Series #7: @ Seattle

[Special_K19]

Tuesday April 22 10:05
C.C. Sabathia vs Freddy Garcia

Wednesday April 23 10:05
Ricardo Rodriguez vs Gil Meche

Thursday April 24 10:05
Brian Anderson vs Jamie Moyer

All-Time Match-Up: Indians lead 160-120, but 3-4 last season.

[Special_K19]

C.C. Sabathia (0-2 3.81)
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/images/gameday/mugshots/282332.jpg

vs

Freddy Garcia (1-3 5.09)
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/images/gameday/mugshots/150119.jpg

[PissedPrincess]

I hate that punk Garcia.:angry: Kick his ass CC!!!!!!!!!!

[Special_K19]

I'm getting bad vibes about tonight's game. Opposing batters are hitting .306 against him and he's never pitched all that well against Seattle. And I won't be able to watch them either. I'll be helping my brother celebrate his 23rd birthday with his frat brothers.

[PissedPrincess]

Well, ditch the damn bad vibes.:angry:

GOOOOOOOOO TRIBE!!!!!!!!!

*good vibes* *good vibes*

:band: :PPsmilie:

:gt:

[duckboy]

I'll be at that game. Freddy pitched really well his last start, and I think he will continue that tonight.

My predicition:

Mariners - 6
Indians - 2

Go Mariners!! :D

[PissedPrincess]

Originally posted by duckboy
I'll be at that game.

Hope ya had a lousy time.:eviltongu

j/k:D

[duckboy]

That was a hell of a game. :clap2:

Observations:

I'm shocked we got to Baez like that. It will be intersting to see what this does to his confidence. It seems like he has never faced adversity in the closer role to this point.

It was very nice to see Cameron get a home run at Safeco. He is a player that always struggles at home. I'm hoping this grand slam will give him some confidence that he can hit here.

It took the weakest of all hits to get Jeff Cirillo a base hit. I've decided to call him SARS as he is a deadly virus in our lineup.

You will be happy to know PP that it was FREEZING at that game. At least take solace in the fact I froze my ass off.

[PissedPrincess]

Glad to hear ya froze.:D You saw a fun game.

Cirillo=SARS huh? I'm gonna have to use that.:D

[Special_K19]

Glad to hear you had a good time. Baez won't be affected, he has real tough skin and will bounce back. Here's the recap of the game.

Grand comeback goes for naught
Indians grab lead in ninth, lose game on grand slam
By Justice B. Hill / MLB.com

SEATTLE -- All Josh Bard could do was shrug his shoulders.
"It was just one of those nights," Bard said. "What can you do?"

Not much except bemoan a victory Tuesday night that got away. And surely this one got away from the Indians.

Having rallied from a 3-1 deficit late in the ballgame, the Indians took a 5-3 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. They had their closer in to seal it, but Danys Baez turned that lead into an 8-5 loss.

Baez faced five batters in the ninth. He didn't retire any of them; they all scored, too.

His night's work started like this: Randy Winn singled, Bret Boone walked and Edgar Martinez hit an RBI single up the middle -- the ball just eluding Baez's glove.

"The ball that Edgar hit was a split that was down," said Bard, who thought Baez had good stuff. "Edgar's one of the best hitters in the world, and it's hard to say you could've done this or you could've done that. It's a quality pitch he hit."

After Martinez singled, Baez walked John Olerud to load the bases for Mike Cameron. What was a solid lead for the Indians just a few minutes before was now in serious jeopardy. A tie seemed the least of what the Mariners would do, particularly since they had nobody out and Baez was experiencing major control problems.

"My fastball was going every way," Baez said. "I think that was the problem."

His was as good an assessment of what went wrong in that ninth as anybody else's. It was also accurate.

Against Cameron, Baez got ahead in the count on the first pitch. But his next offering, which he said was a two-seam fastball, didn't go where he wanted it to.

"The ball stay in the middle," Baez said. "He hit it pretty well."

Yes, Cameron did hit it well. He unloaded on a pitch that caught way too much of the middle of the plate, and he sent it into the seats in left field. When the ball landed, it turned what would've been a fine Tribe win into perhaps its most frustrating loss off the '03 season.

"It just wasn't (Baez's) night," said Indians manager Eric Wedge, echoing what Bard had said. "His control wasn't very sharp. He was facing quality hitters, and they made him come in to them."

