via www.fangraphs.com

The end was coming, but it still sucks.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, the schedule was set up for the Indians to make a lot of ground. If they had taken 6 out of 8 against divisional opponents, then split the four-game series against Tampa going into the All-Star Break, they would still have had a lot to make up, but coming back would nevertheless be plausible. Especially with Fausto Carmona due back in the rotation, and Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner now being a few weeks away from returning to the lineup.

But that stretch also meant that one bad series would end the season. Which has happened. Now it's time for Mark Shapiro to take stock of the organization, identify the most pressing needs, and field about ten thousand calls for CC Sabathia. (Other goals: get somebody to overpay for Casey Blake and Paul Byrd, and foist David Dellucci on somebody.)

The game itself was a nice microcosm of this year's team. Cliff Lee again pitched magnificently, but couldn't stick around long enough for the offense to score its second run of the game. And when the Indians did take the lead, Joe Borowski blew the lead and the game. One good thing about the end of competitiveness is that the Indians don't have to pretend to need Borowski closing or even pitching in games.

via www.fangraphs.com

To say Cliff Lee deserved better and Joe Borowski deserved less would be an understatement. Lee pitched 7.1 excellent innings and got a no-decision, and Borowski caused that no-decision but got the win. 

The Indians lead 4-0 as the eighth started. Lee allowed a one-out single to Matt Kemp, and was removed in favor of Rafael Betancourt. All three members of last year's Circle of Trust would appear in the game, and all three would be charged with a run or allow a run to score. Borowski's appearance was the most pathetic of the three; he allowed three hits and two runs and was about an inch on Adam LaRoche's bat from blowing the game. It's time for a new name for this bullpen, since the Circle of Trust has long since been applicable to this group. Perhaps Corps of Despair is a more fitting name?

The top of the tenth was almost as laughably depressing were it not for an unexpected at-bat from Jhonny Peralta. The Indians loaded the bases against Dodger closer Takashi Saito, but Franklin Gutierrez hit into a 6-2-5 double play, a variation I've never seen. Ben Francisco, who started from second, apparently thought that shortstop Angel Berroa was about to catch Gutierrez's ball and scampered back to the bag. By this time, Berroa had thrown home to force Jamey Carroll and it was now too late for Francisco to make third. Now there were two outs, and given how the Indians bullpen has performed lately, extending the game any length would have given the Dodgers even more of an advantage, to say nothing of the momentum gained in the last two at-bats. But Jhonny Peralta smacked a double to the base of the right field wall, scoring two. Kobayashi ended the game with a fairly quiet bottom of the tenth.

It was a big win, since it got the Indians back to 7.5 games behind Chicago, keeping whatever faint hope of relevance the Indians had alive for another day.

via www.fangraphs.com

The good news last night is that someone had to win. With the two worst offenses in baseball locking horns, you'd think a 2-1 game would be likely. But no, the bats came alive to league-average levels, quite an accomplishment for the two teams.

Cliff Lee has fallen off from his early season high standards, averaging a game score of about 40 in his last three contests; in his first seven games, his average game score was about 74. In last night's start, he allowed 10 hits and four runs, but to his credit, he did get through six innings, allowing Eric Wedge to use only those in his Circle of Trust. With an offense so punchless, it's almost required for a starter to go at least six innings, lest the middle relievers have to hold a one-run lead or a tie game.

Last year, the Indians' offense was lead by Victor Martinez and Grady Sizemore, while Travis Hafner, while having a down year by his standards, still was a viable offensive force. This year, Travis Hafner has been useless, and now is hurt, while Victor Martinez only remains the cleanup hitter because of reputation. Which leaves Grady Sizemore as the only one of the Indians' big three having even an average offensive season. Grady hit two home runs last night, giving him 10 on the season; After his 10 and Jhonny Peralta's 11, the next highest home run total on the team belongs to David Dellucci, with 5.

