Proof That Baseball Is A Weird Game

If you want more proof that baseball is a funny game, look no further than the Indians four game sweep over the Tampa Bay Rays this weekend.  The Tribe came into the series on a 10 game losing streak, and the Rays had the league’s best record.  Cleveland has a journeyman just up from the minor leagues (Matt Ginter) and a guy who hadn’t won a big league game all year (Jeremy Sowers) pitching the last two games of the series, yet won both games.  Weird, indeed!

Want more proof?  Look at SS Jhonny Peralta.  Peralta was struggling all season long at the plate.  His strike zone judgment regressed, his batting average was in the .220 range, and he couldn’t seem to get a hit with a man on base.  For some reason, Eric Wedge decided to put him into the clean up spot in the batting order.  Since that move has been made, Peralta has torn the cover off the ball.  Over the last 30 days, the SS is batting .340 with 5 HR’s and 24 RBI.  He’s raised his batting average to .261, and his OPS is approaching 800, which is above average league wide.  Very, very strange.

At the end of May, the Indians’ offense was killing them.  The pitching was very good; particularly the starters, but the offense just couldn’t score runs.  When June 1^st hit, the hitting started to pick up, but the pitching went south, especially the bullpen.  Since that date, Joe Borowski has been released, Rafael Betancourt has had several meltdowns, and the shuttle back and forth to Buffalo has been in full force.  In the eight game road trip, in which the Tribe went winless, the bullpen was particularly bad.  So…

The Indians come home, and all of a sudden the relief corps picked it up.  Only newcomer Juan Rincon gave up a run in the four game series, and the bullpen contributed three shutout innings in each of the first two games against the Rays, and came up with five scoreless frames on Sunday.  If not for Rincon and his inability to throw strikes, the relief crew would have worked a clean series against Tampa Bay.  A big contributor has been Edward Mujica, who after his horrible outing against San Diego June 14^th, has not allowed a run.  Not exactly something anyone would have predicted.

Even Ryan Garko got into the swing of things in the series.  The right-handed hitter has been mired in all sorts of slumps since the beginning of May, but he hammered a two run dinger and a three run double Saturday night against Matt Garza.  And Franklin Gutierrez came out of an 0 for 32 slump with hits in back to back games.  Andy Marte even slugged his first home run of the year. 

Some things though went according to form, though.  Cliff Lee threw six scoreless innings on Friday night to win his 12^th game before he goes to New York for the All Star Game.  The Tribe’s other all-star, Grady Sizemore belted his league leading 23^rd homer on Saturday.  Aaron Laffey pitched well in the series opener.  And more good news…Matt La Porta belted a game winning two run home run for Akron on Friday night, his first long ball with the Indians’ organization.

Good luck to Sizemore and Lee this week, and here’ hoping the good play continues in Seattle on Friday night.  Also, here’s hoping Fausto Carmona shows he is healthy tonight in his first rehab assignment with Lake County, so he can be back in the rotation sometime next week.

KM