Indians Bullpen Loses It Once Again, Indians Lose 3 of 4 Against Twins, Three Takeaways from 7-5 Loss

On Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Indians took on the Minnesota Twins in what was game four of a four-game series.

Coming into today’s game against the Twins, the Indians lost their previous two games and won the series opener on Thursday in Minnesota.

Heading into Sunday afternoon’s matchup the Indians came in with a record of 30-27 and currently have a 2.5 game lead over the Tigers for first in the Central. The Twins came into play today with a 24-30 record.

Following the Indians loss to the Twins, the Indians fell to 30-28 on the season. As the Twins improved to 25-30 on the year.

Here’s our three takeaways from the Indians 7-5 loss.

1.) Eddie Rosario Have A Day

The Indians seemed like they didn't have much of a chance as Twins pitcher Kyle Gibson had a perfect game through the first four innings until Edwin Encarnacion hit a homer to left.

The trend of Sunday's game seemed to be if you were going to hit a home run, you were going to hit multiple.

For the second time in Rosario's career, he had a 3 homer game. This is the first three-homer game since June 13 of 2017 when he did the same thing against the Seattle Mariners.

Rosario is the first player since Max Kepler had a three-homer game against the Indians back on August 1 of 2016.

Out of the Twins 7 runs scored, Rosario accounted for four of the seven runs.

2.) Indians Offense Kept Fighting

For the Indians, Edwin Encarnacion was mainly responsible for keeping this game close. Encarnacion was responsible for four of the teams five runs, along with hitting two homers (one giving Cleveland a 4-3 lead in the sixth).

As the Twins took the lead in the seventh inning, Michael Brantley answered right back for the Indians in the 8th which tied the game up at 5.

Seeing the offense bounce back after only managing to put one run on the board on Saturday's loss is definitely a good sign heading into their two-game series against the Brewers in Cleveland beginning on Tuesday.

3.) Indians Bullpen Costly Once Again

You can't necessarily blame the bullpen as much as you can in previous games mainly due to the fact that if a single player on the opposing team hits three longballs it will be difficult to come out on the winning end.

Indians starting pitcher Mike Clevinger came back out to start the seventh inning, which proved to be costly as he gave up a solo homer to Brian Dozier. Clevinger probably wouldn't come back out for the seventh inning if the bullpen was having better success than they have as of late but recently Francona has trusted his starting staff more so than the bullpen. A similar situation happened to Trevor Bauer a few weeks ago in which Francona let his starting pitcher stay in a bit longer than he'd like.

Clev pitched in 6.0 innings, gave up 7 hits, allowed 4 earned runs, walked 3, and struck out 3 batters. He came away with a no-decision.

Cody Allen ended up with the loss following a two-run walkoff homer by Rosario.

During the series against the Twins, the bullpen has given up 6 earned runs over 10 innings pitched.

Another dismal showing from the bullpen this series..

With that HR allowed by Olson, CLE relievers have allowed 6 runs (3 HR) over 10 IP against the #Twins
— Jensen Lewis (@JLEWFifty) June 3, 2018

The Indians will be looking to get back to their winning ways on Tuesday when they face the Milwaukee Brewers. First pitch is expected to be at 7:10 pm EST and the Indians will be sending Corey Kluber to the hill. Kluber will be opposed by Junior Guerra of the Brewers.