Written by Steve Buffum

---

So here is what it’s come to: the Indians play the worst team in the National League in Interleague Play ... and they lose two of three.  Thus closes the book on the “Cleveland Indians as interesting team” book, and opens the new chapter, “Utter Contempt and Derision,” and no one utterly derides with contempt quite like The B-List.  Note that one of the reasons for the lost series is no longer contemptible, as D.R. Huffnostuff was sent to Clumbus to ... well, frankly, who the hell cares WHAT he does there? 

FINAL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Indians (26-40)	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	4	9	0
Pirates (23-44)	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	3	6	0

W: Carmona (6-5)          L: Maholm (4-5)             S: K. Wood (5) 

FINAL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Indians (26-41)	1	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	4	9	0
Pirates (24-44)	1	0	2	0	2	0	0	1	X	6	9	0

W: Karstens (2-2)           L: P. Nongrata (2-9)       S: Dotel (13) 

FINAL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Indians (26-42)	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	11	3
Pirates (25-44)	2	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	X	5	8	0

W: Donnelly (3-1!)          L: J. Lewis (2-2)             S: Dotel (14)

 

A couple years ago, nationally televising a mid-season Cleveland-Pittsburgh game would not have occurred to me.  Thankfully, it didn’t occur to anyone else, either.  Are we televising the British Petroleum oil spill?  There you have it. 

1) 2/3rds of a ¡Fausto! 

Let me say this: there are few pitchers who are more fun for me as a Cleveland fan to watch than Fausto Carmona when he has his top-shelf stuff. 

Sure, it was impressive to see Strasburg, and classic guys like Roy Halladay and Tim Wakefield are good from a “baseball aesthetic” standpoint.  I really loved watching Cliff Lee in 2008, although of course it makes me ill (physically, mentally, and spiritually) to see the 2010 version, which is essentially the same wearing the wrong hat.  (Oddly enough, I never got real jazzed for C.C. Sabathia starts.)

But since Fausto is still ours for the time being and he can be truly dominating in his own inimitable fashion (double-digit Ks need not apply), he’s the one for me.  So consider, if you will, the elements of a superior Fausto start: 

a) Ground balls, and plenty of ‘em 

8 groundouts to 2 flyouts is not unexpected, but through the six dominant innings Fausto pitched, he gave up only singles.

b) Low walk totals

 Through six innings, Fausto didn’t walk ANYONE. 

c) More strikeouts than you’d expect

More than one per inning, 7 through six innings of work.  In addition, Carmona induced 11 swinging strikes, and ALL SEVEN of the strikeouts were SWINGING.  Yes, one of them was Paul Maholm, the pitcher, who is hitting .000.  That’s zero, zero, zero.  I mean, pitchers are bad hitters, but ZERO?  I saw Bartolo Colon get a hit, for Pete’s sake, and his strategy (such as it was) was to swing at every pitch and hope its plane happened to cross the path of the ball.  It wasn’t so much a “strategy” as a “concession.”  Still, Carmona struck out six real hitters and Maholm, which still qualifies.  (And if you want to make the joke about the Pirates not being real hitters, I want you to scroll back up and take a look at the scoreboards.  I’ll wait.  More seriously, their 1 through 4 hitters are legit.)

d) A WHIP under 1.00

Under 1.00?  How does 0.33 grab you?  Through six innings, Carmona allowed two singles and no walks.  One guy who singled was caught stealing, meaning Carmona faced 19 hitters through 6 innings, one over the minimum.  Four of the six innings were 1-2-3 affairs.  Moreover, through six innings, Carmona had thrown only 68 pitches, 47 for strikes.  For a guy who struck out 7 hitters, that’s a low number of pitches.

Now, this having been said, Carmona’s start ended up looking pretty mediocre in the end because he couldn’t come back after the long layoff of the Indians’ OFFENSIVE EXPLOSION™ in the top of the 7^th.  Of course, it did not help that he gave up the four hundred ninety-seventh infield single to shortstop the Indians have allowed this season, shattering the old mark of Everybody Else In The History Of Baseball, nor to walk his first hitter.  And, of course, a bases-loaded 3-run double is never recommended, especially not to Ryan Church, who is on his fourth time being washed up, if I recall correctly, and is currently hitting ..180/.219/.311.

But the first six innings were magical. 

2) Speaking Ill of the Dead

Who am I to kick a man when he’s down?  (I’m Steve Buffum, by the way.  I write The B-List.  Nice to finally meet you.) 

Who am I kidding, I TOTALLY kick men when they’re down!  Come on!  I mean, not just for sport or spite or anything, but because their being down makes my team lose, which makes me frustrated and regurgitory.  And no one epitomizes “regurgitory” more than my auxiliary man, David Huff. 

