The Indians, didn’t hit, didn’t score and lost another key game last night to Detroit in 10 innings. The Tribe had a chance to win the game in the eighth but Curtis Granderson robbed Travis Hafner of a base hit with a Grady Sizemore-like diving catch in center field.
Cleveland had a chance to win the game, again, in the bottom of the ninth. Chris Gomez had a lead off double bring Jhonny Peralta to the plate. Wedge decided to let JP swing away. Matt Underwood and Rick Manning hated the call. I liked it. Peralta is a horrible bunter.
(Side note: how can a major league player not know how to get a bunt down. You stick the bat out and tap it to the ground. It boggles my mind that only a handful of players can do this simple task and that no one on the Indians can.)
The last time Peralta tried to bunt, against the Twins, he popped into a double play. He has a much better chance of getting a hit or at least slapping the ball to the right side of the infield. He had a good at-bat, falling behind 0-2 then working the count full while seeing 10 pitches. He just missed advancing Gomez two separate times.
Local newscasters called it a bad move not to bunt, the announcers called it a bad move and I’m sure a lot of fans thought it was a bad move. But say they call for the bunt, Peralta misses again, maybe evening popping into another double play, the Wedge is questioned for letting a poor bunter (still don’t know how that can be) try to bunt.
Wedge does make some questionable decisions but last night was not one of them. Even if Peralta gets the bunt down, it’s not like anyone on the team right now is capable of getting a hit to score a run or even a long fly ball for a sacrifice. Gutierrez and Barfield also struck out, ending the inning so it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The bottom line is the Indians are scoring as much as a zit faced, nerdy, three inch thick glasses wearing high school junior who carries his pet ant farm around with him everywhere and spends more time play role playing computer games than he does interacting with any real human.
They need to get something going soon or it’s 2005 all over again.
At least, the Yankees lost 12-0 to Baltimore yesterday.
