Cleveland Indians: Stop the Cody Allen hot takes after Friday’s loss

The Cleveland Indians lost Friday night when Cody Allen gave up a walk-off home run to Nelson Cruz, but there is no need to panic.

A rare thing happened Friday night. The Cleveland Indians lost a game.

It was only the second loss this month and came after the Indians built up a modest five-game winning streak after the end of the famous 22-game streak.

Cody Allen picked up the loss after giving up a monster home run to Nelson Cruz to lose 3-1 on a night when the Indians couldn’t figure out Erasmo Ramirez. The only run came on a Giovanny Urshela home run, another rare feat from Friday.

The loss dropped the Indians to 27-2 in their past 29 games, another historic mark, but the occasional Saturday morning scroll of Twitter will reveal the usual anger that comes with any loss.

A lot of the anger is focused upon Cody Allen. And I understand this is a small minority of people, but let’s put some facts out there for those who may even have the slightest sense of anger in their hearts.

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Allen may not be the best reliever in baseball, but he is in the conversation. The two runs he allowed Friday night were two of the 20 he has allowed in 63 innings of work this year. Once again, not great but certainly not terrible when considering he hasn’t allowed more than five runs in any month this season.

During the most recent 22-game win streak, Allen didn’t allow a single earned run, and was anchoring the staff with Andrew Miller out.

The offense carried the team for most of the streak, but Allen did pick up saves in five consecutive appearances from September 2 through September 13.

There is nothing wrong with being upset when the Indians lose. That’s the fun of being a sports fan. The highs of victory and the lows of defeat are what establish our mutual emotional connection to this team.

But pinning a loss like this on one player, and a good player at that, is just a waste of energy. You can’t cheer Allen when he does well nearly 100 percent of the time then demand he lose his job when he slips up. The world doesn’t work that way.

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The world is already a crazy enough place and there is just not enough time to bash one of the Indians’ best players who has been a key part of this team throughout the rise to where they are now.