Mistake By The Lake: Game One In Cleveland

I’ll have to do some more digging around to figure out what exactly happened, because I left the room for what seemed like five minutes during tonight’s game, and when I came back Jesse Crain was gone and the Indians had tacked six unearned runs on the board.

I used to think I had a pretty good understanding of the rule covering unearned runs, but I’m still having a hard time figuring out how a guy could give up six unearned runs on 25 pitches. It sort of hurts my head to think about it.

It’s never nice to know one of your guys is hurt, but I guess it’s still sort of nice to know that Crain has been pitching hurt, if only as a way of explaining his lousy performance in the last month.

Ramon Ortiz was not just disappointing tonight, but alarmingly disappointing. He looked absolutely nothing like the guy who pitched so aggressively and with so much enthusiasm in the early going. Maybe that’s the problem now; Ortiz works so quickly, and is so aggressive in going after hitters, that it seems like the scouting report is encouraging opposing batters to be equally aggressive in their approach against him. The guy gave up six runs on just 34 pitches.

How nice of the Twins to pick this particular night to slug four home runs. The real problem, though, was that those home runs might have actually meant something if Glen Perkins hadn’t come in to relieve Ortiz and given up three runs of his own (two IP, four hits, two walks, 48 pitches: that line would represent a bad night for Sidney Ponson). Those three runs, and Crain’s later blowout –aided by Nick Punto’s first error of the season– made moot Minnesota’s late mini-rally.

It was nice to see Garrett Jones, though, and Morneau’s two homers moved him into second place in the AL (now just five back of Alex Rodriguez). And the offense had a pretty decent night overall –every starter but Hunter had a hit– but with all the injuries, the offensive inconsistency, and the recent struggles of most of the starting rotation, this is increasingly a team that looks to be in a serious bit of trouble.