Cleveland Sports Forum

Nice rally to tie (although a wild pitch did score the 2nd run), good pitching until the one mistake. Good game between "two 1st place teams"

First two Indians reach against Yu "Mungous" Darvish.

(Yay! I get to watch the Tribe this weekend.)

And...the air now quickly going out of the rally.

Up to Santana.

Darvish has an excellent curve.

Also excellent: Cabrera's two-run double. Darvish is working behind too many hitters.

Infield single by Choo + throwing error by Andrus lets Cabrera score from second with two out. 3-0.

Inning over. 3 runs off Darvish is about as good as you could have expected, and it doesn't look like he's going to be able to go more than 6 innings, if that.

Jimenez has to start throwing strikes, but you already knew that.

Casey K showing some variety at the plate today, a grounder to second, and a grounder to short.

Ubaldo gets behind the first 2 hitters in the 5th 3-1 but gets both to hit easy outs in the air.

Fans Andrus on 4 pitches for a 1=2=3 innings.. 79 pitches through 5 innings. Maybe he can make it to the 7th for the first time since his first outing of the season.

Jimenez gave up a double to Murphy to lead off the fourth, but he toughened up after that.

Kipnis homered leading off the Tribe half of the fifth.

Even though they're the local team, I don't actually watch the Rangers much, so I'm not sure if Darvish is always this wild, or if it's an off day, or if he's typically a little bit wild but the Indians are just patient enough to take advantage.

He's actually had something of a Jimenez-like day, except he's been able to collect a bunch of Ks (9 through 4 2/3). But he's probably going to end this inning right around 100 pitches.

Jimenez will work into the seventh for the first time since his first start.

And as the local broadcast just reminded me, if the Indians win today, they will have more wins against the Rangers this season than all of last season. Most of those games were brutal, too.

Kotchman just stole second.

I think the real news here is that Kotchman had been on first.

Anyone remember that Casey had two back games against the Royals when he hit homers in each, batting in 3 runs? Deleting those two games from his season totals he is a rather amazing 8 for 69 with one double and 2 RBI! That's an average of 116 and slugging avg of 131!!

And he's 6-3 220, apparently never works out. He's age 29, frequently the highpoint of a career. And he's not even hurt. No excuses for his incredible performance the first 6 weeks of 2012.

2 strikeouts and an easy grounder sandwich a walk and Ubaldo has a 7 inning shutout. A few extra runs and we can give Chris Perez a second day off.