Luckiness

There's an old maxim that says, "It's better to be lucky than good." That's okay as far as it goes, but it hardly goes far enough. It is best, of course, to be good AND lucky. It is worst to be bad and unluky. The FEDBU, as they pretty much have been throughout their storied history, were lucky last night and the Indians were mostly bad and thoroughly unlucky.

The Tribe dropped a 5-2 decision to the FEDBU, despite a fine pitching performance from Aaron Laffey, because of one bad inning where the FEDBU scored 4 runs while hitting one ball out of the infield. It's particularly annoying to have opponents score runs on crappy, lucky, seeing-eye infield hits, primarily because it means that your pitcher is doing his job - he's pitching so well that opponents can't get good wood on the ball. That being said, the Tribe really only have themselves to blame for not teeing off on the husk of Mike Mussina. They had the chance to have a big inning to blow the game wide open and only got two runs. It wasn't enough.

Oh yeah - Laffey had a no-hitter going before surrendering the first two garbage infield hits.

This represents the second straight game where the offense failed to do anything. The previous day they wasted a gem of a game by CC Sabathia and ended up totally shut down by Chien-Ming Wang and losing 1-0 on a home run by Melky Cabrera. Yeah, that's right, Melky Cabrera. Let that rattle around your innards for awhile and then go get some Zantac.

So much for that 5-game winning streak. The total offensive collapse of the last two games leaves the Tribe at 12-14, with Seattle coming to town. The good news is that it might give Shapiro some face time with his favorite trade patsy, Bill Bavasi.

Mojo Watch:
Indians Pitching:

Indians Hitting:

Andy Marte Watch:

I'm beginning to wonder if Andy Marte is really some sort of advanced three-dimensional hologram that the Indians are testing for scientific purposes. This might explain their reluctance to put him in games.