The Indians' bullpen gave up one hit in 4 1/3 scoreless innings of a 12-6 victory over the White Sox on Saturday in Chicago.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Indians played the White Sox in the third of a four-game series Saturday afternoon at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago. Here is a capsule look from The Plain Dealer reporter Dennis Manoloff:
Game: 12.
Opponent: White Sox.
Location: U.S. Cellular Field.
Time of day: Afternoon.
Result: Indians 12, White Sox 6.
Records: Indians 6-6, White Sox 6-6.
Rockin' Raburn (Tweet, Tweet): Indians designated hitter Ryan Raburn, who tormented the White Sox last season, had the biggest at-bat of the game. He delivered a two-out, two-run single with the bases loaded to give the Tribe an 8-6 lead in the seventh inning. Credit first-base umpire Gerry Davis with an assist.
Raburn stepped in against hard-throwing righty reliever Daniel Webb. Moments earlier, Asdrubal Cabrera had popped foul to third on Webb's first pitch.
Raburn swung and missed at the first pitch. Webb thought he had a second swinging strike on a 99-mph heater away, but Davis ruled Raburn checked in time. Replays indicated that Raburn caught a break.
Instead of potentially being in jail at 0-2, Raburn was at 1-1 when he took a breaking pitch for a ball. The 2-1 count enabled him to dial in on a heater, which is what Webb threw. Raburn ripped the 97-mph pitch off the mound and into center for the go-ahead runs.
Feast or famine: Right fielder David Murphy went 2-for-5 with one homer, one triple and four RBI. Murphy has played 10 games. In seven of them, he is 2-for-20 with two singles and one RBI. In the other three, he is 8-for-13 with three doubles, one triple, two homers and nine RBI.
Hiding in the tumbleweeds: The bottom three in the Tribe order -- Raburn, Murphy and third baseman Mike Aviles -- combined to go 5-for-14 with seven RBI and three runs.
Swishalicious returns: No. 2 batter Nick Swisher, who entered hitting .178 with one homer, was 2-for-6 with one homer, one RBI and two runs. One of the outs was loud, the ball having been knocked down by the wind. He did strike out twice.
Bullish: Tribe relievers picked up Justin Masterson, who struggled for his second straight start (4.2 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 5 BB, 7 K). Lefty Josh Outman and righties Bryan Shaw, Cody Allen and John Axford combined to allow one hit in 4 1/3 shutout innings.They quartet walked one and struck out six.
Money men: Outman worked 1 1/3 innings and earned the victory to improve to 2-0. Allen also is 2-0, giving the bullpen 67 percent of the Tribe's victories..
Plush, Plush: Tribe leadoff batter Nyjer Morgan delivered a productive and entertaining first inning.
Right-hander Felipe Paulino threw a 1-1 fastball on the inside corner that Morgan thought was a ball. Umpire Quinn Wolcott called it a strike. Morgan, as if he were Rickey Henderson, turned to Wolcott and briefly asked for an explanation.
Paulino went back inside with a 1-2 fastball that Morgan took. The pitch was close enough that Wolcott easily could have rung up Morgan (in part because Morgan is not Rickey Henderson). Wolcott called it a ball; the K-box supported him.
Paulino went inside again with a fastball, but this one gave Morgan too much swing room and he singled up the middle.
With Swisher batting, Paulino attempted to pick off Morgan. Davis, the crew chief, called Morgan out. Morgan disagreed to the extent that he stood on the bag and waited for manager Terry Francona to arrive on the scene. Replays showed Morgan's right hand reached the bag before the tag of first baseman Jose Abreu. The Indians did, indeed, challenge, and the call was reversed in relatively short order.
Winning the challenge helped make a big inning possible. Morgan eventually scored on a two-run single by Michael Brantley. Asdrubal Cabrera had an RBI fielder's choice for a third run.
Morgan, subbing for injured Michael Bourn in center, finished 1-for-5 with a walk. The Tribe is 5-2 when Plush starts.
Cigar smoke: Indians pitchers have contained Cuban slugger Abreu since he homered twice and drove in three in the series opener. That outburst had pushed Abreu's season's totals to four homers and 14 RBI.
On Friday, Abreu went 0-for-4 with one walk and two strikeouts. On Saturday, he was 0-for-4 with one walk, one run and three strikeouts.
Masterson struck out Abreu looking to end the second. In the fourth, Abreu batted with the bases loaded and two outs. It was then that Masterson made his best three-pitch sequence of the afternoon.