What is there to say that hasn’t been said?  The 7.20 ERA over his last eleven starts?  The 1-9 record over that span?  The fact that his ERA is higher than last year’s ... as is his WHIP ... as is his HR/9 ... as is his OISO (opponent’s isolated power) ... as is his BB:K ratio (it makes no sense to speak of a K:BB ratio w.r.t. David Huff) ... by any objective measure, he has taken a rather substantive step BACKWARD from 2009 ... when he was awful!  It is understandable when a rookie posts bad stats: he is learning his craft, the hitters are a huh-yuge step up, any number of things.  When he REGRESSES from CRUMMY, there needs to be some real soul-searching done.  Because David Huff’s pitching has hurt my soul.

Did Huff walk batters?  Six of ‘em!  Four on four straight balls (admittedly, on intentionally)!  Did he conk out before the sixth inning?  You betcha!  Maybe about a run an inning?  Exactly one per inning!  Strike out nobody?  Two in five innings, virtually nil.  Extra-base hits?  You know it!  (Two doubles and a triple in 6 hits, the classic “one-to-one” ratio we’ve come to know and abhor.)  Homers?  Sorry, Charlie, no homers today.  Alas, there’s always something to work on.  Is there a positive sign to take from his outing?  He did not puncture either eardrum.  That’s the best I got.

Look, is this fair?  I’m tempted to pull some sort of false magnanimity out of my posterior and talk about fair shakes and young pitchers and developmental horse manure, and I can’t do it.  Yes, this is eminently f*@^ing fair, at LEAST as fair as forcing me to watch David Huff pitch thirteen friggin’ times.  How fair was THAT? 

You want fair?  How about this: David Huff is not a lost cause.  He is not a talentless schmuck.  He throws over 90 mph and can get major-league hitters out.  But he commands his fastball with the aplomb of a Lindsay Lohan trainer, doesn’t have sufficient movement to get away with missing spots, works too high in the zone for someone with neither superior velocity or adequate movement, and doesn’t use his repertoire effectively.  There are pitchers who have come back from these flaws: Cliff Lee comes to mind.  There are pitchers who have NOT been able to overcome these flaws: Jeremy Sowers comes to mind.  We should certainly see if Huff can overcome these flaws, but the fact is, he is NOT developing these skills in the majors.  We sent Lee down.  We sent Sowers down.  We sent Huff down.  This is what you do.  Now, let’s see what Huff does while he’s down there, and what he comes back up with.

 Alert reader Don Saverno points out that when Huff’s turn in the rotation comes around, it will be the first time this season that the Indians will have started anyone other than the Original Five of Westbrook, Carmona, Masterson, Talbot, and Huff.  While that thoroughly artificial quirk is an interesting thing to note, I have to admit that my overall reaction to this factoid is, “Good!” 

3) Excellence squandered 

Imagine a world in which the Cleveland Indians infielders knew what the f&#^ they were doing at any given time and could actually play baseball.  Wait ... my brain just made a Blue Screen of Death.  This overtaxes my limited imagination.  Perhaps you will fare better. 

Still, I went to graduate school in mathematics, the very essence of which is to DEFINE a set of rules and determine what you can figure out about the world they define.  You KNOW it’s a nonsensical, piffulous world that you’ll never see, but you can DERIVE what would have to be true given the set of initial conditions.  In this way we get Lobachevskian geometry, complex dynamics on the Riemann Sphere, and a world in which making “Jonah Hex” and giving late-night talk shows to Chevy Chase, Magic Johnson, and Pat Sajak all seem like good ideas to someone.  (You have to relax the axiom set to find someone who thinks ALL of these things are good ideas, but hey, someone invented a non-commutative, non-associate vector space on the octonions.) 

So imagine this crazy, tilted world in which Jhonny Peralta not only doesn’t make a throwing error, but actually keeps the nine hundredth “infield single” hit against the Indians (again: New League Record) from being a “base hit.”  And then someone teaches Justin Masterson how to field his position in a manner UNlike that of a molting musk ox, and HIS throw is on target for an out as well. 

In this case, not only does Masterson give up zero runs in six innings, he gets to go through SEVEN innings (or at least 6 2/3) because of the outs saved in the first.  And then we don’t see as much Raffy Perez, or at least see him later, and of course, when we see him, he is somehow able to avoid throwing a comebacker into whatever f*#&ing body of water is near the g*#&$m new Pittsburgh stadium, and HE doesn’t give up a run either, and maybe we even find some way not to squander the mother*#&ing game and everyone goes home with functional spleens and no one has to learn about hyperbolas or conformal mappings or see Josh Brolin wearing terrifying makeup while Megan Fox pretends to simultaneously be able to act and breathe in an 18” corset.  (That’s a red herring: the corset is irrelevant, in that Megan Fox cannot act under ANY circumstances.) 

Anyway, I appear to have strayed off my original point, which was that Masterson actually pitched damn well on Sunday.  He gave up 5 hits in six innings, all singles: three in the first inning, and two of the five didn’t leave the infield.  He struck out 7 hitters against only 1 walk.  He posted a 9:2 GO:FO ratio, induced a double play, and got 10 swinging strikes.  Really, even in THIS universe, he deserved better than a no-decision. 

But even in this universe, if you use Raffy Perez, Jensen Lewis, and Tony Sipp as your relievers in that order, you will lose.  Even octonions have a “zero.” 

