Bat Masterson Mastering Bats

Yeah, that's right, I said it and the praise is well-deserved.  Two weeks ago, Justin Masterson stood at 2-5 with a 5.09 ERA.  Since, he has allowed just one earned run over 23 frames (0.39 ERA) with 11 hits, 3 walks (0.61 WHIP) and 24 punch-outs.  Tonight, Justin was so flat out dominant that he had Joey Votto, who currently leads NL batters in 11 different batting categories, talking to himself.  In his last two starts before the streak, Masterson needed 111 and 103 pitches respectively to fight through 6 innings in each.  In his first 12 starts, Justin threw 61% of his pitches for strikes.  Over his last 3 that number is up to 68% and he found the zone with 76 of 110 in this evening's complete game effort.  The 3-hitter (or less) was the team's first since September of 2010 ("Fausto Carmona") and just their 16th of the century.  Asked post-game about the transition, Masterson quipped that he was doing nothing differenly, the pitches were just doing what they were supposed to.  I can believe that he can't articulate any difference, but I hope that he keeps on doing it.

As expected that big mo' from yesterday's walk-off poured from the team all night long.  After averaging 2.13 runs of support over Justin's last 8 starts (3.36 on the season), the Tribe offense erupted for 8 runs off of Reds' pitching.  The 7 run margin of victory was the Indians biggest of the campaign.  I sure could get used to this scoring in bunches thing.  The whole game was three hits: Johnny Damon (2-run homer), Asdrubal Cabrera (3-run homer) and Lonnie Chisenhall (3-run double).   Can you imagine if Damon starts hitting?  I mean, the freakin' sky is the limit.  Johnny is 5-for-9 in his last 3 games raising his average over Mendoza for the first time in 2012.  If he can bat about .270 for the rest of the season, wow, I mean, wow, what a lift that would be.  A week ago, Chisenhall was hitting .214 and in danger of a demotion when Jack Hannahan returned.  Now, a 7-for-17 (.412) streak later, he's contributing to a bottom of the order renaissance that has the Indians scoring 6 and half runs a game over their last four.

Oh, right, Jose Lopez went 1-for-5 with a double.  His OPS is now .638.  It is probably time for another DFA so that he can recharge his batteries at AAA.  At least he wasn't batting clean-up tonight.

Recently, I've written at length on what the Tribe should do internally to become more competitive.  So, now I'll just distill it all into those little bottles of liqour from the airplane.

IN: Jason Donald
OUT: Jose Lopez

IN: Jared Goedert (or Russ Canzler)
OUT: Shelley Duncan

IN: Tyler Naquin (not kidding) (or, I guess, Trevor Crowe or Ezequiel Carrera)
OUT: Aaron Cunningham (I'd rather have a vacancy on the roster)

IN: David Huff (or Chris Seddon)
OUT: Tony Sipp

IN: Zach McAllister
OUT: Jeanmar Gomez

That's only five moves.  I'd settle for one.  I'll get zero.  Barring another injury, the next move that Idionetti and woManny will make is when Travis Hafner is ready to come back.

Roll Tribe.

Cheers.