News
Eighth inning costs Tribe a victory
Indians give first lead right back, fall to Tigers
By Anthony Castrovince / MLB.com
05/02/09 8:40 PM ET
DETROIT -- Eric Wedge sat there in the visiting manager's office at Comerica Park, more analytical than angry and more deflated than defiant. He looked very much like what he is -- a man beaten by a bullpen that habitually betrays him. On Saturday afternoon, it was right-hander Rafael Betancourt serving up the two-run, eighth-inning home run to Curtis Granderson that sent the Tribe toward a 9-7 loss to the Tigers. But in too many games this season, you could simply insert some other reliever's name and some other opponent into that sentence. Indians pitchers have given up 35 eighth-inning runs this season, and Wedge has seen them all. His face showed it after this loss. "The eighth inning has really been our Achilles' heel," Wedge said. "But it's really the seventh and eighth inning, for me, because that's where you bridge the gap to get to Kerry [Wood]." Betancourt couldn't bridge that gap on this day, and that negated the effort the Indians had put up to erase the 5-0 deficit left behind by starter Aaron Laffey. Laffey was all over the place in 3 1/3 innings of work. He was continually behind in the count and walked the bases loaded in the second, only to get out of the two-out jam. In the fourth, the Tigers loaded them up again -- this time on singles -- and Laffey's luck ran out. He walked Ryan Raburn to bring home one run, then served up a grand slam to Adam Everett to make it 5-0. "It's tough to get out of that a second time," Laffey said. "I was too worried about walking guys instead of throwing a pitch and letting it move on its own. I wasn't getting ahead and getting first-pitch strikes." But Laffey did get some help from long reliever Vinnie Chulk, his offense and Raburn. In the fifth, the Indians loaded the bases against Zach Miner. With two out, Asdrubal Cabrera hit a fly ball to left. Raburn slipped to the ground, got up and chased the ball down, but it bounced out of his glove. Everybody scored on what was ruled a three-run double. "We caught a break there," Wedge said. Victor Martinez then walked, and Shin-Soo Choo tripled to score him on a ball that skipped past a sliding right fielder Magglio Ordonez. Just like that, it was 5-5. The Tigers regained the lead by manufacturing a run in the sixth, but the Tribe took its first lead with a pair off reliever Bobby Seay in the seventh. Martinez got jammed and hit a broken-bat bouncer down the first-base line that somehow went for an RBI double, and Mark DeRosa later drove him in with a sacrifice fly. Now, this is where Wedge's predicament set in. Going into the bottom of the seventh with a 7-6 lead, he looked down his list of available relievers. He didn't want to use Betancourt -- who Wedge considers to be, at the moment, his most reliable late-inning option -- because he wanted to save Betancourt for the eighth. Wedge wanted to scale back his use of Jensen Lewis, after Lewis served up yet another big home run Friday. And he doesn't even bother to place Masa Kobayashi in tight situations. So it came down to lefties Tony Sipp and Rafael Perez. Wedge went with Sipp, who got the first out before walking Gerald Laird. Up came Brandon Inge, who came in 2-for-19 in his career against Betancourt, so Wedge brought in Betancourt. He was immediately rewarded with two quick outs. But Betancourt was a different guy in the eighth. He gave up a leadoff pinch-hit single to Josh Anderson, then left a first-pitch fastball right down the middle for Granderson, who pounded it out to right for the two-run shot that made it 8-7. The Tigers went on to add an insurance run by taking advantage of Asdrubal Cabrera's throwing error. Placido Polanco singled, moved to second on that error, moved to third on an Ordonez groundout, then scored on Carlos Guillen's sacrifice fly. Even if the Indians had come back again to tie the game in the ninth -- and they didn't, as they stranded runners on the corners when DeRosa and Jhonny Peralta both went down swinging against Fernando Rodney -- they would have been in a bind. Wedge said he would have had to use the left-handed Perez against a slate of right-handers due to the plate. "That's where we're at," Wedge said with a shrug. And the Indians have other issues, as this game proved. Wedge said the game comes down to three things -- making pitches on the mound, not missing pitches at the plate and making plays. For the latter two areas, he pulled out two examples from this game. In the sixth, with the score tied at 5, the Indians had two on with one out for Ben Francisco, who rolled over on a Brandon Lyon fastball for an inning-ending double play. "That's a pitch you have to drive," Wedge said. In the eighth, Cabrera's throwing error was the result of first baseman Ryan Garko being positioned off the bag. Garko had wrongly assumed the ball hit by Polanco got through the middle, so he circled around the runner. "You can't do that," Wedge said. "You have to go to the bag, especially when you know the range Asdrubal has. [The runner's] probably out if [Garko] goes to the bag. Those things can't happen." And what's been happening in the eighth inning is wearing on Wedge. But as deflated as he looked after this defeat, he still uttered some optimism. "[The mistakes are] not in bunches," he said. "That's what leads me to believe we can still get this thing turned around."Anthony Castrovince is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
