Indians win third straight

No time for anything but quick hits:

• The Indians have followed up their seven-game losing streak with a three-game winning streak. Yes, seven is a much bigger number than three, but still, it's nice to see them put a few W's together. Fausto Carmona pitched well, Kerry Wood slammed the door for the save, and Matt LaPorta homered in the 6-5 win over Toronto.

• Here it is, the last day of June, one month from baseball's non-waiver trade deadline. The Indians have a few pieces that could be attractive. In case you missed it, the trading has already started, as Russell Branyan got shipped off to Seattle over the weekend for a couple of OK prospects. Outfielder Ezequiel Carrera hasn't done much in AAA this year and is in fact currently on the disabled list, but won the Class AA Southern League batting title last year, hitting .336. He's only 22, so let's hope he develops. Shortstop Juan Diaz is hitting .295 with seven homers in high A-ball, at age 21. I'm looking forward to seeing what he's doing in a couple of years.

• Other players that could bring attractive prospects include Wood, Austin Kearns, Jhonny Peralta and Jake Westbrook, all of whom are in the last year of their current contract. (In Kearns' case, it's the only year of his contract.) None of those guys figure to be hugely expensive next year, but this team's not going anywhere right now anyway, and might as well try to get some players who could help build something for 2012 or '13.

• The Cavaliers have said they will have a coach in place by the time LeBron James becomes a free agent. That happens less than 12 hours from now, so we'll see. It's looking like it'll be either Brian Shaw, who has no NBA head coaching experience; or Byron Scott, who took the Nets to the NBA Finals a few years ago but has a sub-.500 record in 10 years as a head coach. And the reports are overwhelmingly that Shaw is the guy. In fact, though the most recent news story I can find says the Cavs haven't made an offer to Shaw, his Wikipedia page has been edited to say he's the current head coach of the Cavaliers. Take that with a grain of salt, because any idiot can make a Wikipedia page say anything, but still.

• I have no idea what to make of Shaw at this point, but he's been an assistant of Phil Jackson with the Lakers since 2004-05. Jackson, who has now won 11 titles as a head coach, would be any organization's first choice for head coach. But he's not available, so maybe his top assistant really is the best guy out there. It's hard to say what kind of head coach he'll be, but oddly enough, that's almost beside the point right now. The only thing that really matters is what coach will entice LeBron to stay in Cleveland. So the question isn't whether he'll really be a good coach, but whether LeBron thinks he'll be a good coach. It seems ridiculous to look at it that way, but the fact is, a player like James matters a lot more to the team's prospects than any coach ever could.

• Reports on where LeBron will end up have been flying like mosquitoes at dusk. I've read that he's leaning toward Chicago, that he's giving strong consideration to Miami, and that Cleveland still has the inside track—all in the same day. It's obviously not possible that he could go all three places. So who the hell knows.

• With the U.S. out of the World Cup, eliminated by Ghana for the second World Cup in a row, I initially decided to root for Mexico. Our neighbors to the south were eliminated the very next day. Out of the eight teams remaining, I think I'll pull for the Netherlands. I'm not sure why. Maybe because Dutch people wear wooden shoes and smoke pot in public and have names like Stijn Schaars and Demy de Zeeuw (both names of players on their squad). Either way, they're up against Brazil on Friday, after which I'll probably have to pick a new team to root for.

Indians skidding again; more thoughts on more stuff

Sometimes it's darn near impossible to keep a regular sports blog AND a regular life. But I'm back.

• Mitch Talbot was not yet three years old when Jamie Moyer made his major league debut in 1986, but Moyer has hung around long enough to pitch against Talbot last night, and it was quite a pitcher's duel. Moyer's Phillies scored two off Talbot in the bottom of the first, then the Indians came back with one in the top of the second, and there was no more scoring after that. Talbot, who's having a fine rookie season, was the hard-luck loser in this one. He went seven innings, giving up four hits and three walks, and striking out four, in the Tribe's third straight loss.

• The one run scored off Moyer came courtesy of a Russell Branyan home run, which was the 505th Moyer has given up in his lengthy career. That ties him with Phillies great Robin Roberts for the most home runs given up in a career, and Moyer will no doubt hold that record by himself in about four days, or possibly nine. Two weeks, tops. This falls under the category of dubious records you can't get without being pretty good for a long time, because nobody's going to keep throwing you out there if you suck. It's like holding the record for striking out (which belongs to Reggie Jackson, Hall of Famer), being caught stealing (Rickey Henderson, Hall of Famer) or grounding into double plays (Cal Ripken, Hall of Famer). More important than the home run total is that it was Moyer's 266th career win.

• The home run was Branyan's 10th of the year, in just 48 games, after he started the season on the disabled list. He's only pinch-hit in a lot of those games, too. He's only had 156 at-bats. So in a 600-at-bat season, he'd be on pace to hit 39. He and Shin-Soo Choo (who has eight dingers) are the only hitters providing any power for this team all year, though Carlos Santana has shown some promise in the two weeks since his call-up.

