Clip & Dirty: 4/21/10

The story of the game was the early exit of Carlos Santana with a leg injury, but per Tony's wonderful twitter update (which saved an evening of collective hand-wringing) we can be thankful that it appears to be only a minor injury and should put Carlos on the day-to-day routine. The home crowd certainly had trouble enjoying it to their fullest with Santana's departure, but the Clippers turned in a fine effort without their best player, led by Jeanmar Gomez's superb, but somewhat inefficient outing.

Team Hitting: 9H, 3XBH, 4BB

The Clippers were both lucky and unlucky at the plate yesterday. On face value 13 base-runners and 2HR's would mean around 6 or 7 runs. But if we look at the game a little closer some interesting developments can be found. First, when the preceding batter got on base the next batter got on base 9/16 (.563 OBP) times, including the 3-run rally in the fifth that saw the first five men of the inning get on base via a 3B, 1B, HR, 1B, and a BB. In addition to that stretch, the 7th saw a 1B, HBP, 1B streak with only one down. So, you are probably asking yourself: “How the heck did we only get six?!”

The answer would be two inning slaughtering double-play balls immediately following the on-base parades; Hodges in the 5th and Buscher in the 7th. In short, things could've been a whole lot worse for the Indians (Indianapolis, that is) had Santana been in the mix and the GIDP's were anything other than two-fer's. The offense continues to hum along.

Team Pitching: 8H, 2BB, 10K, 58% K's, 9:6 GB:FB

Gomez got the start and impressed by firing 5.2 innings of 1-run ball. He needed 97 pitches and was still unable to get out of the 6th, despite racking up 7K's and only yielding 7 base runners. A single to Pearce summoned Frank Herrmann from the pen and he promptly threw one ball and Espino ended the inning by gunning Pearce down who was attempting to take 2nd. Herrmann recorded all 3 outs in more typical fashion in the 7th and the much feared Gosling/Rivera tandem shut things down in the 8th and 9th. Overall, great pitching showing despite not getting ahead of the batters as the battery combined to throw only 44% FPS.

Yohan Pino gets the start tonight as the Clippers open up their 3-game set against the Mud Hens at Fifth Third Ballpark and will look to continue his excellent start to the season. Santana will likely get the day off and the Clippers will have to make do with Brantley, Hodges, Crowe, and a white-hot Donald.

Posted in: Clip and Dirty,Columbus