Cleveland, Cliff Lee crushed by Texas, 9-1
By PAUL HOYNES
Cleveland, Cliff Lee crushed by Texas, 9-1
The Cy Young winner was hit on the forearm by a batted ball then was not the same.
ARLINGTON, Texas — All it took was one bad start by Cliff Lee to shine a light on how good he was last year in going 22-3 and winning the Cy Young award.
Lee allowed seven run on 10 hits in five innings Monday as the Indians lost the season opener, 9-1, to Texas at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
Last year Lee didn’t allow his seventh earned run until the season was over 11‚Ñ2 months old. In five innings Monday, he allowed two fewer runs than he did in his first seven starts last year.
Lee (0-1, 12.60 ERA) retired the first four men he faced before Hank Blalock hit him in the left forearm with a hard one-hopper. Manager Eric Wedge and trainer Lonnie Soloff came out to check on him. Lee threw one practice pitch to test his arm and stayed in the game.
He was not the same after that as the Rangers took a 4-0 lead with two-out singles by Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ian Kinsler. Four of the Rangers’ five hits in the inning came after Lee was hit.
Wedge and Lee said it did not affect him. Lee did leave the park after the game with a wrap around his forearm to control the swelling.
“The ball hit me,” said Lee. “[Wedge and Soloff] ran out. I could have done without that. Something would have to be dangling or broken for me to come out of a game there.
“When my adrenaline is going, you could probably hit me in the forearm with a sledgehammer and I wouldn’t feel it.”
Catcher Kelly Shoppach said it was just coincidence that the Rangers scored seven runs off Lee after he was hit in the forearm. Later, however, he said, “Maybe it wasn’t.”
From the other dugout, manager Ron Washington thought Lee’s performance may have suffered.
“I would imagine it affected him, but that’s the way baseball goes sometimes,” said Washington. “He stayed in the ball game and he battled and made it through five. We were just a better team today.”
After the four-run second, Lee held the Rangers scoreless in the third and fourth.
“I thought if we could hold them to that four-spot, we could get back into the game,” said Wedge. “But it happened to him quick in that fifth inning.”
It was Blalock again who delivered the pain. This time he hit a three-run homer into the lower deck in right for a 7-0 lead. It was hit high and helped along by a strong wind.
“We broke four bats in that inning,” said Shoppach, “and two of them went for hits. They’re just a good hitting team. They’ve got a lot of big strong guys who push the ball out there.”
Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz had broken-bat singles in front of Blalock.
With the way Kevin Millwood was pitching, the game could have ended right there. Millwood (1-0, 1.29), making his fourth straight opening day start for the Rangers, held his former team to one run on five hits in seven innings.
“He was good,” said right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, who had one of the five singles off Millwood. “He was never in the middle of the plate. He was on the corners.”
The Indians couldn’t have been happy with Lee’s performance. It looked like an extension of spring training. On March 17, Texas scored 10 runs on 11 hits in 22‚Ñ3 innings against Lee in a Cactus League game.
“This is different than spring training,” said Lee. “Why would it be the same? I was out there trying to get everybody out today. That’s not necessarily the case in spring training.”
Lee went 0-3 with a 12.46 ERA (30 earned runs, 212‚Ñ3 innings) in six spring-training starts.
The Rangers added their final two runs off Jensen Lewis in the eighth.
The Tribe’s only run came in the seventh when Travis Hafner scored on a Millwood wild pitch.