Friends In Lowe Places

Quite an historic day for Derek Lowe.  Not only is he the first Indian in his 39+ year old season (Derek turns on June 1) to win 6 of his first 8 starts, he has the best ERA as well at 2.05.  The list of the aged with 6 wins period only includes a couple of Hall of Famers (Phil Niekro and Satchel Paige) and '95 ace Dennis Martinez, who, incidentally, began that season 9-0.  He's also the first Tribe starter since Dick Tidrow in '73 to throw a complete game without a strikeout.  True to form Lowe got it done with a 19/9 GB/FB ratio (2.11).  He induced 4 double plays and, although he threw 127 pitches, never faced more than 5 in any inning (that was just once, in the 7th).  Right now, Derek looks like the Gaylord Perry and Chris Antonetti like the bastard love child of Bill Wood and Bing Devine for talking the Braves into paying us to take Lowe.  Well, trust me, Antonetti is no genius and we should not expect this kind of production from Lowe all season long.  It would be foolish to set our expectations so high.  In the same way, we would assume that Justin Masterson is going to find himself and Ubaldo Jimenez isn't going to pitch like Bill Parsons circa 1973 for the next 4 months.  If this team is going to ride out this siege of a season, everyone is going to have to contribute.

If not for Lowe's gem, the headline would have been about the truly bizarre line-up that woManny turned in to home plate umpire James Hoye minutes before first pitch.  That card included Shin-Soo Choo batting lead-off for the 4th time in his career (Acta tried it twice last season, good for 1 hit), Michael Brantley batting 5th for the first time since little league and two guys (Johnny Damon and Lou Marson) who finished the day batting a COMBINED .229.  Am I slowly losing my mind (probably) or did woManny not just say that he wasn't going to juggle his lineup on a weekly basis?  If the guy hitting fifth is the best guy to be hitting 5th, shouldn't his season (my opinion) or career (woManny's) slugging percentage be higher than .360?  Maybe he should have more than zero home runs this year?  And how long is the leash on Marson?  The White Sox let Ron Karkovice hit .071 as their primary backup catcher in 1987 and the Cardinals were content with .106 from Rich Gedman in 1991, but we are talking historically bad here.  No player in baseball history has batted under .122 with at least 130 plate appearance (what Matson is on pace for) and only 3 guys have hit less than .150 this century (Remember when JR Towles was supposed to be good?).  While I've already berated the organization for it's mishandling of Damon, we have broken new ground.  Johnny has no business being on a Major League diamond if he is going to produce a .413 OPS.  Now that they have bought and paid for the decision not to send him to AAA before bringing him to the lake, they have very limited options.  Those would be (A) play him and see if he can work himself out of this funk (prospects dim), (B) sit him on the bench and let him eat a roster spot (he ain't no good as a defensive replacement), or (C) outright release him (boy, they'd look pretty stupid then, especially with Bobby Abreu hitting .296 for the Dodgers).  So, yeah, not one of the mongoloids in the Indians' administration is close to being smarter than a 5th grader, let alone a genius.

Despite this avalanche of idiocy and Travis Hafner's .185 average since April 22nd, the Tribe is still 2 full games up on a Tigers team that will use their next off day to be knighted, one and all, by the queen while simultaneously each receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.  They're.  Just.  That.  Good.

Roll Tribe.

Cheers.