Morning Rundown: Tribe Bounced Around in the Bronx

I dislike Nick Swisher. I really do. I just can't stand him. The fact that he struck out three times delights me, but the RBI and the hit boils my blood. Watching him prance around in right field and play up his antics ticks me off. If he was ever on the Indians, I'm not sure I could handle it. Now that that is out of the way, we can talk about more angry things. Expect me to repeat this tomorrow though.

June 25th, 2012

Cleveland Indians - 1

New York Yankees - 7

W: Hiroki Kuroda (7-7) L: Josh Tomlin (3-5)

[BOXSCORE]

Regardless of your offense, Josh Tomlin did not get the Indians off to a great start. 2-2-2 in the first three innings is quite demoralizing. Adding on to the fact that he was pretty much done after that, it's kind of putting the nail in the coffin rather quickly. Teams have come back from six run deficits before, especially with a whole six innings left, but not with this offense.

"This is the wrong place to pitch behind in the count, up in the zone," Indians manager Manny Acta said. "Wrong place. Wrong team. He just doesn't have the stuff to pitch behind in the count and then have to come back into the zone and battle these guys. He really struggled." 

This isn't the vaunted Yankees with endless amounts of talent at every position, so let's not make any mistakes in saying they'll kill you 1-through-9 with their All-Star lineup. But you make mistakes they'll kill you. Even if you don't make mistakes and give them something decent to hit, they'll kill you. That's exactly what happened. Tomlin didn't have it and the Yankees pretty much had his number.

"Guys were fouling pitches off, and they saw a lot of pitches early," Tomlin said. "If guys were going to miss by that much, I'd prefer them to put it in play somewhere and hopefully get an out. At that point, they were fouling a bunch of pitches off and waiting. And when they got a pitch to hit, they didn't really miss it." 

The struggles of Josh Tomlin are starting to get concerning. He's an adjustment pitcher, so you expect him to make some changes. Acta says that while Gomez's issues are more mechanical, Josh's issues are different. Although they are not thinking it right this minute, he went as far as saying Josh could be a bullpen candidate if he doesn't figure things out.

I'm shocked Manny was that open about it, just throwing around that he could be moved to the bullpen. I think overall that's where they thought he'd eventually end up, probably quite earlier than this, but now with his struggles, they might be thinking it's time.

In this game specifically, it was too many pitches as Tomlin said. Of course three home runs will do you in, but in just three innings, 80 pitches? He couldn't have gone any further even if he or anyone else wanted him to, especially since he tops out around 90 anyway. It was just a very un-Tomlin-like game and the numbers show that all around.

So all in all, is it even worth discussing the offense, which has now scored exactly one run in three straight games and five runs in the past four games overall? Acta says it's just that point in the roller coaster, and you have to look at the wins, not the runs.

"It's the long roller coaster of the season," Acta said. "You win, you lose. You hit, you don't hit. You pitch, you don't pitch. You catch the ball, you don't catch the ball. The bottom line is we're 4-3 over the last seven games." 

I guess it is good that the team has managed to pull off some wins regardless of their slow offense. But guess what? You're back in the American League now. It's time to go. You can't be messing around, you need to score to keep up with some of these teams.