Written by Steve Buffum

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The Indians dropped their fifth straight to the lowly Twins last night, and today’s B-List focuses on the game-ending play, Josh Tomlin’s whackability, and a variety of other unsavory actions.  In today’s column, Buff wonders if Matt LaPorta will ever see a different kind of pitch than the One He Cannot Hit, whether Josh Tomlin’s efficiency is actually efficient, and whether the heart of the order can, in fact, hit baseballs.  He lauds the bullpen, but it doesn’t last for very long.

 

 

FINAL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Twins (22-37)	0	2	0	0	3	1	0	0	0	6	10	1
Indians (33-25)	2	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	4	9	0

W: S. Baker (3-4)           L: Tomlin (7-3)               S: Capps (8)

 

 

If the team meeting was really about baby shower gifts, the team might consider taking back one of the cribs and giving Josh Tomlin some Competent Defense instead.   He needs that more.

 

1) Managerial Steve-Infuriators

 

In the bottom of the 9^th, Travis Buck led off the inning with a four-pitch walk off quasi-closer Matt Capps.  This brought the tying run to the plate in the guise of Orly Cabrera, who, to his credit, did take a pitch to see if Capps could find the strike zone.  I was proud of him. Then he fouled a couple off and took strike three and the pride dissipated, but hey, Capps is pretty good and Orly pretty much isn’t and these things happen.

 

Thinking he would go for the quick-strike game-tying homer, Manny Acta called on Shelley Duncan to pinch-hit for 9-hole hitter Jack Hannahan.  This was a bit of a capricious gamble, in that while Duncan has significant raw power, he is not very effective against right-handed pitching.  In fact, in limited service in 2011, Duncan is hitting .152/.171/.273 against righties, which is what Capps is, by the way.  In the previous three seasons (2008-2010), Duncan hit .193 against RHP.  This is not a strength.

 

Do you know who was more likely to hit a home run off a right-handed pitcher than Shelley Duncan?  How about Jack Hannahan?  Hannahan’s overall numbers against righties aren’t good either at .193/.284/.277, and no, he’s neither a power nor a good hitter, generally speaking, but he did have the third-longest ball (possibly the second) for the Tribe last night when he flew out to deep center in the bottom of the 5^th.  And while he is nursing a hamstring injury, he’s only grounded into 4 double plays in 185 plate appearances: Duncan already has 3 in 82.  Really, had Hannahan just stood at the plate like a statue and struck out, there would only be two outs, bringing up the top of the order.  Speaking of which …

 

Do you know who was more likely to hit a home run off a right-handed pitcher than Shelley Duncan OR Jack Hannahan? Mike Brantley.  How can I say this?  How about his 400-foot shot off Scott Baker in the 5^th?  Besides which, Brantley reached three times on Sunday (one of the few Indians to do anything whatsoever against C.J. Wilson and company), and three more last night, going 3-for-4 with a single, double, and homer.  With an OBP north of .350 and on a hot streak (.321/.406/.464 over the week leading up to the game), Brantley was one guy you really would have like to have gotten a shot at Capps.  Of course, maybe not THE guy, because …

 

Do you know who was more likely to hit a home run off a right-handed pitcher than Shelley Duncan OR Jack Hannahan OR Mike Brantley?  How about your team-leading homer artist, Asdrubal Cabrera?  Cabrera hit his TWELFTH homer of the season off Baker in the 1^st to give the Tribe a 2-0 lead, and was ALSO 3-for-4 coming into the 9^th inning.  Really, the only two guys on the whole damned team you WANTED to come up to the plate were the GUYS WHO WERE GOING TO COME UP TO THE PLATE UNLESS SOME MEATBALL HIT INTO A GAME-ENDING DOUBLE PLAY BEFORE THEY GOT A CHANCE TO COME UP.  (The Indians had 9 hits.  Brantley and Asdrubal Cabrera had 6 of them.)

 

Now, in Acta’s defense, here was his bench last night:

 

Shelley Duncan
Austin Kearns
Tofu Lou
Adam Everett

 

You couldn’t have asked me to send one of those guys up against Matt Capps if you threatened to set my car on fire.  Just an awful, awful collection of 2011 hitters.  But … isn’t that kind of the point?  You didn’t HAVE to send ANY of them up there.  Sure, I’d like a better bench.  I bet Acta would, too.  But if you have a water pump that works, you don’t swap it out for one that probably works worse.  This was like the “Peanuts” strip in which Charlie Brown is thrown out stealing home.  Sure, he might not have scored from third.  But he sure wasn’t likely to score by stealing home.  Shelley Duncan was not guaranteed to ground into a double play … but he sure was more likely to do something poor than something good, and was more likely to do something poor than the GUY HE REPLACED.  On the off chance that Capps threw him a meatball?  Great Shakespeare’s bald spot, that hurt my sternum.

