Pretty weak Cleveland lineup today with Grady Sizemore on the DL and Victor Martinez nursing his sore knee. (No Chris Gimenez like I said in my earlier post as I got some bad info. But the bottom of the Tribe lineup is Luis Valbuena and Trevor Crowe. Yikes.)
Eric Wedge does not have a pregame meeting with the media on Sundays but he did his daily pregame radio interview and said that Sizemore is certainly going to be out at least a couple weeks.
"We couldn't take it any further. We tried the DH route and get him away from throwing," Wedge said. That did help him a little bit the first couple of days but it didn't get better. We'll shut him down. No throw, no hit for a couple weeks. At some point in time towards the end of that, we'll get him throwing again and see if that downtime will take care of it.
"He's got a lot going on in there, inflammation, fluid. As we call it, he's got a 'hot elbow' right now. We need to let it calm down."
The Indians were downright Mets-like in dealing with Sizemore's injury. It's kind of like what the Mets did with Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes that I wrote about in today's Inside Baseball column. Seems like teams don't want to put a guy on the 15-day DL if they think he'll only be out a week or so and they try to play through the injury. It's not working. The guy usually doesn't get any better unless you shut him down.
While you were sleeping, you won't believe what happened in the NCAA baseball tournament early Sunday morning: Texas and Boston College played the longest game in history, a 25-inning affair in Austin that the Longhorns won, 3-2, after 7 hours and 3 minutes.
Check out this box score: One Texas player was 1 for 12, another 2 for 12 and a third guy was 2 for 11 with six strikeouts. BC had a couple 1-for-9s.
BC had just eight hits in the 25 innings. That's largely because Texas reliever Austin Wood pitched 13 shutout innings -- and threw 12 1/3 no-hit frames from the sixth into the 19th! The guy threw 169 pitches (120 for strikes) and got a no-decision! The game featured 683 pitches and even had a 21st-inning stretch for a sellout crowd of 7,106, many of whom stayed to the finish just after 1 a.m. Central time.
The longest game in MLB history, by the way, is 26 innings. That came in a 1-1 tie between Brooklyn and the Boston Braves in 1920 that was called by darkness. The longest MLB game by time was the White Sox's 7-6, 25-inning win over the Brewers in 1984. That game took 8 hours, 6 minutes. The professional record is the 33-inning International League affair that Pawtucket won over Rochester in 1981. It took 8:25, started on April 18th and finished on June 23.
CLEVELAND -- As if getting shut down by old friend CC Sabathia and losing catcher Victor Martinez to a foul ball wasn't bad enough last night comes this news this morning from Progressive Field: Grady Sizemore's balky elbow has landed him on the disabled list for the first time in his career.
The Tribe has not made any move official but the scoop goes to intrepid Associated Press veteran Chuck Melvin, who bumped into ex-Bison Chris Gimenez in the clubhouse, put two and two together and came up with four. Gimenez, by the way, is in the lineup at catcher because of Martinez's bum knee and will make his major-league debut today.
Sizemore's elbow has forced him to DH for 10 of the last 12 games. He can't throw at all. Manager Eric Wedge said yesterday that Sizemore still "felt something floating around in there". Uh-oh. Sounds like a player who shouldn't have been on the field at all.
Sizemore played every game in 2006 and 2007, and pushed his consecutive games streak to 382 before sitting out with a sprained ankle on April 26, 2008. He's managed to play 49 of 51 games this year but he's only batting .223. Strangely enough, one of his nine home runs was last night but there's no question the elbow is a factor at the plate.
CLEVELAND -- Grady Sizemore is DHing because his elbow is sore, Travis Hafner is out (again) tonight in Columbus because his shoulder is sore (again) and now the Indians have a new injury worry: Catcher Victor Martinez is out of tonight's game after fouling a CC Sabathia pitch directly off his left knee.
Martinez crumpled into a heap at the plate and spent a few minutes trying to walk off the pain. He stayed in, which wasn't a good decision. Martinez fouled off the next pitch, putting little weight on his legs, and then weakly grounded to second. He was barely able to run and never got more than a third of the way up the line.
So Kelly Shoppach is in catching for Martinez, who entered the game fifth in the AL in batting at .352. And it gets worse: Jorge Posada led off the second with a long homer to right to put the Yankees up, 1-0.
CLEVELAND -- This would be a huge night for baseball in Progressive Field were it not for the issue of that mildly important basketball game taking place down in Orlando. The Yankees and Indians will have a 90-minute head start on the Cavs and Magic but it will be interesting to see if we hear some cheering at odd times in the stands when LeBron takes it to the rack.
Tonight, of course, is the return of CC Sabathia to Cleveland and I would imagine he's going to get smacked with boos here like Jim Thome does. Too bad really. Sabathia did all he could for this franchise from the time he broke in as a rookie in 2001 to the time he got traded last July (OK, so maybe he could have won a game in the 2007 ALCS but I digress). You'd think he would get better treatment. Memo to Cleveland fan: Would you turn down $161 million? Didn't think so. Sabathia, by the way, said he's going to stay out of any recruitment effort to get James to play for the Knicks in two years.