Abreu swing and missed at a nasty slider away, losing his bat in the process. Masterson came back with another slider away, and Abreu fouled it. For the 0-2 pitch, catcher Santana set up way outside with a pronounced body shift, hoping Abreu's peripheral vision detected it. Santana wanted to deke Abreu into thinking another slider was coming. Masterson instead threw a sinker over the middle but low enough. Abreu tapped it to Masterson, who triggered a 1-2-3 double play to keep Cleveland's deficit at 5-4.
Outman, who had given up one of the homers Thursday, struck out Abreu swinging at a high off-speed pitch in the sixth. Credit Francona for allowing the lefty Outman to face the righty Abreu, especially after what happened Thursday.
Axford struck out Abreu swinging at a 98-mph fastball off the outside corner in the ninth.
Fowl play: Allen, who doesn't like his former-teammate-issued nickname, "Chicken Al,'' struck out the side in the eighth. He pitched around a one-out double by Adam Eaton.
Cab fare: Cabrera doubled in the ninth inning against lefty Donnie Veal, extending his hitting streak and doubles streak to four games. All six of his hits in the past four games have come against lefties.
Cabrera is hitting .087 (2-for-23) with zero extra-base hits as a left-handed batter. He is hitting .333 (7-for-21) with five doubles and one homer from the right side.
Trouble early: The Indians and Masterson had mostly themselves to blame for what happened in the White Sox first.
The Tribe's offense had just given their No. 1 starter -- a No. 1 starter who had dominated the White Sox last year -- a three-run lead. One of the worst things Masterson could do was walk the leadoff batter, but that is what happened. Masterson fell behind Eaton 2-0 and 3-1 before losing him with a full-count fastball.
Leury Garcia chopped an 0-1 pitch to Aviles for what should have been a routine double play. But Aviles hurried the throw and sent it way wide of second baseman Jason Kipnis and into the outfield.
With runners on first and third, lefty Conor Gillaspie stepped in. Gillaspie entered with a nine-game hitting streak to begin his season. He had been good against the Indians the past year-plus in part because he hadn't been forced to worry about the inner half. After Masterson got ahead 1-2, Gillaspie fouled. Masterson threw back-to-back quality sliders away that Gillaspie spit on; K-box supported Wolcott in both cases. Masterson's full-count pitch was a fastball up that Gillaspie slapped to left for an RBI single.
Those three at-bats were a lot less excusable than what happened next. Cleanup man Abreu walked and Adam Dunn hit a two-run single to right-center to tie the score, 3-3. Alexei Ramirez grounded into a fielder's choice -- Masterson's first out coming on his 24th pitch -- before Alejandro De Aza's multi-hop RBI single through the hole at second gave Chicago a 4-3 lead.
Masterson struck out the next two batters to end the uprising, but the damage had been done. A 1-2-3 inning against Masterson might have deflated the White Sox a bit, even as hot as they have been offensively. Instead, the Indians not only let the White Sox back in it, they allowed them to take the lead.
Bouncing back: The White Sox have excelled in the series at answering Cleveland runs from the top of an inning. The four in the first pushed their series total of "response'' runs to 11.
Murphy led off the Tribe second with homer. The White Sox responded with an Eaton leadoff homer. Swisher and Kipnis gave the Tribe a 6-5 lead with one-out homers in the fifth. The White Sox responded with one run.
Shaw delivered the Indians' first shutdown inning of the game when, after Raburn's two-run single in the seventh made it 8-6, the White Sox went 1-2-3.
Issues in the field: The Aviles miscue, and a mishandled grounder by Kipnis in the ninth, are part of the Tribe's sloppy start to the season defensively -- and errors only tell part of the story. The Indians have failed to make an assortment of plays that weren't ruled errors but were costly. The list includes passed balls; wild pitches that should have been blocked; double plays not turned; and grounders under or through gloves.
Help from above: Kipnis led off the third with what should have been a routine pop to center. The wind pushed the ball away from Eaton, who chased in vain. The ball dropped in shallow left-center.
Kipnis, upset with himself as he exited the box, reached first with a gift single -- but he needed to be on second with a gift double. The lack of the extra base loomed large when the next batter, Carlos Santana, grounded into a 4-5-3 double play. Third baseman Gillaspie turned it because the White Sox had shifted against Santana.
Santana slumping: Tribe cleanup man Santana entered the afternoon in an 0-for-13 slide. It grew to 0-for-16, but he did walk twice and score twice. He is hitting .179 but owns a .396 on-base percentage.