3 Out of 4 Ain't Bad (Neither is 3 out of 3)

Hey crimestoppers,

Coming at you from New Jersey, where I'll be on business for a couple days.

The Tribe has scratched and clawed its way to .500 (well, briefly over .500) since my last post, carrying 3 of 4 from Toronto.

Good things:

• Unassisted Triple Play by The Beaded One!
• Knocking out Roy Halladay with a 6-spot in his shortest outing of the season.
• Going into the 10th inning of the nightcap of last night's doubleheader, the Indians had held Toronto scoreless for 31 straight innings.
• Complete game shutout for Fausto Carmona.
• Aaron Laffey went 7 scoreless to get a victory
• Cliff Lee went another 9 scoreless innings
• Craig Breslow sighting! Craig Breslow sighting! (2 scoreless)
• Grady Sizemore goes berserk on Grady Sizemore Fleece Night, knocking two out of the park, along with a double for 5 RBI. It may be time for a Travis Hafner fleece night.
• The starting pitching has been so good that Tom Mastny has not been seeing enough innings to stay sharp, so they sent him down to put some work in and stay ready.
• First homer of the year from the Beaded One.
• Shin Soo Choo has started his rehab assignment in Buffalo.
• Andy Marte sighting!

Not-so-good-things

• Tribe's bats silenced by Shaun Marcum in doubleheader nightcap and Senor Slow came on in the 10th to blow the game after Cliff Lee gave the Tribe 9 shutout innings. Rafael Betancourt's appearances are looking less and less like sure things. I can't believe this, but if He Who Shall Not Be Named really gets back what little velocity he had, he may actually be a better closer for this team. (Ack - I can't believe I just typed that, but there it is.) Betancourt does not look like the same guy in the 9th and 10th with the game tied now that he's The Closer.
• Jason Tyner called up to replace Mastny - and he started the second game of the doubleheader. Apparently our outfield logjam isn't so severe that we can find at-bats for a slap hitter like Jason Tyner in one of our corner outfield spots (career OPS - .637). I suspect he's just roster filler until He Who Shall Not Be Named or Shin-Soo-Choo or Westbrook is ready, but geez - do we have to start him? Late-inning defensive replacement for the Looch? Sure. Pinch-runner? Sure. Starting a game in place of someone who can actually hit? Please, no thanks.
• For those just looking at the box score, who see Andy Marte batting .091 on the season, with 3 LOB in the doubleheader nightcap, it's easy to wonder why he's still on the team. Those of us who are Andy Marte apologists will say that it's hard to get in a groove when you play only once a week. Those who are not will insist that any faith in him is not justified - look at his batting average. I keep waiting and hoping for Andy's Big Bustout, because I think it's coming, but for now, I'll have to be content with him playing better defense than Casey Blake and seeing a lot of pitches.

The beat goes on - Age and Treachery goes tonight against Duchsherer with the A's in town for 3.

So Long, FEDBU Stadium.

The Tribe made their last regular season trip to FEDBU Stadium a memorable one, winning a three-game series (and the season series) against the FEDBU. Among the memorable events:

