Roster Moves: Chris Johnson continues to be bothered by a secondary infection in his left hand stemming from a spider bite he received in Minnesota and has been placed on the 15 day disabled list retroactive to August 15th.
In his place, Jason Kipnis has been activated off the 15 Day DL although he wasn’t in the starting lineup. He was initially placed on the DL on August 3rd with right shoulder soreness.
Player of the Game
Responsible for the only Indians run, Michael Brantley takes home tonight’s Player of the Game due to lack of competition. Overall, he went 1/4 with a solo shot as the designated hitter. No Indians hitter had more than one hit and no pitcher threw well enough to deserve mention.
Feathers Up
Corey Kluber starts tomorrow, so the Indians still have a legitimate chance of winning the series in Boston.
Feathers Down
Trevor Bauer is going to have to increase the amount of topics he doesn’t want to talk about after tonight. Although he didn’t give up any home runs (as replay of David Ortiz‘s double showed), he was hit all over the inside of the ball park, including two doubles, a triple and two singles in less than two innings. While a couple defensive mishaps hurt him, including a Mike Aviles error and a poor route by Ryan Raburn in left, that only increased what was already significant damage.
The Indians knocked around the rookie right hander Matt Barnes last night, but Eduardo Rodriguez was a more difficult nemesis, the rookie left hander. Terry Francona didn’t help himself by benching Jason Kipnis and Yan Gomes and was hurt further by the continuing injury of Giovanny Urshela. Of those who did play, only Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez hit safely in the first six innings and they didn’t do so consecutively, so there was no real scoring threat. The only run coming against Rodriguez was a solo home run in the seventh as he appeared to be tiring and left a change-up a little too high in the zone. He would ultimately throw eight innings, allowing six hits and one run.
Every Indians pitcher tonight was involved in the scoring tonight either allowing their own run or someone else’s. Francona tried to use each reliever across multiple innings, but every single one failed at some point. The best of the bunch was Austin Adams, who stranded two of Ryan Webb‘s runs in the fifth, but after a scoreless sixth, he allowed two runners on to start the seventh. Jeff Manship came in for him and allowed both runners to score, raising the Red Sox score to nine, before finishing his inning. Manship did pitch a scoreless eighth and that, along with the sixth and Webb’s fourth were the only clean innings for the Indians staff.
Final Score: Cleveland Indians 1 – Boston Red Sox 9
On Deck: Kluber will face off against Joe Kelly in the finale of this three game series tomorrow night at 7:10 PM at Fenway Park.
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