Cleveland Indians fail to capitalize on anything, fall 5-2 to Orioles

Cleveland Indians 2, Baltimore Orioles 5

box score

Indians fall to 26-28

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It's odd to write a recap for a Shaun Marcum start that resulted in a loss and not immediately point to all the things that Marcum screwed up in the game. By and large, Marcum was not the problem with the Cleveland Indians tonight in their 5-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. Instead, it was almost every other aspect of the team that failed to live up to another quality start by an Indians starting pitcher.

Aside from just being a quality start statistically, Marcum did put on a good show against the Orioles. He wasn't flawless, but he scattered his eight hits allowed throughout his six innings of work, he located his pitches well for the most part and he came up big when he needed to. The argument could even be made that, had he received some more favorable strike calls, he could have made it out of the game allowing only one run. Even the big double Marcum gave up to Matt Wieters in his return from Tommy John surgery wasn't done so on a bad pitch. Wieters just took a decent pitch and made it look ugly by punching it to left to score a running Chris Davis.

A bad breaking ball that floated over the plate in the sixth inning was Marcum's worst pitch of the night, and Adam Jones decided to take advantage of it by crushing a solo home run.

Instead of Marcum dropping the game, it was a return to an old story for the 2015 Indians - bad defense, and an imploding bullpen. David Murphy proved he shouldn't be playing in the field any more, and Brandon Moss took some very strange routes to balls that ended up scoring runs - particularly in Baltimore's two-run eighth inning.

Zach McAllister initially looked great when he came in to relieve Marcum in the seventh inning, striking out David Lough with a backwards K and Manny Machado swinging. The eighth was a different story entirely when he (and the poor defense, let's be fair) allowed two more hits and two more runs. Jones did damage again and made it all the way to third thanks to a strange defensive play from Moss, and Wieters ended up hitting him home on a sac fly later in the inning.

Offensively the Tribe failed to capitalize on a lot of opportunities as well and ultimately failed to take advantage of Marcum's positive start. Other than one exciting inning that generated nothing but false hope in the end, the Tribe couldn't advance anyone on the bases. The Indians left eight batters on base by game's end, and failed to do anything with a lead-off runner in three out of the four innings where they managed to get someone on without an out.

Yan Gomes got in on the action with two hits, including a lead-off hit in the bottom of the ninth. If there's a shining light in this game, it's that it could signal the return of Gomes' bat to the lineup, which will be a much needed boost that could put the team over the top. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Carlos Santana continues to "struggle" but only in the sense that he's not hitting home runs. If he wants to keep "struggling" and walking two times a game, I'm perfectly ok with it assuming the power will come around eventually.

Win Expectancy Chart

Source: FanGraphs

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