The Immortal Mitch T Keeps Tribe Rolling

Source: Yardbarker.com

I love how the Indians pitchers are living up to the nicknames I gave them.

Mitch Talbot was indeed the Immortal Mitch T yesterday, going the distance versus the White Sox in a 6-2 win. He allowed six hits but no walks. David Huff and Talbot are the first Indians pitchers to throw back-to-back complete games since Chad Ogea (remember him?) and Charlie Nagy accomplished the feat in 1996. The Indians starting pitching hasn’t been nearly as terrible as I thought it would be.

And after I called the Indians offense out in my last post, they responded with perhaps their best game so far this season, in terms of timely hitting. Most of the damage the Indians did today came with two outs. Luis Valbuena added a two-run home run, and the Indians were well on their way to the win.

Talbot’s outing wasn’t without hiccups, as the righty gave up a solo shot to Paul Konerko in the second, and had to overcome a Choo fielding error in the sixth. But the Immortal Mitch T minimized the damage each time.

It’s really been the best-case scenario in terms of how the starting pitching has performed. Yeah, there were some clunkers, like Jake Westbrook’s opening day performance, but all and all, you really couldn’t realistically have expected the starters to pitch much better.

But things in baseball usually regress to the mean, so it’s unrealistic to think that the starters will keep up this level of quality over the course of a 162-game season, so let’s not get out hopes up yet. This team is still sub-.500.

The Indians are doing a unique promotion today, offering anyone who shows a ticket from today’s Cavs-Bulls game to get into Progressive Field for $5. Kinda clever, kinda pathetic, but Tribe is hurting pretty bad for attendance. I considered heading down for today’s game despite not having a Cavs ticket, but I realized in this weather, with how suspect this team is, I’d rather sit on my couch and watch the Cavs play a first-round playoff series than freeze my ass off at an April Indians game. I don’t think this reflects badly on my status as a fan at all. The relationship between sports teams and sports fans should be a mutual one, and the Indians have failed to live up to their end of the bargain the past two seasons. So I’ll stay away today, and maybe go down tomorrow for the last home game for about two weeks.

One last thing, since it’s Cavs playoff time, a shameless plug for fansided’s own King James Gospel, where Cody has published a match up review for the Cavs-Bulls series. Cody’s doing some nice work over at KJG, so be sure to check it out throughout the postseason for even more Cavs coverage than the great Brian Windhorst gives us. That’s not sarcasm, Windy is one of the best beat writers in the NBA and Cavs fans are lucky to have him. Having Windhorst covering the Cavs at the Plain Dealer just makes the Indians having Paul Hoynes as the beat writer at the PD look even worse.

Anyways Jake the Snake versus Jake Peavy today on Fox at 4:10. Tune in after the Cavs game, as if the past two games are any indication, Westbrook might still be pitching. 🙂