CLEVELAND – The Indians’ tour of last-place teams has gotten off to a rocky start.
First it was American League East cellar dweller Baltimore, which took two of three games from the Indians. Friday night it was the AL West basement brigade from Seattle opening a three-game series at Progressive Field by edging the Indians 3-2.
With the win, the Mariners snapped a seven-game road losing skid.
Fausto Carmona was a tough-luck loser, allowing just two earned runs over six innings, with a pivotal error in the sixth and another paltry offensive effort costing the right-hander.
“It was another quality start by Fausto Carmona,” said Cleveland manager Manny Acta, whose club lost for the fifth time in six games. “We couldn’t get anything going offensively and we probably should have made a couple plays (defensively). That cost us the game. When you’re not scoring runs, you have to be error free, and we weren’t.”
Indians second baseman Jason Donald was the culprit on the only error of the game, a mistake that allowed the game-winning run to score in the sixth.
With the score tied at 2 and two out after the Indians kept one run from scoring by cutting down a runner at the plate, Donald charged a groundball from Adam Moore and booted it, allowing former Indian Franklin Gutierrez to score from third.
“I kept the ball down and tried to keep the game close,” said Carmona, who was aided by two Seattle runners being thrown out at the plate. “I got a groundball to second. I can’t control (the error).”
Donald called the error an aggressive mistake.
“I was a little bit aggressive,” Donald said. “It’s probably something I should have laid off a bit. It was a costly mistake. It’s frustrating, but I can learn from that.”
Carmona, 11-10 with a 3.87 ERA in 24 starts, has pitched well enough to sport a better record but has been derailed by a lack of run support and poor defense behind him on occasion. He has gone without a decision four times this season despite posting a 2.67 ERA in the outings.
“I can’t control runs. I can only control the pitch,” Carmona said. “I want to (pitch like this) the rest of the season.”
Shutting down Cleveland’s offense on this night was right-hander David Pauley, who notched his first career big league win in his sixth start of the season (11th career start), allowing two runs on seven hits over six innings.
“He threw the ball well,” Acta said. “He threw a lot of first-pitch strikes and he worked fast.”
The Indians scored both of their runs off Pauley with two outs, the first coming in the second inning on consecutive doubles from Donald and Chris Gimenez, which tied the game at 1.
Cleveland scored again in the fifth on a hit from Shin-Soo Choo.
“He kept us off balance,” Donald said of Pauley. “The balls that weren’t strikes looked like strikes and he mixed speeds.”
Cleveland’s bullpen kept the game within reach, a trio of relievers – Tony Sipp, Joe Smith and Justin Germano – holding the Mariners scoreless over the final three innings.
Unfortunately for the Indians, Seattle’s relief corps was up to the task as well. With Pauley in the dugout, the Mariners shut out Cleveland on just one hit over the last three innings.
Asdrubal Cabrera started the eighth with a hit off Brandon League, but remained there after the next three hitters – Choo, Jordan Brown and Trevor Crowe – went down in succession.
Cabrera and Choo both went 2-for-4 to account for half of the Indians’ hits.
The Indians will activate right-hander Mitch Talbot to start against Seattle tonight. Reliever Jess Todd is likely to be optioned back to Triple-A Columbus to clear room for Talbot on the 25-man roster.
Contact Chris Assenheimer at 329-7136 or cassenheimer@chroniclet.com.
TONIGHT
• WHO: Cleveland vs. Seattle
• TIME: 7:05
• WHERE: Progressive Field
• PITCHERS: Talbot (8-9, 4.09 ERA) vs. Vargas (8-5, 3.12)
• TV/RADIO: SportsTime Ohio; WEOL 930-AM, WTAM 1100-AM
