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.