When Baez did come in, those good hitters hurt him and the Indians. Cleveland had rallied off Mariners closer Kazuhiro Sasaki from two runs behind, and took the lead on Bill Selby's pinch-hit two-run single. The Tribe gotten an effective outing from starter C.C. Sabathia and quality relief work form veteran Terry Mulholland.

Still, all the Indians got from all of this good work was their 13th loss of the season. They were three outs away from its third straight win.

"I'm proud of the way we came back," Wedge said. "We were playing a good club, and we fought hard to tie it up, but they took it right back from us."

As tough as this loss was, Bard said he and his teammates won't dwell on it, nor will they lose any confidence in Baez.

"It's a tough loss," Bard acknowledged afterward. "But it's part of the game, especially when you close. Sometimes you go out there and things don't go your way, you know.

"But Danys has got a lot of confidence, and he knows the guys in here have a lot of confidence in him. He's been throwing the heck out of the ball all year."

[Special_K19]

Ricardo Rodriguez (2-0 2.08)
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/images/gameday/mugshots/400156.jpg

vs

Gil Meche (1-1 4.86)
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/images/gameday/mugshots/219194.jpg


Ricardo and the Tribe will bounce back tonight and win! :dance2:

[PissedPrincess]

How old is this Gil character? 12?

Gooooooo Tribe!:smokin:

[Special_K19]

He looks so young. Hopefully Matt Lawton doesn't play tonight so Shane Spencer can continue his great play. And this please you Jacqui, Trav is finally hitting the ball like he was in ST. :D

[PissedPrincess]

Yes, I stopped sleeping with him before games K.:cry: :D

[Special_K19]

:D Way to take one for the team! :thumbsup: Maybe if I stop sleeping with Anna she'll win a tournament. :D

[PissedPrincess]

Originally posted by Special_K19
Maybe if I stop sleeping with Anna she'll win a tournament. :D

:clap2: :clap2: :clap2:

Eh, why break her heart K. :smokin:

[Special_K19]

Silly of me to even think of it.

[duckboy]

The Mariners will again tonight. There is no way that this:

Ricardo Rodriguez (2-0 2.08) :eek:

will continue. It is time he gets roughed up, and damnit, the Mariners are just the team to do it. :2guns:

Meche pitched well his last start (he was up in the Majors three years ago, but had arm troubles to overcome).

My prediction: :idea:

Mariners - 8
Indians - 6

Thank God my butt will be warm tonight. This is the only game in the series that I won't see live.

Enjoy the game.

:luvkiss:

[Special_K19]

There's no way Ricardo gets roughed up tonight. Tribe bats are gonna get to Meche early and let Rico cruise to a victory.

[PissedPrincess]

Time for DUCKBOY to get the boot.:D

His fishy vibes are screwing up the works.:angry:

F'n Mariners.:angry:








:cry:

[Special_K19]

I agree. :D But I'm wholly confident that the Tribe'll win tonight.

[Special_K19]

Rodriguez solid in defeat
Right-hander doesn't receive offensive support
By Justice B. Hill / MLB.com

SEATTLE -- Ricardo Rodriguez had an outing Wednesday night that might have looked a lot better on paper than it did on the SAFECO Field scoreboard.
The rookie right-hander gave up only five hits, but the timing of those hits hurt Rodriguez. So did the fact that the Indians couldn't marshal any run support for him.

For the 24-year-old Rodriguez, that combination translated into a 4-0 loss here to the Mariners.

"He ran us through seven innings and kept us in the ballgame," Indians manager Eric Wedge said. "I was pleased with the way he threw."

Wedge would have been hard-pressed not to have been pleased with Rodriguez, who gave the Tribe a solid outing built with guts and poise rather than top-quality stuff.

"In one way, I feel bad, because I lose the game," Rodriguez said. "My team needed the game."

After their heartbreaking loss to the Mariners a night earlier, the Indians did need this game, and Rodriguez did his best to deliver it. Following a textbook-like first three innings, during which he retired the first nine batters he faced, Rodriguez got himself in trouble by opening the fourth with a walk to Mark McLemore.

McLemore stole second base, then moved to third as Rodriguez (2-1, 2.73 ERA) got Bret Boone to ground out to short. McLemore scored on Edgar Martinez's sacrifice fly.

With two outs and no one on, John Olerud turned on a Rodriguez slider and pulled it into the seats in right field.

"The pitch to Olerud wasn't a hanging slider; it was just a pitch up a little bit," Indians catcher Josh Bard said. "He put a good pass at it."

