Written by Steve Buffum

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In an old-fashioned pitcher’s duel, Josh Tomlin lost a near-perfect game to Trevor Cahill because of a guy who came into the game hitting .227/.303/.258.  David DeJesus raised his SLG 72 points in one game at Tomlin’s expense, and Buff struggles to find a whole lot to say about the game.  He considered making one heading for each hit.  Instead, he talks about Tomlin, the A’s starter, and questions the Indians’ approach of swinging at pitches out of the strike zone.

 

 

FINAL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Indians (20-9)	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	7	1
Athletics (16-15)	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	X	3	4	0

W: Cahill (5-0)                L: Tomlin (4-1)               S: Balfour (1)

 

It’s easier to be magnanimous at 20-9 than, say, 11-18.  Doesn’t make it actually “easy,” though.

 

1) Marginal error

 

Through 7 innings, Josh Tomlin had allowed two home runs and NO OTHER BASERUNNERS.  Not just not other HITS, but no other BASERUNNERS.  The A’s hit 0-for-0 with runners on base until the 8^th, when Jack Hannahan’s error forced Tomlin to pitch out of the stretch for the FIRST TIME ALL GAME.

 

In some respects, Tomlin’s game was better than his counterpart, Trevor Cahill.  While Cahill gave up only 1 run in 7 innings, he took a lot more pitches (116) and allowed a lot more baserunners (5 H, 3 BB), all while throwing fewer strikes (67 to Tomlin’s 72 in 99 pitches).  Tomlin attacked the strike zone, inducing lousy contact and keeping the A’s off balance with a mix of movement, speed change, and location.

 

He threw two lousy pitches, and one of them was more “good hitting” than “lousy pitching.”  David DeJesus’ first home run came on a ball Tomlin meant to run inside, but DeJesus was able to jerk down the line for a corner shot.  This is the kind of home run you give up to the Mike Brantleys of the world: DeJesus came into the game with a .031 ISO, but he’s not really that bad.  In KC, DeJesus would routinely post decent power numbers, never on the order of what you’d prefer from a corner outfielder, but fine enough.  But that home run was more a case of turning on an inside pitch than any sort of majestic blast: the game log says 367 feet, but it didn’t even look that far on the replay.

 

The second homer was simply left out over the plate, and DeJesus creamed it.

 

There are a few lessons here: one is that Josh Tomlin will allow home runs.  I don’t like it, you don’t like it, and I’d venture to say that Josh Tomlin doesn’t like it.  It’s a feature of his pitching, though.  The good news is that both home runs were solo shots, continuing a theme thus far this season.  The bad news is that 2 is more than 1, which is the number of runs Cleveland scored, and that suggests that the conventional wisdom that “solo shots are relatively harmless” depends on your definition of “relatively.”

 

The “glass half-full” way to look at this is that Tomlin retired 21 of the 23 hitters he faced through 7 innings.  He retired two of four in the 8^th, and one of those who reached was on an error.  He went deep into the game with outstanding control (5 K, 0 BB, 72%+ strike percetange) and produced yet another Quality Start.  The “glass half-empty” is that a couple of the outs were kinda loud and he gave up two home runs, giving him a frightening 7 on the young season.

 

What this means is that Tomlin’s “margin for error” is a bit smaller than is normally comfortable.  Cahill put runners on base in nearly every inning, but because of his sinking stuff and broader movement, it rarely felt like the Indians were “just about to score,” much less “ready to put up a big inning.”  Tomlin just requires one bad pitch to the third hitter in a sequence to give up a three-spot: one borderline strike call he doesn’t get, one good piece of hitting, and bombs away.  While that’s obviously true of ANY pitcher, Cahill included, I can tell you that it didn’t FEEL that way.  I literally never thought, not ONCE, that THIS guy would take Cahill out of the yard.  I thought we’d be able to score a couple more runs, but it was likely to take three guys to score one run (walk, hit, run-producing out, for example).

 

Look, let’s not mince words: Tomlin was really impressive last night.  He retired EVERYONE but David DeJesus (and struck DeJesus out once) through 7 complete innings of work.  He was efficient and threw strikes.  He never walked ANYONE.  That’s great stuff.  I’m resigned to the fact that he’s going to make me nervous when he pitches, but his performance to date has been simply superb.

 

2) To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, “Motherf*@&ing ducks on the motherf&#*ing pond!”

 

I don’t mean to make it sound like there were an extraordinary number of runners stranded, or that the Indians set some of Team Record for futility.  You can go back to the 2006 or 2008 archives for that.  The Indians left 10 men on base and hit 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position: they hit 2-for-5 with a guy on first alone, which is pretty good, except that then it led to them hitting 1-for-8 after that, which is pretty crummy.  The only productive hit was Travis Hafner’s bloop single, which CF Covelli Crisp was unable to reach because his side hurt from laughing.

 

But on a night in which Cahill was obviously pitching exceptionally well, and Tomlin was obviously pitching exceptionally well, it just felt like all we needed was a hit here or there and we’d build an insurmountable lead, and instead we wandered around like so many aimless teenagers at the mall, wondering why Orange Julius is still in business even though no one actually ever goes there.

 

Anyway, it was bad.

 

One interesting aspect was the team-wide nature of the Fail: each player in the lineup went 0-for-1 with a runner in scoring position, except for Grady Sizemore, who did not have any opportunities, and Hafner, whose single was hilarious.  Carlos Santana actually had two opportunities and walked once, but the Fail was evenly-spread.

 

3) Specific badness characterization

 

Trevor Cahill threw 67 strikes in 116 pitches, and let me say this: many of them were NASTY.  Cahill has a curve and a slider and a pitch he throws caked in bacon grease and one that appears to be controlled by a small remote-control device in center field.  I can understand why you would not hit these pitches well, or at least pound them into the ground (13:3 GO:FO ratio for Cahill.

 

What I had a harder time understanding was why you would help Cahill out by swinging at garbage that bore no resemblance to the strike zone.

 

Okay, this is simplistic: of course some of those pitches looked good coming to the plate, then tore off the outer coat of grease and ended up far away.  That’s a good pitch.  Tim Lincecum makes a living on that pitch.  Yes, Cahill’s pitches will fool you.  But the Indians got fooled a LOT last night.  I mean a LOT.  He threw 67 strikes, and it seemed like about 40 of those were Actual Strikes.  I would hardly be surprised to see that well over half (if not close to 2/3) of Cahill’s pitches were actually balls.  He racked up a high pitch count in the early innings, and it seemed like the best shot the Indians had would be to continue to foul a few off, watch a few more, generally be Shin-Soo Choo (27 pitches in 4 plate appearances), and wear him out.  The team did this to a large degree, drawing three walks and running up the counts.

 

So if anyone can explain the start of the 5^th to me, I’m all ears. 

 

4) News flash!

 

It turns out that Tony Sipp DOES realize there are guys on base, and that he’s allowed to throw them out BEFORE they steal a base.  Who knew?

 

5) Crossed Fingers

 

Carlos Santana pulled up lame running to third base in the third inning.

 

Please don’t be a serious injury.