The Day the Indians Died

Columnist Written on July 01, 2009

NEW YORK - APRIL 16: Cliff Lee #31 of the Cleveland Indians pitches against the New York Yankees during opening day at the new Yankee Stadium on April 16, 2009 in the Bronx borough of New York City. This is the first regular season MLB game being played at the new venue which replaced the old Yankee Stadium as the Yankees home field. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

The Monday of June 15th, 2009 was an optimistic one for Tribe fans. Their team had just won six of nine games and just witnessed their reigning Cy Young award winner no-hit the first place St. Louis Cardinals for 7 innings, pulling to a record of 29-36, the closest to .500 they had been for a long time. The Indians carried a 12-7 lead heading into the seventh inning over a solid Brewer ball club. Then, after the bullpen had been somewhat solid for a few weeks, the group of former 2009 Columbus Clippers gave up a collective eight earned runs over their collective relief duty and retrospectively finished the teams' chances for a comeback season (fittingly it was Major League the movie Monday, were all fans got Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn bobbleheads). Wedge went to his bullpen five times that night, and these are the folks (in order) who came out and what they did.

Greg Aquino 1 IP 2 H 2 ER 1 BB

Luis Vizcaino 1 1/3 IP 0 H 2 ER 3 BB

Matt Herges 0 IP 1 H 2 ER 1 BB

Rafael Perez 0 IP 3 H 2 ER 1 BB

Joe Smith 1 2/3 IP 0 H 0 ER 0 BB

Smith did a good job, but that was after Prince Fielder hit a line shot Grand Slam and took the air out of the Indians sails. Perez caught the WBC disease in early April and has been a trainwreck ever since. Looking at the first three names, would you really think any team that hoped to contend for a division would be trotting out these losers? I thought so. Why do I bring this game up? Because it started a string of 15 winnable games for the Tribe, and ended today with a loud thud. The Indians are 2-13 over those contests and look like a pathetic, hapless ball club. Their pitching staff is just terrible, and their hitters seem to be going through the motions over their latest five game losing streak. For all the Eric Wedge bashers who believe he should be canned, I can't disagree with you totally, but just look at this roster. If you look to the glorious (and looking like last in a long while) AL Central Division Championship season, their rotation was as follows...

2007

Sabathia/Carmona/Westbrook/Byrd/Laffey (with Lee down in Triple A trying to re-find himself)

2009 current

Lee/Pavano/Huff/Sowers/Ohka (with Lewis and Reyes done for the year and Carmona figuring things out in the minors)

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written on July 01, 2009 Sports

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