getting on base in 8 of his last 12 at bats with two home runs in that span.
Fausto Carmona pitched well again, taking a shutout into the 7th inning. Although he gave up two runs in the 7th and was taken out for Tony Sipp before the 8th, it still goes down as a quality start and a win. Carmona has now had 4 good starts and 2 bad ones. When he is good he has been really good, but when he has been bad, he has been epically bad.
Grady’s been on fire since he got back and he kept it going tonight. Adding a double and home run to his stats tonight, Grady now has 12 extra base hits (8 doubles, 4 home runs) on the season in 10 games, equating to a slugging percentage of .878. For a point of reference, so far this season the MLB leader in slugging percent, among qualifying hitters, is Jose Bautista with a .760. Obviously, Grady doesn’t qualify yet, but if he can keep up anything near this torrid pace, he’s looking at another Silver Slugger and maybe even more.
Feathers Down
Travis Hafner was supposed to start today, but was a late scratch due to a swollen ankle he hurt when he slid into home yesterday. Every year Pronk has had some sort of injury trouble, starting when Mark Buehrle threw a fast ball in his face. The next season he broke his arm when he was hit by a pitch and we all know about his shoulder problems. Hopefully this is nothing, but its disconcerting to see him come out of the lineup for any injury.
Austin Kearns had another chance today for a couple innings and squandered it as well, bobbling the only ball that was hit to him on the ground and striking out in his only at bat. If he keeps up this play, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Shelley Duncan (who hit another home run tonight) taking his starts away from him in left field when either Grady or Michael Brantley get a day off.
Al Pawlowski has been doing a fantastic job in the booth and is a feathers down only because it is just a matter of time before old stick in the mud Matt Underwood comes back. Baseball is a fun sport and this is a fun team, so we need fun announcers like Rick Manning and Al Pawlowski!
Final Score: Cleveland Indians 8 runs on 10 hits, Kansas City Royal Wedding Crashers 2 runs on 6 hits.
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