Besides the offensive heroics, Grady made a game-saving defensive play. With two outs and runner at second in the ninth, Jose Guillen hit a long drive to left-center field. Sizemore ran the ball down just before the fence, bobbled it briefly, hit the wall, and held onto it. If he doesn't make the catch the Royals tie the game, and would be just a single from winning it.

It is time to bring back everyone's favorite bit of cathartic therapy. Two years ago, the Indians were so disappointing that a lot of us wanted to just blow up the whole thing and start over. Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense, but it made us feel better.

Well, the time has come to dig up this irrational concept again. And where better to direct the wrecking ball first to than the rotation?

(For contract details, see Cot's Contracts' Indians page )

C.C. Sabathia

2008 Salary: $9.0M

Signed Through: 2008

Controlled Through: 2008

PRO: Most of the contenders' General Managers would be willing to crawl over two miles of broken glass while having Barney the Dinosaur piped directly into their temporal lobes just to have Mark Shapiro listen to their proposal for Sabathia. For those with deep pockets, they'd have 4-5 months to try to get Sabathia to sign an extension, and for any team, they'd add one of the best pitchers in baseball to their rotation. So no prospect would be off-limits to the Indians, and even players normally not even talked about would at least come into the conversation.

PRO: The Indians aren't going to keep Sabathia past this season, and the major reason didn't trade him was because they thought they would contend again. So if we remove that little impediment, why wouldn't you trade the best pending free agent in baseball?

PRO: Even if a tiny part of you thinks that Sabathia would re-sign with the Indians, and if the Indians found room on their payroll, wouldn't a Santana-like deal be too much a risk to take for team that's already sunk a lot of coin into extensions for Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook?

CON: There's still a chance albeit a tiny one, to keep CC around, and most fans wouldn't look too kindly on the Indians punting on Sabathia this soon.

CON: As bad as the Indians have played, they're only 4.5 games back in the division race.

Cliff Lee

2008 Salary: $3.75M

Signed Through: 2009

Controlled Through: 2010 (Team Option)

PRO: Perceived value probably won't get any higher after a magical run to start the season.

PRO: Has a ridiculously team-friendly contract, so any team not named the Marlins would be in the running for him, driving up the asking price.

PRO: Recent history has been mediocre to terrible, so now may be the time to sell high.

CON: Has a very reasonable contract, and the Indians are probably losing two of their starters to free agency after the season.

CON: Why trade him now just when he's finally figured things out? He's had no history of arm problems, and has always had pretty good stuff.

Fausto Carmona

2008 Salary: $500K

Signed Through: 2011

Controlled Through: 2014 (Team Options)

PRO: Did I say Cliff Lee's contract was ridiculously team-friendly? Whoever trades for Carmona could have another six dominant seasons without having to negotiate a thing with Carmona's agent. And while a team willing to give up value enough to for that pitcher/contract combination may not exist, it only takes one GM and one moment of insanity to give the Indians an entire farm system.

CON: OK, back to reality. Carmona's got the best sinker in baseball, a great attitude, and he's just 24 years old. And did I mention the contract?

CON: There is no package of players out there that could get the Indians full value for Carmona and his contract.

Jake Westbrook

2008 Salary: $10M

Signed Through: 2010

Controlled Through: 2010

PRO: It may sound like a broken record, but even at a quasi-market salary, Westbrook's contract is very friendly. The remaining length of the contract is just about perfect for a trading club; there's only two years left, so the risk isn't that great, but you'd still have two years until he could become a free agent. 

PRO: Westbrook's now been on the DL for two straight seasons, and he's probably at his peak right now. Those two years left on his contract may be for at best a slowly declining and injury-prone pitcher with a low strikeout rate to begin with.

CON: Westbrook has been a very reliable innings-eater for five seasons now, and he just signed an extension that was a bit below market-value. And he likes it in Cleveland, something that hasn't been a commonplace happening in recent years.

CON: Other teams may not think Westbrook is that good, and those are the GMs you want to be talking to.

