Tribe Strikes Early But Falter Late, Blue Jays Win 8-4; Three Takeaways From The Victory

By: Corey Perez CLEVELAND, Ohio- Coming into Friday night's game vs the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cleveland Indians were winners of five straight. After the first

By: Corey Perez

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Coming into Friday night's game vs the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cleveland Indians were winners of five straight. After the first two innings, the Indians looked well on their way to another victory, as the bats came out hot knocking in four runs in the first two innings.

Then came the fourth inning, that four-to-nothing cushion the Tribe had built was erased in just one inning. Mike Clevinger had great control during the first three innings, but that all changed in the fourth as he walked two guys on. With a left-field single off the bat of Kevin Pillar, the Indians lead was down to three, until a three-run 414 ft long ball by Aledmys Diaz tied up the game at four.

Thes rest of the game would belong to Toronto as they added to their lead in the seventh on an RBI double by Teoscar Hernandez. While the Indians offense tried to string hits together in the bottom half of both the seventh and eighth innings they still found themselves down heading into the ninth.

Trailing 5-4 as the top of the ninth began, Tribe fans still had some optimism for an Indians walk-off victory. Unfortunately, that optimism was short-lived as the Tribe bullpen allowed the Blue Jays to plate three more runs. Thus extending their lead to 8-4, and that is what it would finish as the Indians winning streak is snapped at 5 games.

The Indians fall to 8-6 on the season and fall to 6-2 at home. Back at tomorrow afternoon with a 4 o’clock start against these same Blue Jays, as the Tribe will try to even the series with their ace Corey Kluber on the mound.

Three takeaways from Friday night’s loss:

1) Different paths. Similar results.

Tonight’s starters both finished the game with four earned runs. The only difference was the way in which they gave up those runs. Mike Clevinger started the game off hot, as he gave up just one hit and zero walks in the first three innings.

Marcus Stroman, on the other hand, struggled right out of the gate as Francisco Lindor started the Tribe offense off with a single in the first. The Indians then added two more hits en route to scoring two first-inning runs. The second inning was more of the same for Stroman as he surrendered two more runs. After the 2nd inning, things changed for Stroman as he was able to keep the Indians offense at bay and was able to get through the fifth inning.

	IP	H	R	BB	SO	HR	Pitches
Stroman	5	9	4	2	5	0	99

Just as Stroman was seeming to gain control of his pitches, the opposite happened to Clevinger. The fourth inning was very unkind to Clevinger as he gave up two walks, and threw 37 of his 82 pitches in the fourth alone. He has struggled early on in his career to get deep into games and unfortunately for Tribe fans Friday was much of the same. He is such a promising pitcher but continues to get in his own way at times, as one bad inning ultimately ruined what was otherwise a good outing. Sometimes though baseball is a cruel game, and one mistake can cost you.

	IP	H	R	BB	SO	HR	Pitches
Clevinger	4	3	4	2	5	1	82

2) Top of the line-up heating up?

Franciso Lindor had two hits in each of the final two games vs the Tigers this week, and his hot streak continued as he had three more hits Friday night. Not only did Lindor tally three hits, he also crossed home plate twice for two of the Tribes four runs.

When your leadoff hitter is able to get on base like Lindor has these past few games, your offense is really tough to stop by simply putting pressure on pitchers at the top of the line-up.Combine that with the bats of Jason Kipnis and Jose Ramirez heating up as well and the Tribe offense really clicks. Kipnis and Ramirez combined for 2H, 1 R, and 1 RBI.

Friday night was a special one for Lindor as he notched his 100th career double in the seventh inning.

3) Wasted opportunities

Despite getting on base 14 times (12 hits: 2BB) Friday night the Indians only managed to score four runs. They left a total of 16 guys on base, just looking at guys left on base you can see the Indians wasted a number of chances. Unfortunately, though, the wasted opportunities don’t stop there. As the Tribe also had two errors, including a rare one by the usually impeccable Francisco Lindor. While neither error resulted in runs for Toronto, both were silly mistakes made by Cleveland.

The Indians were able to threaten the Blue Jays in both the seventh and the eighth innings but failed to produce any runs. The seventh inning ended with Lindor being thrown out at home on a deep grounder to the second baseman. The eighth inning started off promising as Yan Gomes hit a single, but that was followed by a swinging strikeout by Bradley Zimmer and an inning-ending double play by Rajai Davis.