• A come-from-behind victory against the overhyped Joba Chamberlain capped by a three-run home run by David Dellucci, after which young Joba was seen moping dramatically with a towel over his head in the FEDBU dugout. Apparently, there was a ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal in the dugout that Joba needed to hide from and Joba was just being a hoopy frood who always knows where his towel is. These were the first runs given up by the young future HOF'er in FEDBU Stadium in his entire HOF career in the building - 15 innings worth.
• In a much overhyped pitching "battle of the unbeatens", Cliff Lee's Beta Unit shut out the FEDBU and Chien-Ming Wang. The real Cliff Lee remains off-planet, defending the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.
• Andy Marte played in back to back games for the first time this season, starting the first two games of the series and getting his second hit of the season, scoring a run and generally playing nifty defense. The Indians won both games. The Indians are now 6-2 in games in which Andy Marte plays. Coincidence? However, with the bases loaded in the second game and 1 out, with the Tribe ahead 3-0, Wedge pinch-hit Pronk for Marte. Pronk proceeded to hit a double play dribbler that ended the threat. I guess I see both sides of this - Wedge was making the standard lefty-righty late game substitution. By most standards, this was the kind of typical baseball move that managers make all the time. However, it was just another in a continuing series of examples dating back to Marte's September callup in 2006 and proceeding through the numerous bunt orders this season that indicates that management has no cofidence that Marte can produce in clutch situations. We don't know whether he can because he's been given the chance so few times.
• The Indians version of Age and Treachery lost to the FEDBU version (Mike Mussina) in the last game of the series, primarily by not keeping the ball in the ballpark. Jason Giambi, whose career has declined to the point where he can pretty much only hit soft-tossers, hit a home run, as did Johnny Damon, Robinson Cano and Wilson Betemit. Pretty much the complete list of struggling FEDBU hitters were able to get well against Age and Treachery.
• During game 3 of this series, future HOFer Joba Chamberlain came out to work the 8th with the FEDBU ahead 6-3. He closed the inning by striking out David Dellucci and celebrating as if he'd just won the seventh game of the World Series. When asked about it later, Chamberlain said "That's who I am. Everybody knows that." Because his 38.1 regular season major league innings have made him known to the great American baseball public, who expect him to roll that way. When asked, David Dellucci had this to say: "It is what it is," he said. "If he wants to yell and scream after a strikeout, I guess that's what gets him going. It's May baseball. The home run was in a much bigger situation. I didn't dance and scream. If a hitter did something like that, it would be bush. It's kind of interesting how a pitcher gets away with it." I like David Dellucci more and more every day.
• The Indians now have a 4-6-2 record in series' this year and are 16-18 on the season. Amazingly, this is only 1.5 games back of the division leading Minnesota Twins. (I never thought I'd be typing the phrase "division leading Minnesota Twins" in May.) They start a 7-game homestand tonight against the Blue Jays.
• J-Mike is now a teammate of J-Bay. The Tribe traded him to the Pirates for a PTBNL. By most accounts, it looks like the Tribe is eating most of J-Mike's salary, so they may get a decent prospect back in this trade.

Mojo Watch

Cliff Lee: Full Elvis for Clifton.

David Dellucci: Elvisness for being clutch and for being old school.

Andy Marte: I'm giving Marte some Elvis for playing two in a row and looking like a major league third baseman in the process.

Fausto Carmona: His ERA is low. His WHIP is high. He's killing me in my fantasy leagues with his insane walk rate. Imagine how well he could be pitching if he could find the plate consistently.

Pronk: Right now, Pronk is Michael J. Fox -he's got no Elvis. His mojo is completely AWOL. I'm thinking that it's time for the Hello Kitty armband.

Indians Blanked by Travel Day

Yesterday, the Indians only managed 4 hits, losing 1-0 to Travel Day. Day, a left-handed junk-baller, came into the game with an ERA of 8.96, having been hit hard in all of his starts so far, including giving up 6 runs in 4 innings against the Tigers in his previous start.

So long, J-Mike.

Indians beat writer Anthony Castrovince has confirmed that Jason Michaels will be DFA'd to make room for Ben Francisco.

As The Diatriber has mentioned early and often, Jason Michaels has been pretty superfluous on this team, more so since he's not been producing.

What will this solve? On the surface, not a lot. Francisco has not exactly been lighting it up at Buffalo this year. Dellucci will likely still get most of the starts in left field, since right now he is the third-most productive hitter in the lineup behind Grady and Victor. I suspect that this also means that we see more of Dellucci at DH and Pronk on the bench against pitchers that have given Hafner fits.

This is a message move - even if you're a veteran, your job is not safe if you don't produce quality at-bats. I'm looking at you, Casey Blake. Will it work? Who knows? It worked last year when The Beaded One was brought up to supplant Josh Barfield. How many times can you go to this well?