Paul Byrd

2008 Salary: $7.5M

Signed Through: 2008

Controlled Through: 2008

PRO: Even if the Indians get back into the race, they'd have to think of Byrd as a nice trading chip. Even if they don't bring back Sabathia, the Indians probably aren't going to make a huge fuss of re-signing Byrd, at least not at what the free market will dictate.

PRO: At this stage in his career, Byrd is living off preparation and pinpoint control. There's not a whole lot separating Byrd from a starting spot and being out of baseball. And the longer time frame the Indians begin to think in, the more risk keeping Byrd around brings.

PRO: With Byrd being linked to the PED scandal, keeping him would be a bad example to the children of America. And no amount of plush hot dog giveaways would overcome the stain of devastation the children of Northeast Ohio would have burned upon their minds if the Indians would even think about bringing Byrd back.

CON: He's one of the best 5th starters in baseball.

CON: Now that Carmona is on the DL, the Indians still need him in the rotation.

Aaron Laffey

2008 Salary: $393K

Signed Through: 2008

Controlled Through: 2013 (assuming he stays in the majors from now on)

PRO: Young left-handed ground-ball machine that's had some success but still with less than a year of service time? This time even the Marlins are interested. He may not be worth Garret Atkins, but then again, who is?

PRO: As with any young player, will he survive the first wave of adjustments teams will make to him? Perhaps once hitters stop trying to pull his sinkers, he'll quickly become a lot less effective.

CON: Even if the Indians would undergo a 2002-style rebuild, he's the type of player the Indians would be trying to stockpile.

In General: The Indians are facing the loss of both Byrd and Sabathia, so those two would definitely be on the table if the Indians fall out of the race. If the Indians get some semblance of an offense and if they aren't down 10 games by the All-Star Break, they'll hold on to Sabathia, though there could a couple scenarios where they'd deal Byrd,.

And because Sabathia and Byrd probably won't be here next year, the other four guys mentioned above won't likely be traded. The Indians don't like to use free agency to fill holes, and especially don't like filling a rotation hole with a free agent.

via www.fangraphs.com

Since his last recall, Ben Francisco has hit .356/.391/.559, not counting tonight. No one batter can really carry a lineup if nobody else is contributing, but Ben's been by far the best offensive player the Indians have. So much so that moving him into the cleanup spot got nary a comment from anyone. Whatever plans there were for him to share playing time with Dellucci and Gutierrez have been scrapped; now the only hard decision Eric Wedge will have to make about his outfielders is which of the other two guys is going to hurt the lineup the least.

Francisco has quickly shown that nobody's getting a fastball by him, whether it be at his knees or at his shoulder. And he'll crush any breaking pitch you leave on the inner half of the plate. Scott Feldman learned the hard way when Francisco gave the Indians the lead with a three-run shot in the third. The adjustment's going to come, probably as soon as faces these teams for the second time, but hopefully by that time the rest of the offense gets back off the mat.

The non-Francisco offense has had much better at-bats this series than at any time on the most recent road trip. I hate to jinx it, but Travis Hafner is looking a whole lot better; he's been making loud line drive and fly ball outs recently. Asdrubal Cabrera broke a long hitless streak an at-bat after had a lengthy at-bat. And Jhonny Peralta seems to be on one of his sporadic power surges.

Cliff Lee made some early mistakes, but settled down against a hot Texas offense. That he pitched into the seventh was a big deal since the bullpen is extremely unsettled, even if you assume the Joe Borowski who just came off the DL is the 2007 version. The TV guys speculated that Rafael Perez stayed to pitch the eighth against three right-handers because of who the Rangers had on the bench. While I suppose that was part of the decision, I would have to think that the overriding factor for keeping Perez had more to do with the way Betancourt has pitched of late.

