Indian Bummer: Indians 10, Phillies 1

Not much to say on this one, because you’ve seen this game before.

Vince Velasquez made the start, and he looked okay for three innings. Two of them were 1-2-3 innings, actually. He had six strikes outs on the day. Then, the bottom of the fifth inning happened. The frame started with a pair of errors, one on Jean Segura at short, and one on Velasquez himself as he tried to field a sac bunt. This ended in a three-run home run, followed by a Carlos Santana double—one of the former Phillies first baseman’s three hits on the day. What a season he’s had—he’s got the highest OPS on the Indians (.932)! Good for him. Seriously.

And then, the normal gaggle of relievers stumbled in from the pen to feed the Cleveland offense.

This has been a pretty mediocre bullpen we’ve seen this year, but even a mediocre bullpen can feel like the worst one in the league at this point in the season. If it was any worse, the Phillies would already have a losing record. But they don’t, partially because the relief corps hasn’t been a complete disaster every day.

This wasn’t one of those days. Nick Vincent pitched a clean 1.1 innings, then Mike Morin entered the game and recorded no outs. His day went like this:

• Lead-off double
• RBI single
• Walk
• Hit batsman
• Done

So that brought on the intimidating Cole Irvin, who, after allowing an RBI double to Yasiel Puig, recorded the inning’s first out, six batters in.

But the Indians weren’t done! Edubray Ramos came into the game, and as our own Paul Boye pointed out, the first pitch Ramos threw in nine weeks was clubbed for a home run by Franmil Reyes to give the game its final score—10-1—and eventually, the inning came to a close. I guess. I have a feeling a lot of TVs went off at that point.

You may be wondering where the Phillies offense was during all this? They had five hits on the day. Scott Kingery had two of them. J.T. Realmuto knocked in the team’s only run. Somehow, the last stand in the ninth made by Logan Morrison, Deivy Grullon, and Phil Gosselin failed to muster a comeback.

Happy last week of Phillies baseball, everyone!