Oscar Mercado’s walkoff RBI single gave the Cleveland Indians a 2-1 victory in extra innings in their first game against the Cincinnati Reds.
Where would the Cleveland Indians be without Oscar Mercado? Well for starters they would not have won last night against the Cincinnati Reds. Mercado came through with his first career walkoff hit to give the Tribe a 2-1 win against the Reds. The hit was Mercado’s only hit as he went 1-5 on the night.
Cleveland’s other run came courtesy of a Carlos Santana solo home run in the fourth inning. Like Mercado, Santana only had one hit in the game. Luckily for the Indians both hits were impactful on the overall result of the game.
The Tribe only managed six hits off the Reds Tuesday. In addition the two aforementioned hits, Francisco Lindor went 2-4, Tyler Naquin went 1-3 and Leonys Martin went 1-4. Jake Bauers, Jose Ramirez, Roberto Perez and Mike Freeman combined to go 0-15. This is quite lackluster and will need to change soon if the Tribe want to win more games. Having four consecutive hitters going hitless is not the recipe for success.
Trevor Bauer got the start on the mound and had his best performance in about a month. Bauer went 7.2 innings only allowing one run on six hits while striking out six batters. This is an encouraging sign for Bauer and the Tribe as he finally was able to put together a good performance after a series of not-so-good performances.
After walking Derek Dietrich, Trevor Bauer exited the game and Oliver Perez came on in relief. Perez gave up an infield single and that was it for him on the night. Nick Wittgren got Yasiel Puig to fly out to deep right as the Cincinnati threat was ended. Brad Hand pitched the final two innings of the game and struck out four batters while earning a win.