The series:  Hosted the Athletics (win, win, win) and visited the Reds (loss, loss, loss).  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  The Indians rode an absurd run of exceptional pitching to the division lead, devastating the A's to cap off an 8-2 run, only then to get swept by the not-really-even-kind-of-good Reds.  How many weeks see a team move from 1.5 behind one team, to 1.5 ahead of everybody, to 1.5 behind a different team?

The big story:  The team's most senior and best pedigreed relievers continued to fail in the 9th inning, raising the question, why are we picking our closers this way, anyway?  A week ago, Betancourt followed nine innings of shutout pitching from Cliff Lee with a three-run, game-losing 10th against Toronto.  A few days later, he appeared ready to repeat the performance against Oakland, loading the bases while attempting to close the door on a three-run victory.  Incredibly, Wedge then pulled his closer — something he refrained from doing in well over a dozen similar situations with Joe Borowski on the mound — in favor of Kobayashi, who had "backed into" his first career save two nights earlier.  Kobayashi loosed a run-scoring wild pitch but slammed the door with two strikeouts — and the controversy was on.  Wedge said several guys might share the closer role until Borowski returns.  Kobayashi was inserted into the next save situation a few nights later and promptly blew the game — bloop single to left, hit-by-pitch, and a three-run walkoff homer to Adam Dunn, who should have been wearing a giant cape with the words "Don't Give This Guy Anything Good To Hit" emblazoned on the back.

Many stupid things have already been written about this, and many more will be written in the coming weeks.  We've already heard the brainless drumbeat starting against closer-by-committee, and no doubt much more will follow.  You will hear that Bill James invented closer-by-committee (not true) and thinks it's a great idea (not true), that the Red Sox tried closer-by-committee a few years back (true) at James' urging (not true), and that that Red Sox bullpen failed (true) because closer-by-committee is such a terrible idea (not true, it was because they didn't have any good relievers).

Mind you, I don't really care for closer-by-committee much myself, but I like dumb, superstitious baseball commentary even less, and for some reason, the Holy Role Of The Closer seems to bring out the village idiots like little else.  As you suffer through it, try to hold firm these simple facts:

• Betancourt has not been steady all season.  When Borowski went on the DL, Betancourt had given up two home runs in his last four games.  In fact, Betancourt's best stretch of the season came in the two weeks immediately following his being annointed the closer — allowing just one single (and that was the only line drive) and one walk over four games.
• Kobayashi, despite a very impressive career in Japan, is an older pitcher who has never established any level of performance, good or bad, in the U.S.  And similar to  Betancourt, he had given up two home runs in the five games preceding his first career Save in the U.S.

So there's no reason to think any of this has anything to do with the 9th inning being "different."  We've got two veteran relievers struggling, getting inconsistent results in any inning — but we also have a number of younger relievers thriving within limited opportunities.   And for whatever it's worth, Betancourt looks to have been extremely unlucky on balls in play (.380 BABIP, compared with .287 career and .240 last season) and is still not giving up any walks (only two unintentional in 72 PA).

In other news:  The starters ended a historic run of more than 44 scoreless innings when Aaron Laffey threw a ball into right field while attempting to field a lame squib in front of the mound — even that it was only an unearned run — leading to the curious ESPN headline, "Indians starter gives up run".  The streak spanned seven days in seven games, and over that span, the Indians entire pitching staff gave up just six runs — aside from Betancourt, only two runs over 62.2 IP, one unearned, with nine pitchers combining for an insane ERA of 0.14.  Over that span, Sabathia and Laffey gave up two runs in 30 innings, and Carmona and Lee pitched 18 scoreless innings in a single day.  Byrd contributed another 7+ scoreless innings, and four relievers contributed six scoreless appearances as well.

Cliff Lee ended his own historic run with his first poor start of the season, allowing more runs in that one start (5) than in his first seven combined (4) and nearly as many extra bases.  Lee's historically good launch to the season got heavy press coverage, and he still leads the AL by a significant margin in both ERA and FIP.

