6/27/2005

Oh revenge, sweet revenge

Two teams seemed to have traded places Monday Night as the Cleveland Indians took the field at Fenway Park. A rematch from a week ago that saw the indians 9 game winning streak come to a hault.

Well, The Red Sox were about to have the tables turned. They had just come off their best road record (7-0) since 1977 and were riding the momentum of 7 wins in a row. Kevin Millwood would be the deciding factor.

Millwood would give up a leadoff basehit to Johnny Damon only to walk Edgar Renteria to bring David Ortiz to the plate, followed by baseball's hottest hitter in Manny Ramirez. They would go quietly as Milly got ortiz to fly out with manny and Trot Nixon grounding out on one pitch each.

That would be the only real trouble the Veteran right hander would get into. He would go 6 solid innings, striking out 6 with 3 hits and no runs. When Millwood is pitching like this, hes unhittable and shutting down a lineup like this tells you what kind of heat he was throwing.

The Tribes early runs would come on a Mark bellhorn error. a routine double play ball that surely would have ended the inning was hit at Bill Muelller who threw to bellhorn only to have it skip over bellhorns glove into centerfield. it cost the red sox 2 runs and from there Cleveland would keep pounding out basehits.

Jody Gerut would come to bat to single in the runner on 3rd to make it 3-0 tribe

Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner, accounting for the rest of the offense, seem to find their way into the box scores every night. Both connected for home runs in the 7th inning that broke the game wide open to seal the victory. Sizemores homer should have been caught but as Trot Nixon was retreating under the ball he got turned around and had to try to make the play with his body turned sideways..the ball would hit his glove and bounce over the wall. Hafners blast wasnt so close as the ball cleared both dugouts and left nixon and damon simply watching the ball soar over their heads.

Bronson Arroyo with all due credit pitched a good game but bellhorns error and a few other miscues proved costly. There are two games left in the series.

Cliff Lee will take the mound tomorrow night and will face off against Wade Miller.

Lee has a record of 8-3 with and ERA of 3.28 and has All-Star considerations. Miller is 4-2 with an ERA of 4.83

Note: Cleveland is 9 games better than they were this time last year posting a record of 40-34. They are now only 1 game out of second place in their division and 1 game out of the wildcard. With the Twins playing the hapless royals, these last two games against boston are vital considering the indians play the slumping orioles who are one of the two teams ahead of them and then play the yankees the second weekend of july.