Sabathia (4-3, 3.42) will face Fausto Carmona (2-4, 6.42), who has walked 18 batters in 19 1/3 innings over his last four outings. That's bad news, given the way the Yankees like to take pitches.
The Indians are 7-3 in their last 10, although they didn't do much last night as Andy Pettitte silenced them in a rain-delayed 3-1 win for the Yankees before leaving with back issues. That could open the door for Chien-Ming Wang to return to the New York rotation.
Grady Sizemore is still DHing for the Indians because of a balky elbow. Travis Hafner felt more pain in his shoudler after last night's game in Columbus. Injuries and inconsistency have Eric Wedge shuffling his lineup on a daily basis and that's usually not the recipe for a contender.
The Yankees, meanwhile, have some pretty interesting numbers going. To wit:
---Last night's game pushed them atop the AL East on the latest date in a season since the final day of 2006.
---They have played 15 straight errorless games, two shy of the all-time mark of 17 set by the Red Sox in 2006 and five more than the previous franchise record.
---Think A-Rod makes a difference? The Yanks are 15-5 since his return and Mark Teixeira is batting .363 with 10 homers and 25 RBIs in those 20 games. Pre-ARod, Teixeira's numbers were .198-5-15. Teixeira leads the majors with 12 homers in May and is second with 30 RBIs (Joe Mauer has 32).
CLEVELAND -- A quick Bisons note as we prepare for CC Sabathia's return to Progressive Field tonight: The Mets have scratched Oliver Perez from his rehab start for the Herd Sunday night in Durham and have sent him back to Port St. Lucie, Fla. Perez is still bothered by tendinitis in his knee and clearly tweaked the knee while pitching Tuesday in Coca-Cola Field.
More later from the pregame scene in the Land of LeBron.
Nice day for the Bisons on Friday: A 9-3 win at Durham and thumbs-up to the Mets for continuing to try to improve the Herd roster. I'd say the parent club went 2 for 2 on Friday. Earlier in the day, they acquired veteran outfielder Emil Brown from San Diego and he joined the Herd in Durham. Just a few minutes ago after the Mets wrapped up their 2-1, 11-inning win over the Marlins, they announced they had traded catcher Ramon Castro to the White Sox for pitcher Lance Broadway and assigned Broadway to Buffalo.
Broadway, a 25-year-old right-hander, was Chicago's No. 1 pick (15th overall) in 2005. He was 11-7 for Charlotte last season but the Sox shuffled him between the bullpen and starting roles this year (0-1, 5.06 in 8 relief outings for Sox, 0-2, 5.63 in 3 starts for Charlotte). He'll slide nicely into the Buffalo rotation I would imagine.
Brown, by the way, has an unusual place in Bisons history. While playing for Durham for 2002, he chinked a 12th-inning home run off the right-field foul pole in then-Dunn Tire Park to give the Bulls a 6-4 win over Buffalo in the suspended Game One of the IL finals (the game was called in the 12th the previous night and then finished the next day).
Castro was made expendable by the job of Omir Santos, who homered and drove in both runs for New York. Santos, the Herd's Opening Day catcher, has been the surprise of the season at Citi Field.
Thanks to all who have emailed about Sunday's look at Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium. The interactive Web version of the story, full of links on many of the particulars you'll need for a road trip, will remain on our site all summer and you can catch up to it by going here.
Our feature on the new homes in New York, New York made it into SI.com's "Extra Mustard" hot clicks (scroll past the Danica Patrick pictures to the "Random Links I Liked" section). We also got plenty of kudos from Heather B. on Top Shelf, the Sabres blog we featured last October that isn't afraid to hold our feet to the fire. Much appreciated.
(Top Shelf also has an in-depth look at its experience on Darryl Strawberry Bobblehead Day and I second the smack at the sinks in the Coca-Cola Field bathrooms. They have driven me crazy since the day the place opened in 1988 and are as bad in the press box as they are in the public areas. Hey Herd, fix 'em for once!)
Andrew Kulyk and Peter Farrell, the WNYers we featured a few years back for traveling to every stadium and arena in the four major sports (Check out The Ultimate Sports Road Trip), have also gone to both New York parks. If you're planning on going, these guys are the experts. They really give you the gameday goods. I have to spend much of my time in the press box, remember. Wow, did they slam the ushers and the lack of history at Citi Field (well deserved, I may add).
I was on the Brandon Tierney Show on ESPN Radio in New York Wednesday (listen and even download here), and a few Big Apple blogs have taken to my comments on Oliver Perez's outing here Tuesday night. Specifically, I reminded Brandon of a famous comment Kevin Costner said to Tim Robbins in "Bull Durham" that would apply to what we saw from Perez, who somehow allowed only one run. Remember this one?
We'll see if Perez can do better in his next outing Sunday in Durham. As for the Bisons? Yeesh.
A 7-1 loss today to Lehigh Valley dropped them to 13-32 and here's a piece of even starker news: The Herd has played 71 percent of its games to date at home -- including 32 of its scheduled 72 games downtown this season. That hasn't helped one iota.
Buffalo is 10-22 at home and just 3-10 on the road, where everyone else in the IL has won at least eight games. The Herd plays 43 of its next 69 games away from Coca-Cola Field.
