One thought, then, ruled Carmona's mind before his start against Boston on
Wednesday night.
"I didn't want that to happen again," Carmona said through a translator,
first-base coach Luis Rivera.
It didn't. Carmona, outpitching Boston ace Josh Beckett, carried a no-hitter
into the sixth inning and tossed eight scoreless innings as the Indians
flipped the script from one night ago, emerging with a 1-0 victory before
29,614 at Jacobs Field.
So was it safe to say that the 23-year-old right-hander was looking forward
to facing the Sox for the first time since the Tribe's short-lived experiment
with Carmona as the club's closer blew up spectacularly last summer at Fenway
Park?
"Si, Si," Carmona said, smiling and nodding.
The smile said it all: Hey, Boston, look at me now.
On a night when the Indians most needed it, Carmona continued his domination
of the American League in picking up his 13th win and further cementing his
status as one of the game's -- if not Cleveland's -- top pitchers.
"He continues to just go out there and get it done," manager Eric Wedge said.
"Fausto was outstanding."
The win seemed to take on a special significance for the Tribe. And not
because it was the first time since 1942 that they lost and then won a 1-0
game back-to-back. Or because the postgame pie was abnormally scrumptious --
"I think it was a white-chocolate one," said Franklin Gutierrez, whose homer
provided the game's lone offense. "It tasted good. It was nice."
Instead it was because it came after the Indians had lost the first two games
of a series against baseball's top team, a series the club saw as a measuring
stick.
"I think this [win] says a lot about our guys," Wedge said. "The group of
people in here this year, their skin's a little bit thicker, they're a little
bit tougher."
Maybe, too, the win felt different because it wasn't all Carmona.
Unlike for C.C. Sabathia, who dueled with Daisuke Matsuzaka in Tuesday's
loss, the Tribe's bats gave Carmona some support. Gutierrez ended Cleveland's
17-inning scoreless streak with his third-inning homer onto the left-field
porch.
And unlike for Sabathia, the club's defense went above and beyond the call of
duty for their pitcher. There was the pair of runners that catcher Victor
Martinez nailed at second in the eighth inning. And more important, there had
been his game-saving block of home plate in the sixth.
With two outs and Coco Crisp on second, Josh Barfield made a diving stop on
an Ortiz grounder into short right-center. Crisp never stopped running, and
without a play on Ortiz at first, Barfield smartly threw home to a perfectly
positioned Martinez.
"[There were] a lot of different things that you didn't see on the
scoreboard," Wedge said.
Add all that to another brilliant performance by Carmona, and the Red Sox
stood little chance.
Just how dominant was Carmona, who stifled the Sox with his usually
devastating, mid-90s sinking fastball?
Carmona faced just three over the minimum through six innings, struck out six
and did not allow a ball to leave the infield until the fifth inning.
Perhaps his night's lone downfall was that he would not treat the
increasingly vivacious Jacobs Field crowd to the first no-hitter in the
park's 14-year history. Such hopes came to an end in the sixth with Crisp's
one-out infield single up the middle. Shortstop Jhonny Peralta reached the
ball with a dive, but his throw to first baseman Ryan Garko was offline.
Carmona finished allowing just four hits. It was his second straight
brilliant outing in what's been the finest month of his career. Baseball's
hottest pitcher is now 5-0 with a 1.58 ERA in July.
"He had explosive stuff," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "It was
impressive."
"I think what impressed me most is when guys get hits off him," Barfield
said. "I have no idea how they do it."
Weird how much difference a summer makes.
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