Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Tribe Wins!

Yesterday at work, I was able to sneak a few minutes to watch the Tribe play. Happily, I turned on the TV minutes before Travis Hafner hit a grand slam. There's something great about a Hafner homer: the slice of his bat through the zone from the left side ; the frozen moment when Pronk looks up to watch the ball's trajectory; and the small half smile, almost of relief, on the big donkey's face when he lowers his head to start chugging around the bases.

The Tribe pounded the hapless Orioles 10-1. Hafner's grand slam didn't win the game; it just looked damn good leaving the yard.

Fausto Carmona pitched extremely well for the win. He didn't strike out many---only two, but Oriole after Oriole pounded the ball into the dirt. The infield did its job and made the plays. Pitching coaches track groundball outs. The reason is that it's unlikely that a true groundball pitcher will give up many homers. It's too hard for a batter to get enough loft on the ball to carry it out. Carmona got 14 groundball outs. That's impressive, but it doesn't mean that it's time to trade a starting pitcher. As I drove home, I heard callers suggest, that with the emergence of Carmona, now would be a good time to trade CC. That's nuts.

You don't have to look further than the hated Yankees to see why the Indians shouldn't trade CC. The Yankees have the best everyday hitters in the game, but they're losing game after game due to their decimated rotation. Worse, they just agreed to pay Roger Clemens $28 Million to pitch for them. He won't make the whole 28 since it will be pro-rated for the actual time he spends on the big league roster, but he'll still pocket around 20 mil for 10 wins, at the best. That's nice work for Clemens, but it shows utter desperation by the pinstripers.

Tonight, the Tribe plays a late one against the Angels. Cliff Lee will make his second start after being on the DL.

3 comments:

Hornless Rhino said...

Vinny,

Trade CC? Another good idea from sports talk radio. In this town, it's hard to know whether the hosts or the callers are the bigger morons.

Vinny said...

Oh. The callers.

The hosts are enablers. They humor idiotic ideas and discuss them ad nauseum just because most of them are so witless they have nothing else to talk about.


Many of the callers are the worst type of sports fans: generally ignorant, overly sentimental, and utterly reactionary.

Dwayne Rudd said...

Do you think we could trade CC for Omar Vizquel? That would bring back the glory days of the 90s!