August 16, 2005: Jhonny Peralta homers twice as Cleveland sends Texas to eighth straight loss

The Texas Rangers won 89 games in 2004 – their first winning season since 1999 – but finished third, three games back of the Anaheim Angels, in the four-team American League West.1 They looked to continue the improvement the following season and perhaps capture the AL West crown, a feat the franchise had achieved three times between 1996 and 1999.2

But things had not gone as hoped in 2005. After Texas took a half-game lead in the division on June 5 with a win over the Kansas City Royals, the Rangers lost 14 of their next 20 games to fall 8½ games out of first place.

They were 56-54 and 7½ games behind the division-leading Angels and Oakland A’s when they left for a 13-game road trip on August 8. Seven straight losses – three to the Boston Red Sox, four to the New York Yankees – brought them to Cleveland on August 16 in third place, 12½ games back of the Angels.

The Indians were slightly better at 63-55 but had suffered a three-game sweep at home by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Cleveland was 12 games behind baseball’s best team – the Chicago White Sox – in the AL Central and 4½ games back in the AL wild-card race.

A crowd of 27,403 showed up at Jacobs Field on a Tuesday night to watch two left-handers square off. Cleveland started CC Sabathia, who was 8-9 with a 5.10 ERA in 22 starts. After a rough stretch in July in which he lost five consecutive starts with an 8.39 ERA, the 25-year-old Sabathia had rebounded to win his last two outings.

His opponent was 40-year-old Kenny Rogers. In 21 starts, Rogers was 11-5 with a 2.99 ERA. In his last outing – the first since serving a 13-game suspension for assaulting two cameramen on June 29 before the Rangers’ game against the Angels3 – Rogers had taken the loss by allowing five runs in five innings.

Texas jumped to a quick lead when Michael Young stroked a double to left with one out and scored when Mark Teixeira followed with another double.

Rogers couldn’t hold the lead in the bottom of the first. After Grady Sizemore struck out, Coco Crisp doubled to left. Jhonny Peralta, who took over at shortstop at age 23 when slick-fielding Omar Vizquel departed the previous fall as a free agent after 11 seasons, homered to deep right to give Cleveland a 2-1 lead.

After Travis Hafner walked, Victor Martinez lined a ball to the center-field wall. Rangers center fielder Gary Matthews Jr. leaped toward the wall with his back to the infield and “the ball disappeared from view, then suddenly appeared in his glove.”4 Hafner, running on the play, was doubled off first base when second-base umpire ruled umpire Marvin Hudson ruled that Matthews had caught the ball.

Cleveland players and manager Eric Wedge argued that Matthews had trapped the ball against the wall – TV replays clearly showed that he had – but the call stood and the inning was over.5

“With the way his body was, he would have to be some kind of a contortionist [to make the catch],” grumbled Wedge. “I think it was a tough view for all of them.”6

Rangers shortstop Young marveled at his teammate’s acting skills: “I had a good view of it. He made a great sell.”7

Sabathia and Rogers put zeros on the scoreboard for the next three innings. Sabathia allowed a one-out single by Hank Blalock in the second and worked around a walk to Young and a two-out single by Alfonso Soriano8 in the third. Rogers allowed only a leadoff single in the third to Jason Dubois.

Rod Barajas tied the game with a first-pitch home run against Sabathia in the fifth. It was Barajas’s 12th homer of the season. Matthews drew a walk on a full-count pitch, but Sabathia retired Young, Teixeira, and Soriano to end the inning. In the sixth inning, Kevin Mench led off with a single against Sabathia but was erased in a 6-4-3 double play.

The next inning Texas threatened to break the tie. Mark DeRosa singled to right and moved to second on Barajas’ sacrifice. Matthews singled to shortstop to put runners at the corners, but Sabathia induced an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play from Young.

Rogers was perfect in both the fifth and sixth innings but came unraveled in the seventh. He had retired 12 straight Indians batters – and 17 of the last 18 – when Hafner reached on an error on a hard-hit ball to Soriano at second base.

Martinez grounded weakly up the third-base line. Rogers’ throw to first was late and off-target; Teixeira came off the bag to prevent a throwing error.9 Hafner advanced to second on the infield single.

On the next pitch, Rogers committed his first error of the year. Veteran José Hernández, a late addition to the lineup due to the sore neck of Aaron Boone,10 dropped down a sacrifice and reached safely to load the bases when Rogers fielded the ball cleanly but dropped it for an error.11 Ronnie Belliard – just 1-for-15 in his career against Rogers12 – followed with a line-drive double to left-center on a full-count pitch that cleared the bases and put Cleveland up 5-2. The hit improved Belliard’s career batting average with the bases loaded to .379 (22-for-58).13

“Ronnie always goes up there with an approach,” said Wedge. “He worked himself to a position where he got something to drive, and he didn’t miss it. That was probably one of the best at-bats we’ve had all year.”14

Casey Blake followed with a single to move Belliard to third. Sizemore’s sacrifice fly to Mench in left scored Belliard with the Indians’ sixth run.

After seven strong innings from Sabathia in which he allowed two runs on eight hits and struck out five, Cleveland turned to Bob Howry, who set the Rangers down in order in the eighth.

