Lee Pitches Well & Homers All Around

Yesterday the Tribe took on the NY Mets in Florida. Cliff making his final start this spring pitched well, going 5 scoreless innings, giving up 4 hits, and striking out 5. While this isn't an amazing Mets lineup it still was a performance I suspect will give Mr. Lee the lead in the race to be the fifth starter.

The Tribe batters came alive against Oliver Perez, who held a 15-10 record with a 3.56 ERA last year with the Mets. Victor hit a solo home run in the 2nd, which was followed by home runs in the 4th by Cabrera, Blake, and Francisco, who continues an impressive spring.

Following Lee in the 6th was Elarton who pitched an inning giving up a run, raising his spring training ERA to 2.03 in 13.1 innings pitched. Elarton presents a interesting situation. He would provide a long reliever in the bullpen, which the Tribe really hasn't carried the last few seasons. He has pitched well this spring, but I believe when he was originally signed to camp it was said he would just be showcased for other teams. The scary thing about Elarton is that he is still coming off a few injuries and one could question if he is strong enough to go a full season. For now he presents an interesting situation for the Tribe. Elarton was followed by Fultz who proceeded to give up a run in the final inning of this 7 inning match. This lowered Fultz's ERA by almost a full run to 11.88.

All in all it was good warm-up match for the Tribe. Today at 1 Carmona and the Tribe take on the Tigers, who reportedly signed slugging third baseman Miguel Cabrera to an eight year $153.3 million contract extension. Also scheduled to pitch today are Mastny, Perez, Lewis, and Borowski.

Notes: The Tribe have homered in 12 of their last 13 games and in 20 of the 25 games this spring. If you're interested I suggest you go look up Sizemore's spring numbers, it's a small sample size but wow.