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Games Twenty-One and Twenty-Two

 

Indians 9, Royals 6

Fausto Carmona struggled through five innings, with control again his nemesis. The Indians were fortunate that Carmona matched up up against Tomko instead of Bannister, for Fausto might have been pulled much sooner had the Indians not scored seven runs off the Royals' starter. Many of the Tribe hits were of the bloop variety, but, as in recent games, the hitters were patient enough in their at-bats to wait for Tomko's inevitable mistakes.

 Indians 2, Royals 0

Cliff Lee's stat line after four starts:

31.2 IP, 0.28 ERA, 1563 ERA+, 11 H, 29 SO, 2 BB

The lone misgiving I have about Lee's success is that it has come against Oakland, Kansas City, and Minnesota, all offenses that will probably finish in the bottom half in the league. But still, that's domination.

However you want to look at the context of Lee's domination, the performances haven't been flukey. Hitters aren't making loud outs. He isn't relying on double plays to bail him out of innings, though his ground ball percentage (45.2%) is much higher than his career averages. He's placing his ~90 mph fastball on the edges of the strike zone. And he's not walking anybody.