Tigers continue hitting, Indians continue giving up runs

Tigers 8, Indians 5

Box Score

Tribe falls to 2-4

This thing got ugly in a hurry. T.J. House didn't have it today and it was very clear, very quickly. The first two batters walked and singled before Miguel Cabrera punished a ball over the left field fence, giving the Tigers and a 3 run lead before anybody was even out. House would then hit Victor on an 0-2 pitch, which led to home plate umpire Dan Iassogna warning both benches.

Let's take an aside here. There is no way around it, but that call is/was/always will be over-umpiring at its worst. Umpires are not supposed to inject themselves into the play of the game, but that's what happened. Dan Iassogna perceived there might be tensions from last night (there weren't) and jumped the gun on a hit by pitch when the batter was down 2 strikes. The call was absurd for both teams, but especially the Indians, because without the ability to pitch inside against the Tigers, you're going to get hurt. And T.J. House got very hurt.

House would eventually get out of the inning after giving up another single. The Tribe offense then slowly went to work, trying to chip away at the lead, getting a run back from a Carlos Santana single, setup by a single and stolen base from Michael Bourn. Before you get too excited about the stolen base from Bourn, know that he got a tremendous jump and was still almost thrown out. He is no the speedster he once was and we all should begin to accept that.

House gave up that run and a few more in the 2nd, on 3 more hits and 2 walks, pushing the Detroit lead to 6-1. At this point Cleveland pitching surprisingly stabilized. Austim Adams came on and went 2 2/3 innings giving up only one run on two hits. That run was another Cabrera home run. Shaun Marcum would come on in the 5th and pitch the rest of the game, going 5 innings and allowing only 1 run on 3 hits, striking out 4 and walking 3. The solid pitching from Adams and Marcum helped ease the burden of an already overtaxed bullpen and allowed the offense to try to mount a comeback, but the deficit was just too large.

The Indians would score 2 on a Ryan Raburn single in the 3rd and again in the 8th, when Raburn doubled and Roberto Perez hit a sacrafice fly (a home run on a less windy day). That pushed the score to 5-7, but J.D. Martinez's solo HR off Marcum put the lead back to 3 and the Tribe couldn't get anything substantial going in the 9th.

This was demoralizing early, but the fault is not with the offense. Even with Jerry Sands and Mike Aviles in the lineup, the Indians scored 6 yesterday and 5 today. Most days, those are wins. With the way he pitched today, I wouldn't be surprised to see Marcum stick for awhile and eventually find his way into the rotation. But most importantly, we need to remember that no matter how terrible this series was, it was only 3 games and the season is only 6 games old. There is a lot of baseball left to play, sports fans.

Win Expectancy Chart:

Source: FanGraphs

Roll Call:

GameThread

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