Mariners 8 Tribe 7

The Cleveland Indians lost their brief one game makeup series with the Seattle Mariners tonight at Jacobs Field. Here are my thoughts on the game:

1. Paul Byrd was not good tonight. His stuff looked to have no bite to it and he wasn't fooling anybody. I know he was really geared up for this start. It could be possible he had too much adrenaline for this start but still I'm not looking for excuses and he needs to pitch better than he did tonight and I expect he will.


2. After falling behind by 7 the offense finally came back to life. The really good sign about the hitting tonight was that we scored runs by manufacturing offense and we just didn't do it with a bunch of home runs. Hopefully the offense will continue as we head to Florida.


3. I thought Skinner should have held Dellucci at third in the 8th inning but I'm not going to kill him over it. I like that he was aggressive and he was taking the chance at trying to take the lead.


4. I thought the biggest thing to come out of tonight's game was the three solid innings from Fernando Cabrera. It was nice to see him pitch like he is capable of. If you have him throwing well it greatly improves the bullpen. Also, Roberto Hernandez was good again tonight with pitching a scoreless inning. That is three straight outings he hasn't allowed a run.


5. With our lead in the division down to a game these next two weeks against the NL East are huge in building back our lead.

The Indians will head to South Florida to play the Marlins tomorrow night at 7:05 as Fausto Carmona will oppose Scott Olsen.