Tribe Woes Continue In Oakland

The Indians wrapped up their series in Oakland yesterday in disappointing fashion, unable to win the rubber game and thus losing the series overall. Scott Kazmir, he of the "dead arm", was unable to make the most of his extended rest and was on the hook for the loss, giving up 10 hits for 5 runs in 5 innings in the Tribe's 7-3 loss to the A's. Cleveland haven't had the best run of late; they're 7-10 in August but somehow still find themselves in the wild card race, 4.5 games back of Tampa Bay. Hope remains.

Let's take a look at some talking points from the series:

Ubaldo Still A Mystery 

If you were told Ubaldo Jimenez would flirt with a no-hitter in 2013, you'd probably laugh in that person's face. But believe it or not he did, shutting out the A's for 5 innings on Saturday night during the Indians' 7-1 victory. It was quite a remarkable outing for Jimenez and, like the majority of his starts, wasn't everything it seemed at first glance. Yes, Ubaldo did keep Oakland from getting a hit through 5 innings, but he also walked 5 guys, so he hardly kept the A's off the bases. It came back to bite Ubaldo in the end, as his pitch count escalated (like usual) and he was pulled after just 5 and 2/3 innings.

But there was a lot to love about Ubaldo's recent outing. The right-hander struck out 8 batters, his highest strikeout total in a game since June 29th. He also got the invaluable run support that has been sorely lacking for our pitchers at times this month. Before Ubaldo even took the mound he had been gifted a 2-0 lead; that's got to be comforting from a mental aspect and I expect it helped Jimenez settle in a bit better.

With Saturday's win in the books, Ubaldo's season stats look like this: He's sitting on a respectable 4.00 ERA with 123 strikeouts in 128.1 innings, good enough for a 8.63 K/9 ratio. He has a 9-7 win/loss record, matching the 9 victories he earned last season, so he stands a good chance to beat that and achieve double-digit wins as an Indian for the first time (he had 10 wins in 2011 but 6 of them were in Colorado).

So all in all, it hasn't been the dreadful season from Jimenez many of us expected. He hasn't been great for sure, and he's only been good a handful of times, but he's been a massive improvement from 2012 Ubaldo. With just under a month and a half left of the season, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Jimenez can produce more outings like those of the Saturday night variety. Now if only he could make it through 6 full innings...

Player Of The Series

There were some good contributions throughout this series: Justin Masterson pitched a solid game on Friday night, lasting 7 and 2/3 innings, giving up 3 runs and keeping the Tribe in the game. Unfortunately the Indians couldn't support the big man and he ended up with the loss but it was a decent performance from Masterson nonetheless. Nick Swisher has been pretty good at the plate lately and his form continued in his old stomping ground in Oakland: Swish had 5 hits in the series for 3 RBI, including a home run on Saturday, his 13th of the year. But the Player of the Series for me was Jason Kipnis, who continued to pace the offense like he has all season. Kipnis had 4 hits, 3 RBI, and stole his 22nd base of the year in the series. He now sits with a .294 average, a .374 OBP, 15 home runs and 72 RBI for the season, pretty much leading every offensive category on the team. Well done Mr Kipnis, keep it up.

So the Indians remain out west for a bit longer, travelling to Anaheim today to take on the Angels in a three game series. Rookie pitcher Danny Salazar (1-1, 4.08 ERA) will toe the mound for us, facing off against Jered Weaver (7-6, 3.49 ERA). Salazar made an impressive start to his career in the majors but faltered a bit in his last start against the Twins. He'll be looking to rebound in style against the Angels tonight, and can hopefully put the Indians back on track.

*EDIT* Salazar has been scratched from tonight's start, and Zach McAllister is set to pitch instead. Something to do with the Indians keeping an eye on his innings limit.

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Oakland Swept, Tribe Roll On

The Indians completed their four-game sweep over the visiting Oakland A's last night, beating the Athletics 9-2 to secure their fourth win in a row. When Oakland came into town on Tuesday I did not expect the series to pan out like it did. I said I'd have been happy with a series split but the Tribe went a step above and decided to take all four games. Here's what I thought:

THAT Home Run Call

Yes, it should have been called a home run, anybody who disagrees is being ignorant or needs to book a trip to the opticians. For those who don't know, Oakland's Adam Rosales hit a towering shot off closer Chris Perez in the 9th inning Wednesday night that looked to have either hit the top of the wall for a double or just cleared it for a home run. Initially Rosales was awarded a double by the officials but Oakland skipper Bob Melvin asked for a replay to ensure the correct call was made. With 2 outs and the score at 4-3 to the Indians, if the home run was given it tied the game and awarded a blown save to Perez.

