Roberto Perez does the unthinkable in Cleveland Indians' 5-1 loss to Athletics

Indians 1, Athletics 5

Box Score

Indians  fall to who cares they still have a huge lead in the AL Central

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You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger Roberto Perez cheerleader than me, especially after his recent struggles, but even I cannot deny he has looked really bad this season. Coming into today's game, Perez was 7-for-90, with just three extra-base hits (all doubles) to his name. Sure, he was still walking a lot, but his awful hitting had him getting on base at just a .244 clip. Then he did the unthinkable...

...he had a great game!

One defensive mishap aside, Roberto Perez had probably his best game of the 2016 season this afternoon. The early goings of the game were pretty ho-hum for Perez: A walk here, and a ground out there, but then he hit a ball that just barely managed to get over the right field wall for a home run (and bounced back in, but it still counts!).

As our friend Alan Chen (Denver Tribe Fan) pointed out on Twitter, Perez increased his total bases by a whopping 40 percent with one swing. That's how bad his season has been, and how good this game was for the catcher.

Unfortunately, the good news pretty much ends there.

Trevor Bauer's line looks bad at the end of the day, with 9 hits and three earned runs tacked onto his season numbers. But his outing was not nearly that bad. He had some really good stuff working today, including a hammer of a 12-6 curveball, but one bad inning did all the damage. Chisenhall misplayed a ball off the outfield wall that resulted in a triple, Perez had his aforementioned bad defensive play that resulted in a wild pitch, and Carlos Santana missed an easy ball in the sun that should have been the final out of the inning (but he made it up later with a tremendous diving stop near the first-base line).

When all was said and done, Bauer "allowed" four hits and three runs in the second inning, thanks to the call of Santana's mistake correctly being changed to an error, instead of tacking on two more runs to Bauer.

Once the nightmare inning was over, Bauer got right back into good-Bauer mode, walking only one more batter, inducing five ground balls, and striking out Max Muncy before being pulled in the seventh inning after his pitch count eclipsed 100. Bauer was visibly angry in the dugout after the second inning, but he clearly got himself under control and pitched well, instead of collapsing in a pouty heap of self-doubt.

In general, of all the games in this series against the Athletics, this felt like the one that should have stayed hidden behind a 10 p.m. ET start time. At least we could have all had fun being delirious from lack of sleep, instead of watching the travesty of losing to the A's in broad daylight when we all should have been working instead.