CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The Cleveland Guardians optioned reliever James Karinchak to Triple-A Columbus Saturday.
The team called up reliever Tim Herrin to replace him.
“Everybody’s been pitching and we knew we had to get an arm here for today. So the easy part was, okay, Heron through a couple days ago. He's the guy. Okay. That's the easy part,” Guardians manager Terry Francona said. “The hard part was how to get him here. And we went back and forth and back and forth and we met again this morning and decided that we would send James to AAA. [It] was not an easy decision, was not a fun conversation as you can imagine.”
In 32 appearences this season, which leads baseball, Karinchak was 2-4 with a 3.90 ERA. He allowed 12 earned runs on 15 hits with 38 strikeouts, 19 walks and six home runs.
In Friday night’s 14-inning 10-9 victory for the Guardians, Karinchak allowed a run in the eighth inning that saw him walk a pair of batters and give up a double.
“The hope is he can take this couple weeks and work on commanding the strike zone, working on holding runners,” Francona said. “He probably didn't feel like hearing that today. May and maybe I overshared. Maybe I should have waited. But you know, try to do the best you can.”
Herrin is up for the third time this season. He has made 9 appearances with Cleveland over two previous stints – the last coming May 19-21 – after debuting at the end of March in Seattle.
Movin’ on up – A night after ending the 14-inning marathon against the Astros with an RBI double to right center, outfielder Will Brennan was moved up to fifth spot in the lineup Saturday evening.
“I think he's got confidence more himself, which is more important,” Francona said. “Tonight's just, again, you try to protect your middle of your order best you can. And I thought that made sense. DeMarlo [Hale] and I go over those things every night and every day and try to figure out, and most of the time it’s easy when you’re playing the same guys, but when a couple guys sit, you need to move [the lineup] around a little bit.”
Brennan has been hot at the plate of late. He has hit safely in nine of his last 10 games with a .462 (18-for-39) batting average with five doubles, two home runs and eight RBI over that stretch.
Brennan has also tallied multiple hits in eight of his last 11 games and his .462 batting average during the stretch ranks third in baseball behind Pittsburgh’s Ke’Bryan Hayes and Miami’s Luis Arraez.
Hit parade – The Guardians lead baseball with 129 hits since May 28 and also lead the Majors with eight double digit hit games over that span. The team has collected double digit hits in four straight games and eight of their last 12.
Cleveland’s 292 average over that span ranks first in the America League and trails only Atlanta (.305). They have tallied 48 extra base hits – also tops in the bigs – and are tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers for second in runs scored with 67.
Historic comeback – According to OptaSTATS, the Guardians became the first team in the modern era to erase a deficit in five separate innings in the seventh inning or later in the same game Friday night.
Cleveland tied the game in the seventh, ninth, 12th, 13th and finally went ahead to beat the Astros in the 14th inning.
Box office hit – The Guardians report a 26% increase in attendance through their first 30 home games this season. The team has drawn 585,858 fans to date, an average of 19,529 per game. Last season the team averaged 15,495 per game through 30 games.
Time change – First pitch for Sunday’s series finale has been moved up to 12:40 instead of 1:40 due to rain being in the forecast Sunday afternoon.