Luckily for the Tribe, the umpire Angel Hernandez blew the call and apparently never saw that Rosales' shot hit the railing above the outfield wall. It stayed 4-3 to the Tribe, Bob Melvin went ballistic and got ejected and Perez got the final out and his 5th save of the season.

Now obviously if I was an A's fan I'd be very upset about this. It came at a crucial point in the game, at a major turning point in the series. The MLB have since come out and said that it was a mistake but the ruling on the field was a "judgement call" and would not be overturned. There you have it; mistake made, mistake acknowledged, but no action will be taken. A's fans are no doubt still furious but as an Indians fan, with a controversial call going our way for once, well I can't honestly say I'm not still happy we won that game. It's really tough deal for the A's but nothing is going to happen now so everybody has to move on. That's all I'm going to say about the matter, it's been discussed to death already.

Keep It Up Kazmir

Last week's winning streak and this Oakland series have really seen the team performing at their best. We're getting great performances from every part of the team and look to be settling into a successful pattern.

But the rotation in particular have been fantastic these past four days. Ubaldo was up first on Monday night and he pitched a good game, lasting 5 2/3 innings with 4 hits, 2 runs and 8 strikeouts. He owes some credit to Nick Hagadone, who got Ubaldo out of a bases loaded jam in the 6th inning, but overall Jimenez looked solid out there, picking up the 1,000 strikeout of his career and his second win of the year as the Tribe ran out 7-3 winners.

Zach McAllister took the mound Tuesday night and put in a superb shift, shutting out the A's for 7 2/3 innings, allowing 5 hits with 4 strikeouts on his way to his third win in 2013. In a tight game where the only Tribe run came from a Yan Gomes sac-fly, McAllister never looked rattled and pitched extremely well in the 1-0 win. The 25 year-old put in arguably the best performance out of all the starters this week.

Justin Masterson pitched 7 strong innings on Wednesday night, giving up 3 runs on 4 hits, striking out 7. He had his fastball and slider working beautifully, and only ran into trouble in the 4th inning when his pitches were just a bit too high and in the zone for the A's batters. His offense bailed him out of the 3-0 hole and Masterson picked up his fifth win of the season.

Finally, Scott Kazmir continued his comeback tour of 2013 Thursday afternoon, pitching his best game of the season. Kazmir lasted 6 innings, scattering 5 hits and only surrendering 1 run, a solo-homer by Josh Donaldson, in the 9-2 victory. Amazingly he struck out 10 Oakland batters in those 6 innings, a season high by a Cleveland pitcher, and didn't give up a single walk. The veteran left-hander looked untouchable out there, pitching like a number 2 guy, not the number 5 man we all hoped be could be when he was bought in the winter. I said in my last post that if Kazmir can keep up this level of performance then we really got ourselves a bargain. At the moment he just keeps getting better and better every time he goes out there, surpassing every expectation. Good work Kaz, keep this up and you'll take home the Comeback Player of the Year award.

Ah what the hell, I know the offense have been fantastic over this series as well (we lead the league in HRs now... yeah, thought I should mention that) but I'm gonna go ahead and give Kazmir the Player Of The Series award. Yesterday's outing was just so brilliant, I think he deserves it.

Detroit Will Be The Real Test

So the Indians now sit pretty with a 18-14 record, just a single game back from the AL Central leading Tigers, who dropped one last night in Washington and have a 19-13 record. We arrive in Detroit today for a three game series and it will be a true test of where this Tribe team stand at the moment. A series win would surely put us above them in the division standings, which should be a nice incentive for the team. Not that they need any more motivation: Jason Kipnis said after the game yesterday, "We're excited to finally see them this year. We definitely want to go up against them. We know they're the team to beat. We're playing well right now, so we have a bunch of confidence and momentum going in our favor. We're ready to see them." I agree with our second baseman, we couldn't be in better shape going into this Detroit series and momentum is definitely on our side.

It gets even better with the news that speedy centre-fielder Michael Bourn has finally been activated off the disabled list and should be ready for action over the weekend. Hopefully his finger has healed completely by now and he can contribute against the Tigers. We'll need everybody at their best and it starts with Corey Kluber (2-1. 3.06 ERA)  up against Max Scherzer (4-0, 3.43 ERA) tonight at 7.08 pm. Go Tribe!

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