Olerud's homer was just the second hit off Rodriguez, but it left the Indians trailing right-hander Gil Meche and the Mariners, 2-0.

The way Meche was working the Indians over, those two runs looked more like 10. He had held the Tribe to two base hits to that point, and both came in the first when the Indians seemed on the verge of taking an early lead.

That inning started with Omar Vizquel and Brandon Phillips both lofting soft singles off Meche that put runners on first and third. But they were left stranded as Meche fanned Karim Garcia and Ellis Burks before getting Matt Lawton on a high fly ball to center field.

As quickly as that threat had developed, Meche had squashed it. The Indians, no longer an offensive juggernaut, could not afford to let scoring opportunities as rich as this one get away from them.

"I tell you what, he was outstanding," Wedge said of Meche. "He had a live fastball, all of his secondary pitches he was able to throw where he wanted to. He was pretty good against us."

As Wedge said, Meche was "pretty good." He would not give the Indians many chances to score against him this night. After the first, the Tribe's next chance didn't come until five innings later.

Vizquel and Phillips fueled that sixth-inning threat with one-out singles, but that scoring opportunity vanished faster than the first one did when Meche got Garcia to ground into a double play.

By that point, the Indians were in dire need of runs, because the Mariners had doubled their lead an inning earlier to 4-0. It was McLemore who played the major role in the production of those two runs as well.

His double to right-center off Rodriguez knocked in Ben Davis and Ichiro Suzuki, both of whom had singled with two outs.

In the eighth, the Indians mounted their final threat against Meche (2-1, 3.33), putting two runners aboard with two outs. The Mariners went to their bullpen and brought in Shigetoshi Hasegawa to put out that threat.

Hasegawa did. He got pinch-hitter Bill Selby to fly out to Mike Cameron in center for the inning's last out.

"It's tough for the young guys to go out there and pitch nine-inning shutouts," Bard said. "We've got to score some runs, and we haven't been doing that.

"Ricardo didn't have his best stuff, but he gave us a chance to be in the game. That's all you can ask for."

[Special_K19]

Brian Anderson (2-2 3.51)
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/images/gameday/mugshots/110230.jpg

vs

Jamie Moyer (2-1 3.09)
http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/images/gameday/mugshots/119469.jpg

BA might not start tonight, he hurt something yesterday and Billy Traber might start for him. Either way, you might as well put a W in the win column for the Tribe. :D

[PissedPrincess]

HEY! K! You left this guy out---->:angry:

I know right away if we won or lost based on what smiley dude starts the story.

I'm lost without it.:cry:

[PissedPrincess]

Don't they having tanning booths in Seattle?

Moyer looks dead.:D

[Special_K19]

Slight mishap on my fault, got it all fixed now. :cool:

[PissedPrincess]

Originally posted by Special_K19
Slight mishap on my fault, got it all fixed now. :cool:

Who's better than you K? :smokin:

Well...........except for me:D

[Special_K19]

Just trying to keep my peeps happy. :fro:

[duckboy]

:clap2: :clap2: :clap2: :clap2:

:biggrinpa

Another fine Mariner outing. I underestimated both pitchers in that matchup. Comments from Meche after the game had him saying that his fastball was really popping tonight. He reached 94MPH on the radar in the first inning, and was hitting 94MPH in the eight inning when he was pulled. Rodriguez looked very good. Cleveland has a fine future with him.

As for tonight, there should be no question about the result. It's Jamie Moyer (The pitcher with the best winning percentage over the last five years) vs. Brian Anderson (An once overrated pitcher with Arizona, now an overrated pitcher with Cleveland).

The final score you ask? :idea:

Mariners - 7
Indians - 2

You got it. I'm calling right here and now for the sweep. :2guns:

I'll be celebrating in Safeco tonight. :drinkin: Hopefully I won't freeze to death this time (yeah right).

Enjoy!

:luvkiss:

[duckboy]

Originally posted by pedro's princess
Don't they having tanning booths in Seattle?

Moyer looks dead.:D

They certainly don't have sun in Seattle. Another day of rain here.

[Special_K19]

I hope it's bitterly cold for you. :D

And I think Billy Traber is now going for the Indians, not completly sure though. Anyway, Moyer's gonna get rocked.

