It’s only percentage points, but the Indians remained in first place after they took care of the Reds today and won their three game series. The end result is, the Indians are one loss better then the Tigers and those two teams will square off for four game beginning Friday. In between is one of the makeup games with the Mariners as well as three against the bottom dwelling Royals.
Jhonny Peralta hit homerun number ten today and he’s bounced back nicely from a tough 2006. He needs just three more homers to match last year’s total and he’s almost half way to what he drove in last year. And he’s done it mostly against left handed pitching. Coming into today’s game, his OPS against right handed pitching was .793 while against lefties, it’s 1.173. That’s a pretty wide split. He’s also hit a lot better at home (1.131 OPS) then he has on the road (.616) so you wonder what he’d do if he just played at home against lefties? He’d probably have numbers similar to Jack Cust in Oakland. And this is all after an April where his OPS was just .770.
A final interesting note on Peralta from his splits page is how good he is when he gets ahead in the count. After a 1-0 count, his OPS is 1.113 while after an 0-1 count, he has just a .627 OPS.
Paul Byrd picked up the win today and he’s been a pleasant surprise. He’s now 4-1 and he’s walked only three hitters in 45 2/3 innings. In fact, he’s given up more homeruns then he has walks. And that gives him a rather respectable 1.24 WHIP (heading into today’s game) while allowing hitters to hit him at a .283 clip.
C.C. Sabathia gets the start tomorrow in the single game against the Mariners. He’s been his usual self and he looks to become the second seven game winner with a win tomorrow.
