Cleveland Indians: Shane Bieber’s worst start comes vs Yankees
Cleveland Indians pitcher Shane Bieber had his worst start of the season vs the Yankees in Game 1.
The Cleveland Indians started Shane Bieber in Game 1 of the Wild Card round against the Yankees, but the Tribe’s No. 1 starter didn’t have ace stuff.
Bieber gave up a season-high seven runs.
After four pitches, the Yankees led, 2-0, thanks to a home run from Aaron Judge to right-center field that drove in D.J. LaMahieu. Bieber leaned heavily on his fastball and the Yankees were aggressive getting after him early in the count. The homer to Judge was sitting dead red over the plate.
Bieber got caught again over the middle, trying to sneak a cutter by Luke Voit. The AL home run champ doubled home a run to give New York a 3-0 lead.
An RBI double from Brett Gardner extended the lead to 4-1, marking the first time this season Bieber had allowed four runs in a game.
Gleyber Torres finally knocked him out of the game with a two-run homer in the fifth. Bieber’s final line: 4.2 innings, 9 hints, 7 earned runs, 7 strikeouts.
The expectation was that Bieber was going to throw seven shutout innings, but in reality, that’s a hard thing to do, even if you’re about to win a Cy Young Award.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t supposed to get dinged for seven runs. Instead of cashing his nasty breakout stuff out of the zone, the Yankees jumped on the meat hanging over the of the plate.
While the ESPN broadcast crew had me switching to Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus, I did catch a conversation involving 2017. At that time, Corey Kluber was in the same spot as Bieber (Cy Young favorite, best pitcher in the planet), yet Kluber couldn’t close the Yanks out.
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Bieber is still a pitcher on the rise, though, and hopefully he’ll be better in the future after this forgettable start.