[Special_K19]

Traber shows flashes in first start
Lack of run support saddles rookie with loss
By Justice B. Hill / MLB.com

SEATTLE -- Billy Traber has said he views himself as a starting pitcher rather than a reliever. But the 23-year-old rookie left-hander was willing to settle for relief work if it kept him in the big leagues.
"Whether it's start or relief, I just want to go out and pitch," Traber said.

On Thursday, Traber got his first chance to start and pitched admirably. He held the Mariners to three hits and three runs over 4 1/3 innings. Too bad, however, that his performance in a pitch-count-shortened outing didn't bring him a win.

For despite his solid work, Traber was the victim of the Tribe's season-long problem -- an inability to score runs. The recurring theme helped turn Traber's first start into a 4-2 loss at SAFECO Field.

Filling in for injured Brian Anderson, Traber (0-2, 4.26 ERA) surely deserved better. While not his sharpest, he displayed true grit in the absence of top quality stuff. He made 71 pitches, 40 for strikes. That's hardly the ratio of strikes to balls a pitcher might want.

"I thought he did a good job," manager Eric Wedge said. "He's a guy who mixes his pitches, a guy who works hard to stay ahead. He did walk a couple of guys, and that's uncharacteristic."

Too many walks or not, Traber still kept the Mariners from putting together big innings, which certainly was a plus for the run-challenged Indians.

Cleveland did have its chances, though. Against the slow-balling Jamie Moyer, the Tribe took a 2-0 first-inning lead on Casey Blake's two-run long ball. Moyer needed to be at his craftiest to keep that inning from evolving into something more substantial.

Two innings later, the Tribe had another chance. John McDonald singled and Omar Vizquel doubled with nobody out.

Moyer left them both stranded.

First, he fanned Blake. After walking Ellis Burks to load the bases, Moyer (3-1, 3.07) got the inning's second out on Karim Garcia's soft foul pop to third base. He then fanned Shane Spencer for the third out.

"We created opportunities for ourselves, but we didn't finish 'em off," Wedge said. "I think it was evident by (Moyer's) pitch count and the number of innings he threw that we had some quality at-bats against a pretty good left-handed pitcher, but we didn't take advantage of it."

Though he was shaky early, Moyer was more like Moyer from then on, which meant he baffled hitters with his combination of slow, slow and slower stuff. He also didn't allow another runner to cross home plate.

That would prove a particularly vexing problem for the Tribe, because Traber and the Indians bullpen couldn't keep the Mariners from scoring.

Traber's problem was his four walks, which eventually led to his early exit in the fifth. He left with runners on first and second and one out.

"I think I made some pretty good pitches tonight," said Traber, whose record fell to 0-2 with a 4.07 ERA. "I thought I had better control of most of my pitches than I did at least in the last two outings when I was in the pen. But as a starter, you need to do that. That kind of goes with the territory."

Coming in for Traber was veteran Jose Santiago, who quickly got Randy Winn to bounce out to first base. On the play, Dan Wilson and Ichiro Suzuki moved up a base, and both would score on Bret Boone's single to center.

With Traber gone and a 3-2 lead, the Mariners pushed across an insurance run in the sixth. The run was charged to Santiago.

It was not a run the Indians could afford to give up, and the way the Mariners bullpen complemented Moyer, the prospects of Traber seeing his first outing revert to a no-decision didn't look good.

Relievers Giovanni Carrara, Shigetoshi Hasegawa and Jeff Nelson secured the Mariners sweep of the Indians in this three-game series.

[PissedPrincess]

Shit.:(

Can we keep that Goose/Duck character out of here.:cry:

Eh, maybe he got frostbite or something.:D

[Special_K19]

We'll get payback May 13. :2guns:

[duckboy]

:Party:

That was very nice. Very nice indeed. Are you ready for the word? You know it's coming..........S W E E P!!!

I want to formally thank the Indians for contributing to our first place lead in the American League West.

Traber did look good, but I wouldn't take that as too big a sign. Seattle has a long documented history of struggling against starters they face for the first time. I don't want to rain on his parade, but just make sure you take his performance with a grain of salt.

To those of you concerened about my health as I attended the cold game, you need not worry. I got a call in the second inviting me to a luxury suite (It pays to have low friends in high places). There I was plenty warm and able to watch the game in the style that it deserved.

As for the Indians now: :Peace: :gt: I need you guys to do very well against the other teams in the west. God only knows that the A's won't be down for too long. It's good to kick them in the face while they are.

Thanks again for the victories and the memories.

:cooldude: