P.M. Cleveland Indians links: Buck Showalter's Orioles deliver a shellacking to the Tribe

Buck Showalter's Baltimore boys bash the Indians.

Cleveland, Ohio -- Was it coach-pitch night at Progressive Field last night? The Baltimore Orioles, who are playing as if they have Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson and Paul Blair from the 1970 World Series champions team in the lineup, flat unloaded on the Tribe, 14-8.

It was the season-best offensive showing for the Birds, who are hardly playing as if their 39-74 record is the worst in baseball. You can probably credit new manager Buck Showalter for that. But even Buck bobbles, as he did in a pregame talk with the Baltimore Sun's Jeff Zrebiec:

Asked before Tuesday night's game about how the Orioles could maintain the momentum that they built on the previous homestand, a grinning Buck Showalter said: "Pitching would be a good start. Then probably pitching."

The Orioles' new manager didn't mention anything about hitting, which looked like a glaring oversight several hours later when his team put together its biggest offensive outburst of the season -- and had a fine time doing it.

Trailing by two after starter Jake Arrieta allowed five fourth-inning runs, the Orioles leaned heavily on the long ball and scored 10 consecutive runs at one point to overwhelm the Cleveland Indians, 14-8, before an announced 13,541 at Progressive Field.

Not sure, but Starting Blocks thinks almost every one of those 13,541 went 2-for-4 with a pair of RBI against Indians pitchers.

Hope springs eternal
Running off a 7-1 record is a pretty good way to start a stint as manager. What's more, it could be a harbinger of the future for the Orioles, at least according to John Parent, a Lima, Ohio-based writer for calltothepen.com.

Baltimore still doesn't have the talent needed to compete in the AL East, but Showalter will get more out of his club than his predecessors did, his track record of building winning ballclubs speaks for itself. The Orioles will be much improved going forward once their plethora of talented, but young, pitchers begin to learn the art of pitching in the majors, and if Showalter can turn Matt Wieters and Adam Jones into the players they could become, Baltimore could return to relevance as early as next season.

Baltimore's owner, Peter Angelos, has more often than not gotten in the way of rebuilding efforts in the past, but he seems to be allowing GM Andy MacPhail to do things the right way this time. Adding Showalter might not have been MacPhail's first choice (the are rumors that MacPhail preferred Eric Wedge), but Showalter has the ability to light a fire under his team. And Baltimore has been sorely lacking a disciplined manager for quite some time.

Now admittedly, there's a fair amount of "at least the Indians aren't as bad as Baltimore" around these parts. But if a good manager can start a turnaround, maybe there's hope for the Tribe as well. And the real plus is that the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays are not in the AL Central.

Battered up

And the hits just keep coming for the Indians. Unfortunately, they're not the kind of hits that show up in the box score. We're talking hits in the gut. John McLennan, writing for sbnation.com says attendance at Major League Baseball is down, down, down, maybe a million fans overall this year . . . and the Indians are, sadly, among the leaders in losers.

At the other end of the spectrum, major drops -- and we're talking from 250-315,000 so far -- come from the Indians, Blue Jays and Mets in the East.

Some of that is to be expected -- the Mets got the "new field boost" last season. But the Indians have simply been hemorrhaging fans over the past few seasons. The per-game number is more than 10,000 down on when they went to the playoffs in 2007, and is on pace to be the lowest for Cleveland since 1992, before they moved into Jacobs/Progressive Field. The Blue Jays are worse off still - the last time they averaged less than 20,000 per game was 1982.

At this rate, it's going to be about as easy to get a seat now as it was in the old Municipal Stadium days.

From The Plain Dealer


Beat writer Paul Hoynes, who's endured the bulk of the Tribe's 66 losses so far this season, and the Indians themselves thought maybe this would be the "easy stretch" of the schedule. Wrong. The beauty of baseball is that usually, even in a debacle like last night's loss to the Orioles, some bright spot shines. In what should give hope to Indians faithful, that came from Asdrubal Cabrera.

Here's how how Hoynsie described it:

(Justin) Masterson walked Nick Markakis to start the fourth. (Ty) Wigginton sent a double-play ball to third baseman Luis Valbuena, who couldn't handle the ball for an error. (Former Tribe farmhand Luke) Scott hit an RBI double, Adam Jones grounded out and then Cabrera made the play of the game, grabbing (Felix) Pie's deflection off Masterson's leg barehanded while sitting on his rear end after skidding to a stop. He looked back Scott at third and threw out Pie for the second out."

There's more, but it goes into how the numbers for the Orioles grew about as quickly as pages being ripped from a calendar in a bad film noir movie, so we'll just let you read it there.

In his Indians Insider column, Hoynsie notes that the guys dealt by the Indians haven't exactly lit the league afire:

• Jhonny Peralta, Detroit: .214 (9-for-32) two homers and four RBI. He's started five games at third, five at shortstop and one at DH.

• Jake Westbrook, St. Louis: He's made two quality starts, but the Cardinals are 0-2 in those games. Westbrook has pitched to a no-decision each time, allowing five earned runs on 10 hits in 13 innings. He's struck out 16 and walked two.

• Kerry Wood, Yankees: He's made four appearances with no record and a 2.08 ERA. He's allowed one earned run on four hits in 4 1/3 innings. He has seven strikeouts and three walks.

• Austin Kearns, Yankees: He's 1-8 with two strikeouts. He's played four games in left field.