Written by Steve Buffum

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The few Cleveland fans not watching the NBA team turn into the Newtaliers were treated to the Brett Cecil Show, as the Toronto hurler carried a perfect game into the 7^th inning.  Although Cecil lost the perfect game, no-hitter, and shutout to a two-walks-and-a-single Planck Rally, it was plenty for the Jays to take the opener, as Mitch Talbot gave up three bombs.  Buff considers Talbot’s outing, Peralta’s hit, and everything else of interest, which is to say, nothing.  Well, Tony Sipp.  Whatever.

FINAL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Brett Cecils (14-13)	0	2	1	1	0	0	0	0	1	5	8	0
Indians (10-15)	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	2	0

W: Cecil (2-1)                L: Talbot (3-2)

I am reminded of the old saw about Len Barker’s perfect game, questioning whether being in Cleveland disqualified it.  This time, it’s not the location, but the “quality” of the lineup that has me wondering if an asterisk would have been necessary.

1) Wrong plane

In archaeology, there is the concept of stratification, where different layers of sediment represent different time periods.  This cuts both ways: not only can you tell from a particular layer what the conditions were like, but if you want to find a particular set of fossils or artifacts, you need to go to that particular layer.  Don’t look in the layer with stone tools for dinosaur bones.

In this vein, Mitch Talbot should not pitch in the plane in which he spent too much time last night.

Well, that’s a bit simplistic, of course: Talbot had plenty of success in stretches.  From the 4^th to the 9^th after Travis Snider’s rocket shot until John Buck’s bomb, Talbot allowed only three baserunners on a single and two walks, and erased one of them with a double-play ball.  During this stretch he struck out two guys and got more groundball outs than outs in the air.

Before that, of course, he was terrible.

Look, perhaps “terrible” is a bit strong, but Talbot came into the game having allowed only three extra-base hits all season: two homers and a double.  He gave up two doubles and three homers in this game alone, and all but Buck’s homer came in a two-inning stretch.  Was his command off?  I suppose you could say that.  Empirically, Talbot is most effective when he either keeps the ball down or has late sinking action.  I will tell you this: when he has neither, the results are not pretty.

Now, I was going to make some pithy comment about how maybe changing the plane gave him more strikeout power, since he struck out a season-high 5 batters.  Maybe this is so.  However, Toronto as a team has struck out 228 times, tops in the A.L. and 2^nd in the majors.  Texas’ 196 is the next-most in the A.L. (no pitchers batting), which is a LOT fewer.  So maybe striking out Blue Jays is not really the greatest way to measure anything.

(In case you were wondering, Cleveland is 3^rd in the A.L. with 194 Ks.)

2) Managerial Head-Scratcher

After 8 innings of 4-run ball, Talbot had given up 7 hits and 4 walks in 107 pitches, a thoroughly respectable outing.  One run shy of a Quality Start, but still, a job reasonably well done.

So he was sent out for the 9^th.

Now look: while I think pitch counts are valuable things, I’m no hardliner.  And, as noted above, Talbot was cruising from the 5^th through the 8^th, and the right-handed power hitter coming to the plate (John Buck, who goes through laughable stretches, but did hit 3 homers in a game recently, is very large, and has a perfectly cylindrical head-neck combo) had been retired three times without incident (first-pitch lineout, swinging K, first-pitch groundout).

But Talbot had gone 104, 97, 99, and 100 pitches in his first four starts: in a sense, 107 pitches was already “stretching” him.  More importantly, doesn’t this strike you as a bit of unnecessary luck-pushing?  I guess the strategy was to have Talbot retire Buck, then bring Tony Sipp out of the pen to face the severe lefty Snider, but … I mean … is Tony Sipp valuable or not?  Is he a lefty specialist and I didn’t get the memo?  Why not bring him in to start the inning and give Talbot the well-deserved congratulatory butt-slap?  Either Manny Acta was going for a complete game, which seems unnecessary, or was matching up Talbot for one hitter, which also seems unnecessary.  I dunno, I was surprised to see him out there, homer or no homer.

3) For the record

Sipp got Snider to whiff swinging, walked Fred Lewis on four pitches, picked him off, then got Aaron Hill to fly out (four of five pitches strikes).

In Sipp’s last 10 outings, he has given up 3 hits and 1 run in 8 1/3 innings.  He has struck out 7 hitters, but walked 5.  Left-handers are hitting .100 off Sipp; righties pound him to the tune of … .158.  Cut the walks, and this man is our best reliever by a wiiiiiide margin.

4) The man with the golden eye

Jhonny Peralta made four plate appearances last night: in THREE of them, he saw Ball Three.  In the other, he only went to a 2-2 count before lifting a single into left for Cleveland’s only hit of the game.

Hey, I love the plate discipline.  If there’s any hitter who can potentially not be bothered by being behind in the count, it’s Jhonny Peralta, who was last perturbed by something in 2006.  I admire the man’s placidity.  And he seems to be doing a better job this year of laying off the slider down and away, otherwise known as the “Jhonny Peralta.”

But if you watch strike three come right down the center of the strike zone, you have missed the point.  Jhonny did it twice, including once with two men on and two outs in the 9^th inning.  Still, when the man has your team’s only friggin’ hit, it seems petty to complain about a time he failed, since everyone else failed nearly every time.

5) Explanation sought

Mark Grudzielanek pinch-hit for Asdrubal Cabrera in the 9^th.

Aside from the fact that Kevin Gregg (Toronto’s closer) is right-handed and so is Grudzielanek, while Cabrera is a switch-hitter, and Cabrera can hit while Grudzielanek cannot, this is a terrific move.  Did Cabrera hurt himself?  Tweaked a hammy, for example?  Drew a jack-o-lantern on Manny Acta’s head, Charlie Brown style?  There’s gotta be something going on there, right?

6) Silver Lining Dept.

You know, the team could certainly have rolled over after being down 4-0 in a perfect game, but Sizemore and Choo drew walks and we actually had a chance to draw even if Travis Hafner were still alive.  And then, after a desultory 8^th and the Buck homer, the team STILL didn’t roll over, putting two men on base in the 9^th before Peralta dozed off on the full count.  I dunno, maybe I’m graspin’ at straws.  The team seems to have some character, though.

7) Fast Foward

Here’s what else happened in the game: Cleveland batters made outs.  Lots and lots of outs.  Virtually nothing but outs.  And then the game was over.