Indians waste Bauer outing, fall to Cards

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

One of baseball’s most reliable left-handed relievers, Marc Rzepczynski hadn’t given up a homer to a lefty in three years — not once with Cleveland.

His streak ended Thursday.

It’s been that kind of season for the Indians.

Rzepczynski allowed Matt Carpenter’s two-run homer in the eighth after Cleveland manager Terry Francona replaced starter Trevor Bauer, giving the Cardinals a 2-1 win over the Indians on Thursday.

Not only did the Indians waste Bauer’s solid outing — 10 strikeouts, four hits in 71/3 innings — they blew a chance to build off Corey Kluber’s 18-strikeout performance on Wednesday night and still haven’t won consecutive games since April 8-9. The Indians had several base-running gaffes, including two runners being thrown out in rundowns between home and third.

“Anytime you play a one-run game, every little thing is important,” Bauer said. “We seem to be on the losing end of a lot of the little things this year.”

Bauer blanked St. Louis until the eighth when he walked Peter Bourjos with one out and was lifted by Francona for Rzepczynski (1-1) to face Carpenter, a lefty, who had struck out in his three previous at-bats.

Carpenter drove a 2-1 pitch over the wall in right-center — just over the glove of center fielder Michael Bourn — to help the Cardinals win the series after being overpowered by Kluber.

“My job is to get that guy out,” said Rzepczynski. “I fell behind with a couple good sinkers that he laid off. And then I tried to go again and it’s probably the straightest ball I’ve thrown in a long time. I tried to go sinker and it stayed straight. If you leave a ball middle up to a lefty, he’s usually going to hit it pretty good.”

It’s the first homer Rzepczysnki has given up to a left-handed hitter since June 12, 2012, when he was with the Cardinals.

“I know it’s been a while — since I’ve been here,” said Rzepczynski, traded from St. Louis to Cleveland in 2013, “It’s just one of those opportunities that sometimes you come up and try to do too much and try to make a pitch, and I just left it up middle.”

Francona didn’t second-guess his decision to replace Bauer, winless since April 15.

“We had Zep for Carpenter, just to keep him in the ballpark and it didn’t work,” he said.

Kevin Siegrist (2-0) pitched two scoreless innings, and Trevor Rosenthal put the tying run on with one out in the ninth before striking out pinch-hitter Zach Walters and Jason Kipnis for his 12th save.

Michael Brantley homered for the Indians, who dropped to 12-21 and 1-11 following a win. Cleveland’s margin for error is small, and the Indians aren’t helping themselves with walks, errors and bad basereunning.

“When you’re playing games like that every detail is magnified,” Francona said, “and we’re coming up short more often than we need to.”