 

2) Portrait of the Columnist as a Foolish Fool

 

I fell for Josh Tomlin.  After all the hemming and hawing and hedging and grudging, I fell for it anyway.

 

On the other hand, if there is such a thing as an “encouraging dismal failure,” Tomlin did have some moments last night.  He generated a pretty-high 16 swings and misses, even more than Scott Baker had through 7-plus (Tomlin went 6).  He kept the ball down with 10 ground ball outs to 5 in the air.  He certainly threw strikes, 63 in 83 pitches, showing efficiency (83 pitches got him through 6 complete), control (0 walks to go with 3 strikeouts), and willingness to pound the strike zone.

 

On the other hand, he fell behind 2-0 to Matt Tolbert, who is hitting .215/.263/.333 on the season, with two runners on, then put the 2-0 pitch in Tolbert’s “happy zone” (actually, at .215, Tolbert doesn’t have a “happy zone” as much as, say, a “mildly amused zone,” or a “less dispeptic zone”) for a two-run single.  And while the 3-run 5^th inning was a horror of bunts, crummy defense, and a run-scoring wild pitch, it all started with a leadoff double by a guy with a sub-.300 OBP.

 

Tomlin did give up 9 hits, which is kind of a lot of hits in 6 innings, but two of them were bunts (one a squeeze, one just poorly played), and none left the yard.  I guess you’d have to call any outing in which you give up 1.0 runs and 1.5 hits per inning to be pretty bad, or at least Carrascoesque.  But I don’t think this is any gigantic “the league’s caught up with him now!” sort of moment for Tomlin: he just got beat.

 

3) In direct contrast

 

Raffy Perez and Chad Durbin combined to allow one baserunner in three innings.  The baserunner was on an infield single allowed by Durbin.  He was erased trying to steal second, which came immediately before what would potentially have been a double play grounder anyway.  They allowed a combined two fair balls to be hit past the infield.

 

4) A game of inches

 

In the first inning, five Cleveland batters came to the plate.  Of the five, only five of them hit the ball as hard as humanly possible.  After Brantley’s leadoff double and Cabrera’s two-run shot, Grady Sizemore smoked a single the other way, and Carlos Santana hit a ball on the screws.

 

Unfortunately, Santana’s ball was right at second baseman Tolbert, who doubled Sizemore off first.  On the next pitch, Shin-Soo Choo smashed a liner to right that was more or less right at Ben Revere, and the inning was over.

 

The next inning, Travis Buck smoked a liner that was stabbed by first baseman Mike Cuddyer: had that made it down the line, the next hitter, Orly Cabrera, might have had an RBI single instead of a pointless one.

 

I really thought we were going to score a bunch of runs early last not.  (Not late, though.)

 

5) Scouting Report

 

If you are a major-league right-handed pitcher, and you throw anything but a slider low and away to Matt LaPorta, I am forced to conclude one (or more) of the following:

 

a) You are getting too “cute”
b) You have no slider
c) You are much too stubborn
d) Your scouting department sucks rocks

 

Over LaPorta’s last 10 games, he has struck out 15 times in 38 AB.  He has drawn one walk.  He has struck out at least once in each of the last 6 games, a total of 10 times in 23 AB.

 

In completely unrelated news, Nick Johnson was in Cleveland taking batting practice in front of Tribe officials.  He is a first baseman.  (I’m sure it was simply a coincidence.)

 

6) In fairness to Shelley Duncan

 

Carlos Santana batted with runners on 1^st and 2^nd and nobody out in the bottom of the 8^th inning.  He promptly (well, not PROMPTLY, Carlos Santana never does PROMPTLY at the plate: it was on the 7^th pitch and his umpty-umpth full count of the season) grounded into a double play.

 

7) In continuing unfairness to Matt LaPorta

 

LaPorta ended that inning with a man in scoring position by … wait for it … wait for it … striking out swinging!  Yes!  You guessed it!  Thank you for coming!  Try the veal.

 

8) Ducks on the pond!

 

With Brantley and Cabrera going 3-for-4 apiece, you would think that they would score a lot of runs!  And they did score all four of Cleveland’s runs!

 

Two scored on Cabrera’s homer.

 

One scored on Brantley’s homer.

 

The other run scored on an error.

 

Cleveland’s 4-5-6 hitters (Santana, Choo, LaPorta) went 1-for-12 with 5 Ks.  They hit 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.  There is no truth to the rumor that they played Puppyminton™ in the clubhouse between innings, but that’s about the only thing that would have made their collective performance more loathesome.