Late life from Indians offense falls short as Tigers take series

César Hernández hit a game-tying leadoff home run for the Cleveland Indians. Greg Allen hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth. They still lost 7-4 and dropped the series two games to one against the Tigers.

In between, the Indians didn’t do much else.

If you want to keep reading about this game you’re welcome to do so, but it might not be a bad day to just jump right into the comments.

Full Game Recap

listen i said as the dog bounded around the front of the house sneaking through the gate again just enough room should have closed it faster listen i have to go back into the house and watch the baseball game because i have to do the recap and he didn’t listen and the motor of the edger next door roared into life and he bolted back toward the house afraid of it and i reached toward him and grabbed him by the hips then picked him up and took him inside carried back through the gate closed it this time went upstairs and surprised honestly missed the top half of the first chasing the dog now curled up on the couch panting stupid grin on its face carrasco found some trouble not locating the slider well gave up a run after a double a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice walk and also gave up another walk not to much to worry about when hernández smacked a home run to right center tied it right up but the offense faltered after that minus a carlos santana walk and so things fell into a bit of rhythym with carrasco working through hitters and the tribe working themselves out of scoring opportunities and that’s just how its been for the indians this season looks like they might score and they don’t score and you keep watching anyway because if they score then that’s good and exciting and then they don’t score and you wonder just what it is that you’ve decided to do with your life and francisco lindor took a fastball off the foot and was fine and if it hadn’t hit his foot then jose ramirez would have stolen a base but he didn’t steal a base it would have been third base if he had and so carlos santana upon hitting a fly ball did not earn an rbi he didn’t earn anything but an out and franmil reyes could do nothing and the tigers came out with a vengeance in the top of the fourth as niko goodrum homered and jacoby jones doubled and jorge bonifacio homered and carrasco had thrown four pitches in the inning just four and he’d given up three runs and just like the the indians were down 4-1 and carrasco tried to pitch from there and a sadness crept into my chest as he labored and the dog snored and isaac paredes doubled and then that was it for carrasco he was gone sandy alomar took him out of the game he hasn’t looked good the last few starts has he that’s three starts now he hasn’t looked good and when carrasco isn’t looking good that’s not good because he’s supposed to be good he’s one of the best starters in baseball actually and so you lose a lot when you don’t have that anymore and in losing it today the indians lost the game because my goodness they could not put the bat on the ball and even when they did put the bat on the ball it was gentle softhitting no muscling no bashing no mashingdingering just doink an out whiff a strike not what you want hitters to do you know you want hitters to hit the ball hard you want mashdingering and linedrivering and pitchscaldery and in the air so that it goes over the fence or at the very least lands far from home and away from fielders and they tried to do it and they couldn’t do it and so they didn’t score very many runs and even if they had scored runs it isn’t a guarantee that they would have even been in the game because after carlos carrasco left logan allen came into the game and threw 71 pitches and that meant he pitched 4.2 innings and in that time he walked four batters and allowed five hits and three runs and that’a not good at any level of baseball when you do it and so it was especially not good today when logan allen did it at the major league level and some people started talking and as they talked they started saying a thing that they had been thinking and the thinking went along the lines of maybe this logan allen fellow shouldn’t be on the major league roster right now if we have two quality starting pitchers about to come back from their banishment for being morons and maybe moron is a strong word here but what i mean is that i’ll take a guy who is good at pitching over a guy who might become good at pitching especially given that the guy who started last night is a guy who is almost certainly going to be very good at pitching and so now there isn’t as much room on the roster and a performance like today maybe that’s the kind of thing that you look at and use to make a decision when a decision has to be made and that’s just what it is dominic leone was the other pitcher that came in for the indians and he worked an inning and struck out the side and gave up a hit and that was nice to see because in the past things we’ve seen from leone haven’t been nice and maybe the indians were thinking about making a decision about him because decisions have to be made and decided and nice is nice so that was nice i like nice isn’t it nice no not really this game was not nice nothing about it was nice there’s not really even any major takeaway you can have from it other than maybe something isn’t so good with carlos carrasco but even that’s not a guarantee because sometimes pitchers have a stretch of three bad games or so and that’s what he’s in the middle of right now so like is it even that big a deal but it’s worth keeping an eye on because it’s readily apparent that the indians need every bit of firepower they can muster on the mound right now if they want to win baseball games because even though the offense is starting to find its footing a little bit it’s still tripping all over itself too often to feel comfortable and the dog snapped at the cat as the top of the ninth wound down and the cat wasn’t scared but looked up as if to say bro what the heck and the dog cowered as a scolding came down not a hard scolding but the dog knew it had done a bad and felt bad that it did a bad so he laid underneath the chair in the upstairs office for a bit and thought about the bad that it did and the cat came over and the dog licked it and it seemed like they apologized to each other and moved forward from there and maybe the indians should go find an office chair to lay under because they also did a bad today and probably feel bad but i doubt a cat is going to come say hello to them and if it did they probably wouldn’t deserve it but wait things are starting to change jordan luplow who had a great game today managed to draw a nine-pitch walk to start the bottom of the ninth and he went 2-3 with a double other than that and then mike freeman came in to pinch hit and drew a four pitch walk and then yu chang got called out on strikes and it was close i mean if i’m the ump maybe i don’t give the pitcher that call given that he just walked two guys i might think well this guy has been wild that pitch was close close-ish not sure full count guy at the dish been swinging not just waiting not where he wanted it catcher’s glove moved no intent for that spot yep that’s a ball take your base but he didn’t say that he paused and yu chang bent to take his shin protector off to walk to first and then the ump pumped his fists and it was a strikeout and nothing could change it and the ump now an executioner after the axeswing if he has doubts they will meet him as he drifts to sleep and i wish @indiansump was still around so i could quickly compare the call to the normally-called strike zone but it’s been inactive for like two years so that’s not happening and then greg allen stepped up to the plate and took another ball that was called a strike but it was okay because the next pitch sailed over the middle of the zone and allen launched it into the bleachers in right all of the sudden it’s 7-4 and i’m in the middle of writing whatever the hell that this recap is supposed to be and the lineup is turning over to the top and there is only one out and i’m not saying that the indians really have a chance here because six-run deficits rarely get erased but maybe just maybe i need to redo this entire recap and i was definitely kidding earlier when i tweeted that i was going to curse myself by starting this recap early but man here we go i guess and even the cat is interested in the game now which has never happened before but here he is

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and karen said oh you should put that in the recap and she took a picture and sent it to me and said some inarticulate things to the cat in the way that people do when they talk to a cat and i wonder if cats even understand that surely they don’t understand baseball they see a ball fly across a screen and go ooh a ball swat swat mrkgnao and karen came and looked over my shoulder to make sure i put it in the recap so i did and there it is and anyway it didn’t matter hernandez struck out and then ramirez hit a hard liner to first that got snared and tossed and the game was over just like that one last brief flash of hope snuffed out and if i were the cat hell i probably wouldn’t like baseball very much at this point even as me i’m having some doubts after watching whatever that was for the better part of an afternoon and this is the part of the recap where i stop writing