The offense continued to struggle to stop continuing to struggle, but the problem shifted as some hitters showed some at least signs of recovering (Hafner, Garko), others showed at least an up-and-down tendency (Peralta, Dellucci), while still others displayed an increasingly chornic-looking awfulness (Cabrera, Gutierrez).  Jason Tyner was ditched out of a need to summon Jeremy Sowers for a spot start.  Sowers was demoted and replaced the next day by Michael Aubrey, a highly touted prospect around 2004 who has been chronically injured ever since.  Aubrey made contact in every plate appearance and sent his first major league hit over the Cincinnati fence, and to nobody's particular surprise got more playing time than Andy Marte.

Post of the week:  Should we talk about it?

Who fed it:  Despite disappointing results, many Indians had a great week, none moreso than Ben Francisco, who piled up five singles, three doubles and a home run in just 18 at-bats, good for a 1359 OPS.  Sabathia delivered the club's best start of the week and arguably the whole season, a complete-game shutout in which he faced 32 batters, only two of whom even reached second base, in both cases with two outs.  Carmona, Byrd and Laffey each contributed a seven-inning gem, combining to allow only one run, one walk, one HBP and one extra-base hit (a double).  Rafael Perez added four more scoreless appearances and hasn't allowed a run in more than three weeks, spanning 11 games.  Jorge Julio continued his march on the Circle of Trust, retiring all four batters he faced, two on strikeouts; he's now retired 21 of his last 25 batters, allowing just two singles and two walks.  Peralta chose feast over famine with a 1038 OPS, including two doubles and two home runs.  Jason Tyner exceeded our wildest expectations, getting released before he could make our wretched offense any worse.  Absolute Best:  Francisco.  Relative Best:  Tyner.

Who fed it breakdown:  What if Travis Hafner rebuilt his swing and nobody noticed?  With half the week's games in the NL, Hafner had a limited role but still produced a home run and three walks — and in fact, he has a very healthy .318/.483/.545 — that's 1028 — over his ten games, which included seven starts and three pinch-hitting shots.  It's far too soon to announce that he's back, or even to have any real optimism, but considering his OPS was well under 600 for a month of games before that, it's at least an encouraging sign.  Garko, meanwhile, slugged 700 this week with two doubles and two home runs but drew no walks, and he's drawn only two walks in 75 PA over the past four weeks.

Who ate it:  Gutierrez is playing himself out of a job completely, or at least into a significantly reduced role, and this week, he failed to reach base even once in ten trips to the plate, which included five strikeouts and a GIDP.  His OPS for May is 328, and it's just 545 for April and May combined (that is, the whole season except for his heroic Opening Day act on March 31).  Dellucci was also terrible this week, managing just a single in 16 at-bats; he's also having a terrible May (444 OPS) but at least had a good April (871).  Cabrera managed just two singles in 17 at-bats (285 OPS) and is carrying a 492 OPS all the way back to April 6.   Betancourt retired just one batter out of four and ominously did not appear in any other game.  Absolute Worst:  Dellucci.  Relative Worst:  Gutierrez.

Who ate it breakdown:  As noted above, the weakness of our offensive attack was nowhere near as widespread this week as it was at the start of the month — the team hit just .232 and slugged .423, but if you exclude AbaCab, Gutierrez and Dellucci, the other 11 position players hit .278 and slugged .523 — more than respectable.  This is not to prescribe just leaving those three out of the lineup, as this is just a tiny slice of the season.  But it is nice to know that based on this past week's numbers at least, it is possible for us to field a lineup that can produce good numbers.

The other guys. false alarms and open questions:   Will be posted later.

via www.fangraphs.com

Let's get this out of the way first: the Indians cannot win a game as presently constituted if the starting pitcher does not go at least six innings and allow less than four runs. And three runs allowed is pushing it.

Cliff Lee finally came back to earth, giving up 10 hits and five runs in 5.2 innings. Last year, we would have taken that kind of outing from Cliff, and besides, the offense was actually capable of winning a shootout. Those fastballs which were formerly kept to the edges of the plate found their way to the middle of the zone, and most of them got hit hard somewhere.

