On a night that featured offensive futility out of both teams as the battle spread itself out over 14 innings and nearly five hours, one mistake pitch to Jacoby Ellsbury was all it took for the Indians to come up short.
In a game that saw a combined eight hits and one run over the final nine innings, Ellsbury’s 14th-inning solo shot off Vinnie Pestano proved the difference as the Tribe fell, 5-4, on Wednesday night in front of 21,727 at Progressive Field. The four-hour, 51-minute affair featured 15 pitchers between the clubs and marked the Indians’ second-longest tilt of the season.
Leading up to Ellsbury’s decisive blast, which snapped an 18-inning scoreless streak from the Cleveland bullpen that stretched back to Saturday, Indians relievers had combined to allow just three hits over 6 2/3 innings on the night. But with two outs, Pestano left an 0-2 slider over the plate that New York’s center fielder smacked over the right-field wall.
“I was trying to back foot it, just didn’t get it there,” Pestano said. “When you throw a pitch like that to a hitter like that, you need to get it down. It just didn’t get there, and he did what he gets paid to do.”
The right-handed Pestano has been hit by lefties at a .277 clip over his career. But with the Indians already quite deep into their bullpen, manager Terry Francona was not afforded the luxury of changing pitchers based on the matchup, and the left-handed Ellsbury took advantage.
“We try to use [Pestano] against as many righties as we can, just because he’s been so successful against them,” Francona said. “When you get in a game like this, you really can’t pick and choose too much. Wanted to get him through [right-handed-hitting Derek Jeter, who was on deck], and it didn’t work.”
The Tribe received scoreless appearances out of five relievers, including John Axford (1 1/3 innings) and Marc Rzepczynski (two innings).
Offensively, however, the Indians squandered a big opportunity in the 10th inning when former Indians first-round Draft pick David Huff issued consecutive one-out walks to Michael Brantley, Carlos Santana and Lonnie Chisenhall. With the bases loaded, the Yankees brought in Shawn Kelley, who struck out Nick Swisher and got David Murphy to ground out.
“We had the bases loaded with Swish up, and it was a 2-1 count and he check-swinged on a ball down in the dirt,” Francona said.
Starter Josh Tomlin worked seven innings for the Tribe, surrendering four runs on eight hits while striking out five, but his otherwise solid effort was undone by a two-homer performance from Mark Teixeira. Through 13 games, the soft-tossing right-hander has now served up 13 long balls, and he claims only one quality start in his last five outings.
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