Morning Rundown: Lowe-r Than You Possibly Thought

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On top of Lowe's shutout being the first this season (a complete game for a starter), it's the first since 2010 for the Indians when then named Fausto Carmona tossed one. Indians staff didn't really do that all that much last season because A) Acta is always willing to go to his pen. B) Uh, the pen was actually good and you can trust them in handing a game over.

Back-to-back jacks in the fifth inning for Carlos Santana and Asdrubal Cabrera, but not before Shin-Soo Choo also hit a solo shot. It just added to the run support that Lowe did not need much of. All three of those gentlemen had two hits, and they were joined by Michael Brantley, who continues to swing a hot bat as he tripled (and stole a base!).

The Indians didn't even strikeout that much, just two on the game.

Casey Kotchman is now hitting above .200, but don't-cha-know, he's hitting .286 in May with double his RBI total. Told ya to just give him a little time. And you wanted LaPorta to botch things up?

Interestingly enough half of the hits that Lowe gave up were to a rookie, shortstop Brian Dozier. Yeah that's just different.

The only guy not on base at some point for the Twins? Their leadoff hitter, Darin Mastroianni, who didn't walk or collect a hit in this one. But how dirty is this lineup? I mean, it's gross looking. The crazy thing is the offensive lineup they field is not that much worse than what they fielded when they were a contender year-after-year. Sure they had Mauer and Morneau and some other good pieces, but this was never a team that scored a lot of runs.

They had good pitching and excellent defense. Well those two aspects are now failing and not coming through and the whole offense thing is starting to look a little worse as it no longer has that support it used to. Maybe Bud Selig should threaten to contract them.

[RANDOM RUNDOWN]

One guy to not reach base for the Tribe was Johnny Damon, who in result of Choo being named the permanent leadoff hitter, was dropped in the order, to even behind Michael Brantely.

"Choo is our leadoff guy. That's where he is going to hit," Acta said. "[Damon] is struggling right now. He's going to continue to get his at-bats, but he's not going to get them in the leadoff spot right now." 

You can't argue with the move right now as Brantley is still hitting in his spot, Damon has struggled, and Choo so far has seemingly taken to the new spot. Even if, Damon's numbers have simply not been good, even enough to justify his continued playing time in that area. It's been long enough that a change needed to be made.

This feels very much temporary though. As you would expect Damon to eventually get it. Whether it's just a slump or still not having gotten himself up to speed, you would expect Damon to start to produce at some point and be able to be put back in that leadoff spot that he's done so well in for so many teams. But we will certainly have to wait and see on that idea.

As was expected, at least by myself, Jack Hannahan was not in the lineup. With the day game following the night game, it seems like not enough time would have elapsed to give Hannahan the go-ahead to start. It stinks for Hannahan because this is his always his homecoming, but Acta wasn't ready to pencil in the third baseman back into the fold.

They will continue to take a wait-and-see approach, especially after they get back to home base for tomorrow's two game swing. Acta did note that he improved, but again, we'll see where things are Wednesday for the game against Seattle.

This seems like an appropriate time to mention the more aggressive use of the shift this season. Manny Acta, always one for statistics and data, has taken to using it a little more this year, saying that it doesn't matter what way the hitter is batting, they'll go with what statistics suggest.

"Righties, lefties, it doesn't matter," said Acta. "That's the thing that has changed drastically in the game. In the past you would only see it against left-handed hitters. But if a left-hander hits the ball to right side of the infield 85 percent of the time and a right-hander hits it to the left side of the infield 85 percent of the time, why not do the same thing? That's where the game has really changed. Guys are thinking outside of the box a little more. The stats and the facts are there. It's a matter of you taking a chance on the 10 percent or 20 percent of the times you get burned."

The Indians are one of the more frequenters of employing the shift to their defense. Joe Maddon really started doing it a whole heck of a lot in Tampa Bay and Manny Acta has likened to the trend and has now made the Indians one of the teams that uses it the most. It certainly comes into play when you are talking about someone like Derek Lowe, who's getting almost all his outs via the groundball. The perfect placement is even more important.

[TIGER WATCH]

We can definitely see that lineup's potential when they do things like score EIGHT runs in one inning. They keep doing those sorts of things. Then they go and look dead in the water offensively. The common occurrence more than anything is their pitching and it struggled again despite picking up a 10-8 win over the White Sox.

I think the biggest story here is that Jake Peavy struggled for the first time this season. Just like the Indians, the Tigers had a three home run inning in the sixth. Copy cats.

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