The Indians' offense "exploded" for four runs on eleven hits. with most of those hits spread throughout the starting lineup. Michael Aubrey got his first major-league hit in the fourth inning, a home run. Jamey Carroll was on base three times; sadly, he's had one of the better on-base percentage on the team.

Yes, they were facing NL ERA leader Edinson Volquez, but at what point do we stop clinging to the desperate idea that the Indians have faced twenty straight great pitching performances? And when are other fans going to catch on that their pitchers aren't actually shutting down a good offense?

[Editor's Note: I've invited Kyle Boddy of Driveline Mechanics  to analyze an Indians pitcher. Here's his statistical and mechanical analysis of Cliff Lee's amazing start to the 2008 season - Ryan]

Phrases that I heard about Cliff Lee over the course of the 2007 season:

• He’s a bum!
• Good riddance - enjoy Double-A, you idiot.
• We should have traded you for Matt Murton while we had the chance!

Phrases that I have heard about Cliff Lee over the course of the 2008 season:

• We love you!
• Never leave!
• Thank God we didn’t trade you for Matt Murton!

Funny how things change, isn’t it?

Continue reading this post »

The series:  Visited the Yankees (win, win, loss) and hosted the Blue Jays (win, win, win, loss).

The big story:  The team put together a strong week behind a dominant rotation, but the daily lineups wore the strange hue of a series of odd decisions — moves that occasionally excited but more often puzzled, or even smelt of desperation.

Newly promoted Ben Francisco was used in all seven games, including five starts, performing similarly to (and not demonstrably better than) the man he replaced, who was traded to Pittsburgh for (we can guess) something in between a bag of balls and a case of bats.  Slight-hitting Jason Tyner was also promoted, adding to our already overstocked cupboard of weak-hitting outfielders, or perhaps more accurately subtracting by addition.  Even more strange than Tyner's promotion was his being given a start immediately upon his arrival.  We have four better-hitting outfielders — five if you count Blake — most of whom are also good or great defenders, so what was the point of this?

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it, unless it was to send the other players a message, something along the lines of:  "You guys suck so bad, we might as well be playing Jason freakin' Tyner.  That's right, you guys, it's that bad.  Our hitting is as pathetic as the goddam Twins now."

And then there's Andy Marte, long buried at the end of the bench, who shockingly got three starts this week — and yet already has fewer at-bats this season (22) than Ben Francisco (25), who has been on the roster only 11 days compared to Marte's 43.  Some guys just have to play, apparently, and some guys don't.  (See full screed.)  It's a good thing we don't have to understand these decisions, because who could?

In other news:  Cliff Lee ascended to a new level of other-worldly Chuck Norrissitude, leading a rotation that allowed just nine runs in seven starts, including five games allowing one run or zero.  Five!   Five starts allowing one run or zero!  This week alone!  Since April 17, Indians starters have allowed just 35 runs in 23 games, good for a 2.07 ERA.  Sabathia even managed to climb out of the ERA cellar, having needed four excellent starts to get his ERA down to 6.55 — still awful, but good enough to surrender the "lead" to Nate Robertson at 6.64, of our alleged rivals the Detroit Tigers.  (Happily, the bottom five also includes two other Tigers, Justin Verlander at 6.43 and Kenny Rogers at 5.82.)

Asdrubal Cabrera delivered a stunning series of defensive gems in a two-game stint at shortstop, but he made history when he returned to second base last night, turning just the 14th unassisted triple-play in the history of major league baseball.  Rather than save the ball for himself or for the Hall of Fame, AbaCab casually flipped the ball to some fans sitting behind the Indians dugout as he jogged in from the field — just another routine play, I guess.

Post of the week:  Okay, maybe let's start using that recommend-until-it's-green thingy.  And no, I'm not eligible, thank you.

