Sometimes a team is going to have an inning where all the tumblers click into place and the vault of hits and runs opens. That is what happened last night in the fourth inning in Seattle, where the Indians simply exploded and showed the Mariners a mirror of what Chicago had shown them on Opening Day.
↵But what stands out for me is how Carlos Carrasco came out in the Mariners' fourth and shut the vault before Seattle could enter and get back into the game.
↵That is not an easy thing to do: to sit; to wait; to need to go into the clubhouse and stretch, and then to come out and not allow the opponent a whisper of momentum, a whisper of hope. A whisper like that can come back and become a shout, as the Indians proved on Opening Day when they turned a 14-run deficit into a five-run loss.
↵So kudos to Carlos Carrasco. In the long run, what he did in the fourth and in his last two innings might be the farthest-reaching benefit of last night’s game.
↵Slamming the door on an opponent when the game is a laugher…not letting them even begin to hope to climb back in…
↵Those are the kinds of things that can create an ace over time.