NewsTribe backs Pavano in big way
Cabrera triple shy of cycle to lead 13-hit attack behind righty
By Matt O'Donnell / MLB.com
08/02/09 5:32 PM ET
CLEVELAND -- Not too many people would have thought that an Indians team that had been purged of two franchise players just days ago would have enough fight left to compete with one of the American League's best teams. But the Tribe keeps fighting and winning in the second half, despite the fact that the club has a lot of new faces and is pretty far back in the standings. The Indians cruised to an 11-1 win to take the series from the AL Central-leading Tigers in front of 24,718 on Sunday at Progressive Field. This time, it was a turnaround performance by Carl Pavano and an offensive outburst led by Asdrubal Cabrera that helped propel the Tribe to a win. "It's tough losing some of the guys you're used to being with," said Grady Sizemore, who was 2-for-4 with a home run on his 27th birthday. "You just have to bounce back." And bounce back they have -- at least for one series. The Tribe went into rebuilding mode after the team traded away some of its most well-known and well-liked players in the days leading up to the beginning of this six-game homestand. The loss of the caliber of players such as Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez could have deflated the young team. But instead, the infusion of the younger players has seemed to only help the Tribe. "We have a lot of new faces here," manager Eric Wedge said. "But we're more athletic and we've got guys that are hungry." Pavano isn't one of those new faces, but he was hungry to put a recent string of bad starts behind him. In his past two outings, he had given up 13 runs, including a six-run, 10-hit outing in his last start against the Angels. He had given up an eye-popping eight home runs in those starts. But Sunday, the Tigers struggled to get a hit of any kind. Just three runners got past first base. Pavano had a shutout going until the eighth inning, when a Ramon Santiago sacrifice fly scored Detroit's lone run. In all, Pavano pitched eight innings, giving up one run on six hits with a walk and four strikeouts. "I know a lot of changes have been made, but my season isn't over," Pavano said. "Today I was able to keep the ball in the park, which had been my demise." And while Pavano was putting zeros up on the scoreboard, his offense kept giving him more support. Cabrera, who finished a triple away from a cycle, led the offensive outburst for the Indians. He got Cleveland started with a single in the first inning. Shin-Soo Choo then doubled just inside the third-base line. As Cabrera was rounding second, a fan reached out and touched the ball. Cabrera was able to score, because the umpires deemed that he would have scored had the fan interference not occurred. But the Tribe really broke the game open off Tigers starter Armando Galarraga in the fourth. Jhonny Peralta led off the inning with a single and was standing on third after a Luis Valbuena single two batters later. Both runners scored when Andy Marte doubled in his first two runs of the season to give the Indians a 3-0 lead. The Tribe wasn't done yet, however, as Trevor Crowe doubled in Marte to extend the lead to 4-0. Two batters later, Sizemore hit his 15th home run of the season to center field to give the Indians a commanding 6-0 lead. Cabrera continued his hot hitting when he belted his fifth home run of the season -- a two-run shot -- in the sixth inning to give the Tribe an 8-0 lead and finally end Galarraga's day. And while his counterpart was being roughed up, Pavano continued to baffle the Detroit hitters. "I thought today actually was the best I've seen him," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "I thought he was a little more firm today, velocity-wise, than he's been." After the Indians put up three more runs in the seventh, the only thing left was to see if Pavano could go the distance. After Santiago's sacrifice fly in the eighth, Pavano sat at 100 pitches, and Wedge decided not to let him go for his second complete game. "If he throws up another zero there in the eighth inning, I probably give him a chance to finish it off," Wedge said. "But I didn't want to get his pitch count up if we didn't need to. He's approaching innings that he hasn't in awhile." The Indians have now won eight of their past 12 games.Matt O'Donnell is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