The other question is - will anyone want J-Mike? Can we at least get a low-ceiling prospect for him? He has shown some signs of at least playing like a major leaguer lately (7 for his last 20), so there might be an NL team that could use him as a bat off the bench and willing to give up a little something for him. Stay tuned.

Swept

The bad news: The Indians just got swept this weekend, at home, by the Royals.

The good news: One of the games was rained out, so it was only a two-game sweep.

Let's go to the checklist:

• Excellent starting pitching wasted? Check
• Closer gives up a home run? Check
• Fielding errors gives up costly runs? Check - this time it was Casey Blake (Sunday) and Franklin Gutierrez (Saturday)
• Failure to pound second- or third-rate opposition pitching? Check
• No sight of Andy Marte? Check
• 8 total hits in two games? Check

Right now, the Indians are a mediocre team. Something has to change to shake this team up before some other team gets hot and puts the whole division in a deep, deep hole. They can't keep wasting good starting pitching like this.

Cliffie!

There are many surprising things so far about the Indians season. Here are a few of them:

• CC Sabathia's puzzling stretch of awfulness.
• The fact that several key hitters seem to be hovering near the Mendoza Line, including Jason Michaels, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Pronk, Casey Blake, and, with his recent nosedive, now Ryan Garko as well, to name the most egregious offenders.
• The puzzling continued extensive pine time of young Andy Marte.
• The complete disappearance of Victor Martinez' power.
• The implosion of the bullpen.

However, one surpise ranks well above all the others, and that is the Nintendo numbers being put up on the mound by one Cliff "Sleepy Kitten" Lee. To put this in perspective, at one point in last night's game, Lee had pitched 28 consecutive scoreless innings, including 6 last night. Lee tired to open the 7th, giving up a couple singles followed by a bomb to make his line 3 runs in 6 innings. To put this into perspective, giving up those 3 runs increased Lee's ERA to 0.96. Think about that for awhile.

The other good news is that when Lee gave up those runs, it was not cause for heart palpitations and the tense gripping of armrests among Tribe faithgul because Lee had been staked to an 8-0 lead. Sizemore, who looks more like the Sizemore of old that we've come to know and love since he had a couple of forced days off, opened the game with a big fly. The Tribe finally pummeled mediocre starting pitching (Jarrod Washburn), putting the game away with a 5-run fifth. Sizemore was 2 for 3 with a double, homer and two walks. Frank the Tank had 3 RBI.

So, the Indians finish April at 13-15. The good news is that Detroit also finishes April at 13-15. We haven't lost ground to the Motor City Kitties, but we've also not been able to put them into a hole based on their 0-7 start. The other good news is that no other team seems to want to run away with the division. The Whine Sox are 14-12, 2.0 games ahead of the Tribe and MCK. The last place Royals are only 2.5 games out. Even more good news - given the quality of the Indians' starting pitching, they are the team most likely to be able to put together a good run and put some distance between them and the rest of the teams in the division, if they can get a good run of hitting and some solid bullpen work.

More of the Same

The Tribe lost last night's game to the Mariners (7-2) the same ways they've been losing them all season. Let's run down the checklist, shall we?

• Adequate starting pitching wasted by anemic offense? Check
• Lack of clutch hitting? Check
• Fielding mistakes turn into unearned run(s)? Check
• Late bullpen collapse by the closer? Check
• Failure to pound inferior opponent starting pitcher? Check
• Bad luck on balls hit in play by the Indians, better luck by the opposition? Check

FWIW, the domain firederekshelton.com was available when I checked last night. Anyone game?

That's all I've got. It's too disheartening now to elaborate.

Andy Marte Watch:

Andy Marte played. He made several really fine barehanded plays, but ole'd a hard-hit ground ball that led to a run. He went 0 for 4 at the plate and hit the ball hard twice right at people and hit the ball weakly twice. He was not asked to bunt, nor was he pinch-hit for. SUMM played first base in place of Garko, who was given a mental health day.