Cleveland Indians hammered in sixth, eighth, fall to Diamondbacks 11-2

Yes, the title and tagline of this recap is almost a direct copy of Matt’s title and tagline from yesterday’s recap because this game followed virtually the same script as yesterday’s. That script read:

• Have lead on opposing team
• Have starting pitcher face opposing team for a third time
• Dumpster fire
• EVEN LARGER DUMPSTER FIRE (exclusive to the sequel)
• Tribe loss

Things were not this bleak to begin with. The two starting pitchers, Trevor Bauer and Zack Greinke, were matching each other pitch for pitch through the first five innings of the game. Both pitchers looked elite; Greinke was making Tribe hitters look foolish with his changeup, and Bauer was busting out his knee-buckling curveball on the Arizona hitters. Seriously, here are the stat lines through five innings:

The lone run by the Tribe came in the form of a double off the wall by birthday boy Carlos Santana followed by a sharp ground ball through the shift by Michael Brantley. Brantley looks healthy and his swing looks like vintage Dr. Smooth, so there is a silver lining in today’s “game”.

The sixth inning is where the wheels fell off. On a missed ball four call by Angel Hernandez Lance Barksdale (although I’m sure few of you noticed this error because we’re so used to Angel Hernandez making bad calls), David Peralta was able to stay in the box for another pitch instead of taking his free base. He promptly smacked the next pitch into the right field foul pole to give the Diamondbacks the lead that they would never relinquish. But just for good measure, Yasmany Tomas tripled off the wall in dead center. Bauer left the game with the deficit at a sad but manageable 3-1. Enter Bryan Shaw, who immediately gave up and RBI double to Brandon Drury and an RBI single to Jeff Mathis.

You laugh, but as I’m typing this (seriously, I keep having to change the score in the headline because they keep scoring runs), the eighth inning somehow managed to be worse than the sixth inning.

Boone Logan, the shiny new LOOGY for the Cleveland Indians, came in to start the eighth inning and immediately gave up a double to Jake Lamb. Tito had seen enough (read: the next batter was right-handed) and brought in flamethrowing right-hander Shawn Armstrong. Well, Armstrong was definitely throwing fire, and by fire I mean gasoline onto the bright burning dumpster fire that was this game. Against Armstrong, Arizona batters had the following results:

• Single by Tomas
• RBI single by Drury
• Single by Jeremy Hazelbaker
• Sac fly by Chris Herrmann
• RBI single by Chris Owings
• Walk by David Peralta
• RBI walk by Daniel Descalso
• RBI ground out by Jake Lamb*
• Fly out by Nick Ahmed

I’m tired. This is not the baseball. Corey Kluber looks to get the Tribe back into the win column tomorrow against LHP Patrick Corbin as the Indians try to avoid being swept after just sweeping the Rangers.

Some happiness in a sea of darkness

• Yandy Diaz (I’m not sure if you’ve heard of him) is good at defense. I really don’t care what anyone else says at this point, but the man can play 3B with ease. He made multiple incredible plays this evening in terms of range, bare-handed pickups, and throwing out runners. He still can improve the accuracy of his throws off of bare-handed pickups, but he’s a beautiful, beautiful man.
• Lindor continues to be good at baseball and missed a home run by inches. Despite being off to a slow start, Lindor seems to be back to his old ways of hitting baseballs with little to no effort.
• Jose Ramirez got his first double of the year when he almost got a home run of his own in the top of the ninth. Hamster’s gonna Hamster.
• Michael Brantley has played in every game for the Indians thus far this season and looks to be healthy *furiously knocks on every piece of wood in a five mile radius*.

Top posts from Indians social media:

Why do you hate us, Phil? Why?

*Okay, so this has an asterisk by it because the replay officials in New York have no idea what they’re doing. Sure it only resulted in one extra run, but it’s the principle, dammit. THE PRINCIPLE.