Who fed it: Cliff Lee pitched 16 scoreless innings, starting a new streak perhaps to rival his previous 27-inning tear.  Carmona and Laffey provided another 16 scoreless innings, Carmona's in a complete game shutout, the quartet of Perez-Lewis-Julio- Breslow contributed eight more, and man, that is just a lot of scoreless innings.  Julio has been pounding on the door of the Circle of Trust, having retired 22 batters since the last time he allowed a run (April 16) while allowing just two singles and two walks.  Breslow meanwhile was fighting just to have his existence recognized, appearing in just his second game in the past four weeks.  Casey Blake had the best offensive line of the week with a 912 OPS, though that was more of a reflection on the team's hitting than anything else.  Sizemore hit another two home runs, matching his pair from last week, and has a 1063 OPS over his last dozen games.  And, well, that's about it for the hitters.  How did we ever score 12 runs in that one game?  Absolute Best:  Lee.  Relative Best:  Lee.

Who ate it:  Garko was the worst-hitting starter this week by far, with just two singles, a double and the obligatory HBP to show for 19 trips to the plate.  He bears an atrocious .140/.219/.175 line over his last 16 games, with as many strikeouts, double-plays and sac-flys (14) as times on base (also 14).  I can't tell if we're supposed to consider Francisco a bench guy or not, but if we assume that he isn't one, then the bench (Carroll, Shoppach, Marte and Tyner) was unbelievably awful this week — 4 for 43 awful, .093/.152/.093 awful — often frustrating Wedge's attempts to shuffle the lineup and give extra days off to his  struggling sluggers, i.e., half the roster.  You know who else sucks?  Rafael Betancourt, whose ERA is something around 9 since being anointed the closer, I can't even stand to look it up.  Absolute Worst:  Garko.  Relative Worst:  Betancourt.

The other guys. false alarms and open questions:   Will return next week; I kind of got sidetracked by the whole Marte thing.

via www.fangraphs.com

99 years ago, Cleveland shortstop Neal Ball made the first unassisted triple play in AL history. Bill Wambsganss made the second one during the 1920 World Series. And tonight Asdrubal Cabrera made just the 14th unassisted triple play (including postseason) in MLB history. Because so much has to go right, it's an extremely rare play. But everything game together tonight. As mentioned above, the Blue Jays were desperate to score a run, so they put the runners in motion with nobody out. If Asdrubal Cabrera wasn't covering second, Lyle Overbay's line drive would have scored a run, and might have lead to a big inning. But because everything fell into place, Cabrera was in the perfect position to catch the sinking liner, though it wasn't a routine catch. But after he got up with the ball, all that remained was to tag second (to double up Kevin Mench, who took off for third) and tag Marco Scutaro (to double up Marco Scutaro, who had just arrived from first).

And the pitcher who watched Cabrera make three outs behind him? Cliff Lee, who saw his magical start to the 2008 season continue. Even with his Nintendoesque pitching stats, maintaining an ERA under 1.00 requires at least some good fortune. Besides the historic triple play, Franklin Gutierrez made a game-saving diving grab in the ninth to assure Lee of at least a no-decision. But still, Lee threw what normally would have been a shutout, striking out five, walking two, and allowing seven hits in nine innings of work. He wasn't on the top of his game; he had to work himself out of several jams, which in my mind was impressive than his first couple dominant outings. He's now pitching unpredictably, that is, using any of his pitches in any count. Lee's hot streak will inevitably end, but when it does, I don't think this new Lee will entirely disappear.

But despite the rare play and almost as rare pitching streak, Toronto finally broke through and won the game in the tenth. The Jays had had opportunities all game long, but finally capitalized off Rafael Betancourt. Two singles to open the game set the inning up; the second hit Betancourt flush just above his left elbow. After a sacrifice, leading to a intentional walk, Toronto scored the game's first run with a no-doubter sacrifice fly. The game was put away by Aaron Hill's two-run single.