4) A contrast in styles

Given a 3-2 lead to protect on Sunday, Raffy Perez gacked it up on a single, an error, a sacrifice, and a two-out wild pitch, meaning that if he’d basically done ANYTHING ELSE, like field his position OR throw the ball within the range of the catcher (the hitter with two outs subsequently struck the f*#& out), he would have held the lead. 

For Jensen Lewis and Tony Sipp to blow, of course, but the point remains.  Lewis walked a hitter and gave up a hit; Sipp also walked a hitter and gave up a hit to tack the runs onto Lewis’ ERA instead of his own, because, you know, 7.04 is high enough. 

On Friday, Perez DID throw the ball within the range of the catcher, and he, Frank Herrmann, and Chris Perez were able to hand over a 1-run lead to Ubermenschian closer Kerry Wood, who produced a 1-2-3 save and SEEMED to signal the beginning of a very successful weekend.  Well, as successful as it can be with David Huff starting.  And the Chuckle Head Brigade wrapping up on Sunday.  Huzzah! 

5) Ducks on the Pond! 

Of course, when you lose a pair of games by two runs each, the natural question is, “How did the boys hit with runners in scoring position?”

I am so glad you asked. 

Like human waste. 

Russ Branyan’s three-run shot not only represented the bulk of the offense in “support” of Huff on Saturday, it represented the ONLY HIT THE INDIANS HAD WITH A RUNNER IN SCORING POSITION IN EITHER LOSS.  That’s right!  1-for-8 followed by a brisk 0-for-6!  We left 7 and 8 men on base respectively.  We outhit the Pirates 11 to 8 on Sunday, and had the same 9 hits on Saturday.  (Note: with Huff’s blunderbussery, the Pirates DID walk 8 times Saturday and left 11 on base despite producing 4-for-15 with RISP.) 

Believe it or not, the one game we won was the game in which we hit 5-for-12 with RISP.  How about that?  Who would have thought that?  By the way, the 5 hits produced 4 runs.  I will now use lye as contact lens solution. 

6) Ode to Tofu Lou 

O, Lou Marson,
You toil in Columbus.
For ever and ever,
Amen.

Carlos Santana went 2-for-2 on Friday with a pair of walks.  One of the hits was a double. 

Carlos Santana pinch-hit on Saturday.  He walked. 

Carlos Santana went 3-for-4 on Sunday.  He had a single, double, and homer.  The strikeout he had was the only out he made against Pittsburgh in three games. 

Carlos Santana is now hitting .393./.514/.786.  He has 7 extra-base hits in 28 AB.  The man he replaced, Lou Marson, left after hitting .191/.268/.262.  He had 8 extra-base hits ... in 141 AB.  Marson allowed 2 passed balls, four hundred thousand wild pitches, and caught a marvelous 38.1% of would-be basestealers.  (No snark there: that IS marvelous.) 

Carlos Santana has allowed zero passed balls and has caught 42.9% of would-be basestealers. 

Basically, what I’m saying is: if you find someone who says that Tofu Lou deserves another shot so we can move Santana to 1B (for example), hit that person in the face with an anvil. 

7) Some stats mean more than others 

Carlos Santana did not get a hit in each game, but Shin-Soo Choo did.  That’s very nice: your #2 hitter getting hits is a good thing, and Choo had an RBI single Friday, a single and a double Saturday, and another single on Sunday (to go with a walk and an HBP, after which he scored).  Of course, he was also thrown out at home by Ryan Church, but hey. 

So you might conclude that Choo was just as valuable offensively since he got a hit in each game.  You know who else got a hit in each game?  Jhonny Peralta.  So let’s not get carried away. 

8) Salesman’s hat! 

Jhonny Peralta not only got a hit in each game, two were doubles (more than Shin-Soo Choo!).  Peralta now leads the team in doubles (20), triples (2), extra-base hits (26), stolen base percentage (1.000), RBI (33), and head width-to-height-to-depth ratio (1.000).  He is a man who can play just as well at third as he can at short.  If you were a team in need of either commodity, you could do a whole lot worse than trade for Jhonny Peralta.  (Adam Everett, for example .... brrrrrr ... I get shivers just thinking about that.) 

And Kerry Wood ... what can be said about Kerry Wood that hasn’t been said before?  He loves puppies AND kittens.  He can recite “Ozymandias” by heart.  He can kill pestilent insects just by looking at them with a furrowed brow.  You must have Kerry Wood on your roster, or you will all die.  All of you!  It’s sad, but sadly (by definition), it is true.  Without Kerry Wood, you will die.  (We’ll be okay: forcing us to carry Raffy Perez and Tony Sipp on the roster inoculates us, and really, this is one case of the cure being worse than the disease.) 

9) Riddle me this! 

Question: what do Andy Marte, Shelley Duncan, Luis Valbuena, Travis Hafner, and a pierogi have in common? 

Answer: all could be found in Pittsburgh this weekend, and each of them collected zero hits. 

10) Casual observation 

Our pitchers suck at hitting.