Giovanny Urshela tallies first career home run in Cleveland Indians 6-0 win over Mariners

Cleveland Indians 6, Seattle Mariners 0

box score

Indians improve to 28-31

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Waiting for a young player to rack up their first hit and home run can be excruciating at times, so it's nice when they decided to just get it all over in one game. In only his second big league game, third baseman Giovanny Urshela did just that and helped give the Cleveland Indians an offensive spark over the visiting Seattle Mariners.

Urshela's first career hit came as part of an offensive explosion that was the bottom of the third inning. To this point of the game only another young player, Zach Walters, had hit a run home and the rest of the Tribe offense looked to be whiffing with runners in scoring position as they've done all year long. Something finally clicked with the offense, starting with Brandon Moss and his big single to center that scored Michael Brantley, who singled earlier in the third. Following Moss was Urshela -- who struck out looking in the second inning -- with another big single to bring home Ryan Raburn and put Moss on second. Urshela later came around to score off of a yet another single, this time by Roberto Perez.

Being a major component of an early-inning rally is big enough for a player in his second career game, but Urshela didn't stop there. He added on to his impressive day with a towering fifth-inning solo home run that just made it into the bleachers in left field. Luckily for Urshela, if he's into keepsakes, the ball hit the concrete steps and bounced back into the outfield where it was promptly delivered by a ball boy to Carlos Santana who reportedly gave it to the young third baseman. No word yet on if Santana demanded, or will demand, a ransom for the ball. Maybe he could use a new Macbook Air or a 50 gallon drum of lube? UPDATE: The Slamtana is a merciful god -- no ransom required.

VERY IMPORTANT BASEBALL UPDATE! @Urshela10 has his first hit and first homer baseballs. No ransom. pic.twitter.com/VkMG2iv21j

— #VoteKip #VoteTribe (@Indians) June 11, 2015

Watching young players break out is one of the most exciting things to happen during a game (for me, anyway), but that's no reason to discount a stellar performance by Shaun Marcum. I've made jabs in the past about how strange it is seeing him do well in a game, but there's no joke here -- he was great. His seven innings of work saw him striking out five batters and allowing only two hits and zero runs. He carried a perfect game into the fourth inning, which was immediately broken up when he hit Logan Morrison with an inside pitch, and his no-hit bid came to end when Mark Trumbo tallied the first Seattle hit in the fifth inning. Unlike a particular Indians pitcher who fell apart after a bad couple of at-bats last night, Marcum held it together flawlessly even after his mistakes.

Marcum's outs didn't come easy, however, and it resulted in him reaching 100 pitches in just the seventh inning, which would end up being his final frame. So it wasn't a complete game shutout, or even remotely close to a Maddux, but it was sure nice to see starting pitching, offense, defense and the bullpen all come together for a great victory.

For those of you who are especially superstitious about these type of things, the last time the Cavs played on the same day as the Indians and the Indians won... the Cavs lost. So, apologies in advance if it comes to that again. Blame Marcum for being awesome.

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Source: FanGraphs

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