For the most part, it has been good if you are a left handed pitcher who has worn a Cleveland Indian uniform this season. Although Zach Jackson’s fielding performance yesterday would have people disagreeing with that statement. In reality, Jackson was a victim of some questionable strategy and one extremely bad pitch to Adrian Beltre in giving up six runs in five innings in the 6-4 loss to the Mariners yesterday. Why you would choose to pitch to Ichiro Suzuki (no one name baseball players here, that’s a soccer thing) with first base open is beyond me.
Tonight, southpaw Cliff Lee becomes the first Indians’ hurler in 28 years to even try for his 20th victory of the season against the White Sox. No pitcher wearing a Tribe uniform has won this many games since, of course, Gaylord Perry did it in 1974. Up to then, it was a regular occurrance. Perry’s 20 win season in ’74 was the third such season by a Cleveland pitcher in past five years, following Perry’s own 24-16 mark in 1972 which earned him the Cy Young Award, and Sam McDowell’s 20 win campaign in 1970. To go back a little farther, Luie Tiant won 21 games in 1968.
Rafael Perez has been the Tribe’s best relief pitcher in 2008, with a 3.35 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 69-1/3 innings this season. In the second half of the season, he has been back to the dominant guy who was a shutdown set up man in 2007. He has been used heavily since the All Star break, and here’s hoping skipper Eric Wedge uses him more sparingly the rest of the year, because it would be a crime to have him hurt his valuable left arm in a season that means nothing.
And yesterday, former ace C.C. Sabathia fired a one-hitter against the Pirates for his ninth consecutive victory since the deal that sent him to Milwaukee in early July. Sabathia is now a combined 15-8 for the season.
The win was controversial because the one hit was a squibber a little more than half way to the mound that C.C. picked up and dropped in the fifth inning. If the big lefty had given up a hit already, there wouldn’t be a question that it was a hit. So, the Brewers are challenging the scoring decision in an effort to make Sabathia the first man to fire a no-hitter the day after he pitched. It would be a bad decision if they did.
We will never know how the pitcher would have held up to the pressure of entering the eighth and ninth innings of a game without allowing a hit. That’s part of throwing a no no, having to deal with the crowd screaming, your teammates not talking to you, etc. I’m sure the Sabathia critics will assert he would have crumbled under the pressure.
Besides this sort of thing has happened before. In 1981, Bert Blyleven had a no hitter going into the eighth inning of a game against Toronto when a ball was lost in the lights and dropped by LF Larry Littleton. The play was ruled a hit, and the Dutchman did not get the no no. You cannot change the scoring decision on something this important a day after the fact. For his part, Sabathia didn’t complain, just his manager Ned Yost, who has been running up the southpaw’s pitch counts, was whining. It was a great game for C.C., but it was his first one hitter.
KM
Cleveland Sports Perspective 