• The U.S. soccer team's game against the Algerians starts in about an hour and a half, and if the Americans win, we're into the round of 16. As I covered in my last post, there's a possibility of moving on with a tie, but I don't think anybody wants to see what happens in that case. This team is definitely one of the 16 best at the World Cup, but they have to prove it on the pitch. France was supposed to be one of the best too, but they've been eliminated. It can happen.

• From the department of "Are you bleeping kidding me?" comes a story of a fishing tournament in North Carolina. At the 52nd annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament, anglers on a boat called the Citation bagged an 883-pound marlin, which not only would have won the event (the next-largest marlin was 528 pounds) and set a new record for biggest marlin caught in the tourney (previously 831), but would have brought in a nearly $1 million purse for the boat's owners and crew. But it was discovered that one of the boat's mates, 22-year-old Peter Martin Wann of Alexandria, Virginia, did not have a North Carolina fishing license, which he could have bought for $15, and the boat was disqualified, the catch erased from the records. They lost out on a high-six-figure purse because one of the crew members forgot to get his fishing license. Can you bleeping believe that bleep? Bleep, man! ... I first heard about this story on WTAM this morning, and Bill Wills was saying how that guy probably lost a bunch of friends over this. But I'm sure he feels awful about it, and at some point, whoever heads up the crew has to make sure all the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed. Yes, it's his fault, but it's not all his fault.

Gotta love the walk-off

Some quick thoughts:

• Going into the bottom of the ninth last night, it looked like another tough loss for the Indians, as Kerry Wood had come this close to saving the game, but with two outs and two strikes on J.D. Drew, he threw a slider that slid too much, hitting Drew; and then gave up a two-run homer to Adrian Beltre to give the Red Sox a 7-6 lead. But the Indians' offense roared back in the bottom of the ninth, loading the bases with nobody out against Daniel Bard. Bard then bore down and struck out Travis Hafner, then got Jhonny Peralta on a pop foul. Enter Russell Branyan, who roped a single to right that scored two runs and gave the Indians a walk-off win.

• The Tribe won despite committing four errors, three of which were committed by third baseman Andy Marte in the first inning. Two of those were on one play, as he failed to field the ball cleanly to score one run, then threw it away to score another. As a result, Mitch Talbot had to work a lot harder. He only gave the Indians four innings, giving up five runs, three of which were unearned. Marte is supposed to be strong on defense, but he sure didn't show it last night.

• The Indians are reportedly set to call up catching uber-prospect Carlos Santana in time for tonight's game against the Nationals. In the words of ESPN's Rob Neyer:

There are so many things to love about Santana, whose performance has improved as he's moved up the ladder. He was great in fast-A, greater in Double-A, and sublimely brilliant in 56 Triple-A games this year. He's 24, though — older than Matt Wieters and Buster Posey — and so it's time to move him up and see what he's got.

Couldn't agree more, Rob. They will presumably send down Lou Marson, who's been good with the glove (and the arm) this season, but terrible with the bat.

• Speaking of the Nationals and uber-prospects, Stephen Strasburg will get his second career start Sunday afternoon at Progressive Field. Strasburg struck out 14 Pittsburgh Pirates in his first career start, while walking zero of them, in seven innings. This kid looks like the real deal. I look forward to seeing what he's got. And I'm obviously not the only one, as the Indians have reportedly sold more than 8,000 tickets to that game since it was announced that Strasburg would be starting.

• Tom Izzo was in town yesterday, being wined and dined by the Cavaliers. It sounds like they're close to a deal. I'm not backing off what I said the other day, which was that the track record of college coaches who jump to the NBA isn't good, and therefore it seems a bit foolish to hire one, but Dan Gilbert seems to have his mind made up. Izzo apparently hasn't signed anything yet, but if he does, I hope he proves me wrong.

Branyan to the rescue

So the well-known strikeout machine Russell Branyan is back in Cleveland, this time with the promise of a regular job. Scandal! Horror! How could we give daily at-bats to this train wreck of a free swinger? Don't we remember what a failure he was? ... Or so the thinking seems to go among many Indians fans.

I'm not going to sit here and claim the 34-year-old Branyan is the second coming of Lou Gehrig. Or even Andre Thornton. And when you look at the numbers baseball people have traditionally looked at — .234 career average, 164 career home runs against 946 strikeouts (averaging 174 strikeouts per 162 games played) — it looks pretty ugly. But the fact is, Branyan was actually pretty productive last year in Seattle, if you look at the numbers that actually relate to run production. His on-base percentage was .347, good enough for 46th in the American League (one notch ahead of Grady Sizemore), and his slugging average was .520, which was 16th in the AL. And anyone who thinks his batting average and strikeout totals matter more than those numbers doesn't really understand the game.

Branyan hit a career-high 31 home runs last year for the Mariners in 116 games, the most he'd played in the majors in a season since 2002, when he was 26. It's true that he's at an age when most hitters decline, and it's true that he'd never produced in the majors like he did in 2009, suggesting it might be a one-year aberration. But given that our other first-base options were Matt LaPorta and Michael Brantley — two guys who have never produced much at the major-league level — it's worth giving him a shot for a $2 million, one-year contract.