Somewhere deep inside our Cleveland based souls a lot of us aren't surprised with what happened over the last week. We all saw it coming, we just tried our best to suppress the bad memories or at the very least, like some happy-go-lucky high school kids spending a weekend at Camp Crystal Lake, we all pretended our past sports misfortunes were just myths or ghost stories.
Then, Jason Voorhies came roaring his fat head right back this time in the form of Red Sox nation.
The best way to describe what happened is in one single word...choke.
Yes, Indians fans everywhere are burning their Joel Skinner baseball cards in effigy. What else can be said about that blown call by the third base coach? Clearly, Lofton would have scored standing and clearly this seemed to take the wind out of the Indians sails. The run would have tied the game late and instead we were treated to the Tribe doing their best impression of the 87' team with their comedy of errors in the field and a "bullpen from hell" type performance. Was that Keith Atherton out there pitching in Betancourt's uniform? Are you sure???
The Indians had a three games to one series lead and blew it. What happened to C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona this series? The pair of Indians co-aces each had an opportunity to close out the series in games 5 and 6 and neither were effective...again. Sure, I understand both pitchers were over fifty innings over their career highs in innings pitched, but haven't they been watching those annoying Dane Cook commercials at all? "
There's only one actober!!!"How weird will it feel if one of these two ends up winning the Cy Young over Josh Becket come November? Oh fuck it, at least we'll win something over that guy.
Travis Hafner even tried to celebrate Halloween early by dressing up at Cory Snyder for the series. He may have been the scariest of them all. The most common phrase being tossed around to describe Cory Hafner at the plate is that he's been caught "in between" lately...behind fastballs and way ahead of the slow stuff.
Eric Wedge last night played the ol' "well we're a young team..." routine. Fine. I still don' t think that's much of an excuse for this collapse by any stretch. How do we know they'll be back again? I'm quite sure the White Sox and Tigers expected to repeat as league champions the past few years. Where are they now?
My point is there are no guarantees and if they Indians expect to come back and take the next step they must make a significant move to upgrade the roster. Unless, they actually believe Ben Francisco can be somebody, they should be on the lookout for a left fielder who can add some pop to the line up. The same assertion can be made for the closer's role as Joe Borowski has yet to put together two solid seasons in a row as a closer.
Read the complete post at http://kidcleveland.blogspot.com/2007/10/wahoo-what-depressing-finish.html