Francisco Cordero took over for Rogers in the bottom of the eighth. Rogers allowed six hits and fanned five; only three of the six runs charged to him were earned.

Peralta greeted Cordero with his second homer of the night to increase Cleveland’s lead to 7-2. The round-tripper was Peralta’s 18th of the season, the most by a Cleveland shortstop since Woodie Held hit 18 homers in 1962.15

Hafner grounded a double to right and scored the final run of the game on Hernandez’s one-out single to shortstop to make the score 8-2.

Rafael Betancourt pitched a one-two-three ninth to close the game.16 The win upped Sabathia’s career record against Texas to 6-2.

Remembering the previous season, when the Indians got within one game of first place on August 15 and then lost nine in a row, Sabathia said, “This [win] was huge. The experience of last year, falling completely out of it, will help this year.”17

Just a day after Indians relief pitcher Bob Wickman voiced concern that some of Cleveland’s position players were ducking the media after games, the stars of the game – Peralta and Belliard – did not stick around to speak to the press.18

But in the visiting locker room, the Rangers had plenty to say.

Texas manager Buck Showalter held a postgame meeting. “The manager was mad,” said an unidentified player. “But we deserved to be yelled at.”19

“My three years here, this is the worst it’s ever been,” said Teixeira. “My rookie year, we lost something like 20 of 23 in June.20 This is worse than that. Obviously, we’re not playing well, and there are a lot of guys in here who want to win badly. Anytime you go to the park you expect to win, and it’s not happening.”21

“I had hoped we were ready to take it to the next level this season instead of taking a step backward,” said Young. “This is my fifth year with this team, and we’ve never finished higher than third place. It’s hard when every season you start concentrating on next year.”22

Although Texas hit a major-league-best 260 home runs – they had 31 more than the second-place Yankees – and finished third in hits and runs, Texas finished under .500 for the fifth time in six seasons. They ended in third place with a 79-83 record, but this time 16 games behind the Angels.

Some of the blame for the large deficit in the standings fell on the Rangers’ pitching staff – their relievers’ ERA swelled from 3.51 in 2004 to 4.85 in 2005 – but the biggest reason was their dismal showing against the Angels; they were 4-15 against Los Angeles, including a 1-8 road record.23 Five of the losses were by one run. The Angels averaged more than six runs per game while hitting .304 against Texas.

Cleveland’s win over Texas started a stretch drive in which the Indians went 30-14 to end the season at 93-69 – but they couldn’t catch the White Sox, who finished 99-63. Cleveland missed the playoffs, finishing two games behind the Boston Red Sox for the AL wild card.

Author’s Note

This game was the fourth of seven games that the author, his almost 5-year-old son, and his father attended as part of a Jay Buckley baseball tour. The seven-day trip included games in Chicago (Cubs), Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago (White Sox). Also included was dinner at Harry Caray’s restaurant, a stop to tour the remains of Cleveland’s League Park, and a quick stop outside of deserted Tiger Stadium.

Before the game the author and his son were watching batting practice from the standing-room area above the left-field wall when the author caught a home-run ball on the fly. He believes it was hit by Texas catcher Iván Rodríguez.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the references cited in the Notes, the author consulted data from Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE200508160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2005/B08160CLE2005.htm

Notes

1 Beginning with the 2005 season, the Angels would be known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim until the 2016 season, when their name was changed to the Los Angeles Angels.

2 Texas was eliminated in the best-of-five American League Division Series each time by the New York Yankees. The Rangers won the first game in the 1996 ALDS, but the Yankees won the next three and then swept Texas in both 1998 and 1999.

3 Ben Walker (Associated Press), “Kenny Rogers Reinstated,” Santa Clara (California) Signal, August 10, 2005: B3.

4 Associated Press, “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking,” Bucyrus (Ohio) Telegraph-Forum, August 17, 2005:1B.

5 At this time, the major leagues did not have replay review to allow the umpires to overturn an incorrect call. MLB implemented replay review of home runs during the 2008 season. Jack Curry, “Baseball to Use Replay Review on Homers,” New York Times, August 26, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/sports/baseball/27replay.html.

6 Chris Assenheimer (Associated Press), “Belliard Rips Rangers,” Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle-Telegram, August 17, 2005: C4.

7 “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking.”

8 The hit extended Soriano’s hitting streak to 15 games in which he hit .344 (21-for-61). The streak ended the following day when he was 0-for-4.

9 Associated Press, “Indians Stay in Wild-Card Contention with Victory,” ESPN.com, August 16, 2005, https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap?gameId=250816105.

10 “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking.”

11 “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking.”

12 “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking.”

13 Assenheimer.

14 Assenheimer.

15 Peralta finished the season with 24 home runs.

16 Texas finished the road trip 1-12. Texas ended its losing streak with a 3-0 victory over Cleveland in the second game of the three-game series. After Cleveland took the final game, Texas lost three straight at Tampa Bay.

17 Associated Press, “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking”.

18 “Indians Let Bats Do Their Talking.”

19 T.R. Sullivan, “Frustration Begins to Show in Rangers,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 17, 2005: 1D.

20 From May 30 to July 2, 2003, the Rangers lost 24 of 31 games.

21 Sullivan.

22 Sullivan.

23 In 2004, the Rangers were 10-9 against the Angels.