Cabrera bobbles three in field

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

Shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera’s defense has been something the Indians could count on.

That’s why it was so surprising when the honoree of tonight’s bobblehead promotion at Progressive Field committed a career-high three errors — two on one play — that led to four unearned runs in Cleveland’s 9-5 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates Sunday.

The Indians lost for the fifth time in six games.

Pittsburgh scored three runs in the fourth following Cabrera’s first error and five of the six runs in the fifth came after Cabrera’s double error.

“It was a bad day for me,” Cabrera said. “We lost the game right there on the errors I made.”

It didn’t help that Pedro Alvarez hit a three-run homer in both innings following the miscues.

“That made me feel bad, too, but there’s nothing I can do,” Cabrera said. “It [the errors] already happened. You have to finish the game.”

Cabrera had three errors in 279 total chances going into the game. He hadn’t committed an error since May 7, a stretch of 33 consecutive games.

“You want him to make every play, but that’s impossible,” Indians manager Manny Acta said. “You have to realize he’s won a lot of games for us with his glove. He’s human.”

Cabrera’s two-out throwing error in the fourth on Casey McGehee’s grounder was followed by Alvarez’s three-run homer that gave the Pirates a 3-2 lead against starter Jeanmar Gomez. Cabrera fielded the ball near second base and his throw to first baseman Casey Kotchman was wide.

The Indians went ahead with two runs in the bottom of the inning on Shin-Soo Choo’s double, but the good news ended there. After Alex Presley’s one-out homer tied the game at 4, the Pirates loaded the bases. McGehee sent what appeared to be an inning-ending double play grounder directly to Cabrera. However, he booted the ball for the first error and then scooped it with his glove toward second base, where it rolled past Jason Kipnis, for the second miscue.

“That was a perfect groundball for a double play,” Cabrera said. “Gomez did a good job. I missed the ball so I tried to get it to Kipnis.”