Best Offensive Play
May 18th, Rajai Davis
Walk off home runs are fun, but at any given point from the 9th or beyond in a tie game, the home team has greater than a 50% chance of winning anyway. Much more impressive was this two run home run from Davis that tied the game at seven with one out in the ninth. It was just Davis’ fifth home run of the season, but his second in one game against Cincinnati. The long ball pushed the games into extras where Francisco Lindor added his clutch by shooting one out to the opposite field for the win. Both hits are included in the video below.
Best Defensive Play
June 4th, Francisco Lindor to Jose Ramirez
It’s tempting to give this to Davis for his game ender against Detroit on June 24th, but while this play was only worth one out, the degree of difficulty was slightly higher. Against the Royals with a huge shift to the right on Kendrys Morales, the ball was hit in the one place with no infielders, right up the middle. Lindor, playing on the right side of second, dove for the ball, but knew he couldn’t get up in time to throw to first. Instead, he flipped it underhand to Ramirez, who was playing third base, but standing on the left side of second. Ramirez threw it to first to retire Morales for the second out in the ninth.
Worst Offensive Performance
May 11th, Francisco Lindor: 0/7, 1 K, 1 GIDP, 1 RISPLOB
The Indians three worst offensive performances all came in a single game, a 16 inning loss to the Astros on May 11th. It was hard to pick the worst performer as all three of Yan Gomes, Davis and Lindor went 0/7, but the double play put Lindor over the top. All three stranded one runner in scoring position and Gomes struck out three times, Davis twice. Gomes’ last strike out was the Indians final at bat of the game as Marwin Gonzalez homered off Cody Anderson to walk off in the bottom of the inning.
Best Offensive Performance
April 23rd, Yan Gomes: 3/5, HR, 2B, 5 RBI, 3 Runs
Gomes may have been the Indians worst offensive performer during the first half, but on this one day, he was the best. Against Anibal Sanchez and the Detroit Tigers, Gomes knocked in the first run of the game in the first with a single and while Corey Kluber wouldn’t need more than the run he scored later that inning on an error, Gomes was far from finished. In his second at bat, Gomes hit a three run home run off Sanchez, then in the 7th, he knocked in one more with a double that scored Mike Napoli from first. Gomes scored later that inning on a Davis double to give the Tribe their tenth and final run of the game.
Credit must also be given to Davis for hitting for the cycle on July 2nd, but he only scored and knocked in two.
[mlbvideo id=”617042883″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /]Worst Defensive Performance
April 10th, Rajai Davis: Two Routine Flies Missed in One Inning
Last season, Kluber had to deal with the stigma of a poor win loss record making him look worse than he was thanks to extremely poor run support. This year, it has been an ERA that does not fit his stuff or his peripheral numbers like FIP. Three of those earned runs came in one inning early in the season against the Mets and all should have been unearned. After two were out in the second inning, Davis went back and lost a fly ball in the sun, allowing Curtis Granderson to get to third with what was called a triple. Granderson scored on a Kluber error, then Davis missed an even easier catch that scored the third run of the inning on a Yoenis Cespedes “double.” Those three runs were significant as if they were called unearned, Kluber’s ERA would be 3.55 instead of 3.79.
Best Defensive Performance
April 23rd, Francisco Lindor
Looking back at every play I marked as special in the first half, Lindor blew everyone away with 31, the next best being Jason Kipnis with 14. Lindor had six games with multiple tremendous plays, but the best may have been the same game that Gomes had his offensive explosion against Detroit. This game featured one of my personal favorite plays of the season, Lindor catching a liner smoked by Miguel Cabrera, falling on his butt and still throwing out the plodding slugger at first base.
Worst Relief Appearance
July 3rd, Tom Gorzelanny: 0.1 IP, 4 H, 3 BB, 7 ER, 1 HR
It’s possible that both the Indians biggest win and biggest lost came in the same series in Toronto the first week of July. Starting with the worst, Gorzelanny came into this game against the Blue Jays already down 5-0 in the sixth and he did nothing to improve the situation. He walked the first two batters he faced, then gave up a three run home run to Troy Tulowitzki. After an out, he walked another and allowed three straight singles to bring home two more runs. His final run scored off Tommy Hunter when he gave up a double to the first hitter he faced. Adding in Hunter’s performance (1 ER on 3 H) and an interesting two innings stint by Chris Gimenez, this was also the worst performance by the bullpen as a unit in a game.
Best Relief Appearance
July 1st, Trevor Bauer: 5 IP, 3 K, 2 H, 3 BB, Win
First, credit needs to go to Ryan Merritt who was on the team for seven days without pitching before he was asked to go 4.1 innings in his MLB debut, relieving Austin Adams in the fifth inning of a 9-2 loss to Texas on May 30th. Merritt didn’t allow a run and only allowed one hit, but was still sent down the next day.
That being said, what Trevor Bauer did against the Blue Jays on July 1st has to be considered one of the gutsiest relief performances in Indians history. The Indians had already used eight pitchers in the game and the Blue Jays were using position players to pitch before Bauer was done. He came in for the 15th in the 1-1 game and knew he was going to finish the game no matter what. When any single run would have ended it, Bauer lasted long enough for Carlos Santana to eventually end it with a solo home run in the 19th. Bauer was originally scheduled to start the next day, but gave up that opportunity to help his team win their 14th game in a row, a new team record.
Worst Start
May 30th, Josh Tomlin: 3.2 IP, 4 ER, 8 R, 9 H, 1 K, 1 HR
There was a reason why the Indians needed Merritt go so long on that day in May and that was Tomlin. The official line is listed above, but this game was worse than that. Tomlin allowed the first two batters to single and homer to get behind early, then a single and a double in the second to add one more. In the third, Tomlin masked some of his own failure as it was his two base throwing error along with two singles and a double that cost the Tribe two unearned runs. He allowed two more hits while retiring two in the fourth to let one more earned run in before Juan Uribe‘s error made the rest of the runs that inning unearned. Of course, those runs came off Austin Adams as he relieved Tomlin with two outs. Adams then allowed a home run to Nomar Mazara to make sure Tomlin didn’t leave anything on the table.
Best Start
June 21st, Corey Kluber: Complete Game Shut Out, 9 K’s, 2 BB, 3 1B, Win
Much like last year when four of the Indians best starts came in one series against Tampa, three of the Indians top five starts this year happened in a four game span and the best of them was the first by Kluber. This happened to be against the Rays as well as Kluber went all nine, struck out nine and allowed just five base runners. Only once did two base runners reach in the same inning and when that happened with one out in the ninth, it was the first time a Ray reached second base safely all game. On this occasion, the Indians weren’t stingy with the run support and he won the game 6-0.
Trevor Bauer would continue the luck against Tampa the next day with another complete game, allowing one run and Carlos Carrasco would pitch the third great game against Detroit on the 25th as the Indians won 6-0 again behind another complete game shut out. All three were in the middle of the 14 game winning streak and it was because of consistent starts like these that the stretch was possible.
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