Indians didn’t want to waste all their wins in April, so they lost

The last thing I want is for the Cleveland Indians to use their predetermined number of wins too early in the season. They screwed up and won 22 games in a row last season and look how that turned out? Luckily the 2018 team is smarter and tanked this game to avoid winning their sixth straight and voiding the rest of their season entirely.

At least that’s how I’m going to internalize what I just witnessed.

Remember around 7:50 p.m. tonight, and how happy you felt. That sense of joy that the Indians offense was back, carrying over from their sweep of the Detroit Tigers and ascension in the last couple games.

“This is it,” you thought to yourself, brimming with joy and optimism, “my team is back, baseball is fun.”

NO.

YOU GET BACK IN YOUR HOLE, JOY. THIS IS NO TIME FOR JOY. THE WORLD WILL REMAIN IN DARKNESS.

Blame Mike Clevinger if you want, blame playing Fortnite before his start if you’re over the age of 70, or blame the home plate umpire (I suggest the latter), but it all hit the fan in the fourth inning. Clevinger straight-up dealt through three innings, carrying a one-hitter with three strikeouts. He looked like the same guy that allowed one run in each of his last seven starts. Then he didn’t.

Clevinger completely lost sight of the strikezone and ended up walking two of the first three batters he faced in the fourth. He almost found it again getting Aledmys Diaz to a 3-2 count, but instead a ball was lifted by an unknown force over the center field wall. It left DIaz’s bat at 106 miles per hour and was well out of the reach of Bradley Zimmer for a game-tying home run. Clevinger might’ve gotten out of the jam if it weren’t for some, let’s call them questionable, balls.

The game was still in range, obviously, but Andrew Miller got knocked in the seventh. It’s a shame, too, because he was brought in at seemingly the perfect time. With the game tied, a runner on third and no outs, lesser managers might want to “conserve” their best reliever for “the save” — Tito had none of that. He brought in Andrew Miller, one of the best relievers in all of baseball to put out a fire. He just didn’t put it out the way he was supposed to because Teoscar Hernandez — who I still don’t think is a real person — doubled before the inning ended.

Alright, game in still in reach. One run, who cares. Fine. Oh wait no everything is terrible.

Terry Francona made a briliant bullpen move by bringing in Andrew Miller when he did. I want to reiterate that — loved the move, great courage to go against the typical “gut feeling” we hear so much about. But with that said, Matt Besisle? Matt Belisle? Matt Besililililile?

The Lord of Lies got three solid outs in the eighth, which should have been the end of it, but forgetting that he isn’t Bryan Shaw, Tito left Belisle in the game for the ninth and it went generally awful. Look, I’m not recapping that inning, you can’t make me. The Indians went in down 4-5 and came out down 8-4, you can do the math yourself on how that one happened.

One thing worth noting is that Yan Gomes looked lost everywhere tonight. At the plate he seemed to know he was out before even swinging, and he had a few bad throws, which aren’t normally things we see from Gomes.

At least some of the offense was fun. Francisco Lindor had three hits. I also want to commend his decision to try and go from second to home on a misplayed ball a few feet past second base. Didn’t work, not even that close, but it was damn ballsy and I like it. I choose to focus on that while the rain pours over the weekend and we’re left to stew on this toilet puddle of a game.