Cleveland Indians: 3 takeaways from the Indians demolition of the Reds

The Cleveland Indians bounced back in a big way, showing the Cincinnati Reds that they we’re pretty mad about Tuesday night.

The Cleveland Indians certainly gave their fans something to smile about on Wednesday night. For the third time this month the Indians scored 10+ runs and it’s only June 11th. The Indians showed that they weren’t going to roll over against their in-state rivals as they scored 19 runs against the Reds.

The Tribe scored nine runs in the third and six in the fourth to put this game out of reach for the reds. The Indians offense looked like they found new life after Tuesday night’s embarrassment. We won’t get into that. Today is about a win. Here are the takeaways from the win.

The offense took off early and never looked back

The Indians lead all of baseball in runs in the first inning. Wednesday night was no different for that. Jose Ramirez hit his 26th home-run in the first (he hit another one later on) and the Indians took a two-run lead in the first.

The Indians have been so good at scoring early that it’s hard to remember how good they’ve been in the first frame. It’s hard to remember when you have a bullpen like Cleveland’s. In this game; as we saw, that wasn’t the case. The offense made sure that Carlos Carrasco got his win and had nothing to worry about.

Carlos Carrasco didn’t have to do much

Carrasco was able to breathe easy tonight but it was still a big night for him. He earned his 1000th career strikeout with the first batter he faced. He tossed 83 pitches through five innings with seven strikeouts in that span.

The Indians thought is was better to let Carrasco have light work in this game as he just returned from the DL last week. If we see more outings like this from Carrasco, fans will have a lot of confidence in their rotation at the halfway point.

Adam Plutko pitched out of the bullpen and I don’t wanna talk about it

Wednesday night wasn’t all sunshine and homers for the Tribe. Adam Plutko didn’t have a great game in his first appearance from the bullpen since he replaced Josh Tomlin. He actually looked a lot like Tomlin. Plutko allowed three runs on six hits in four innings to close the game out.

It was nice to see have the run-support to give the rest of the bullpen an off night. Still, we want to see better from Plutko. He lost his starting role after a bad outing against the Oakland A’s and performances like this aren’t going to earn him that role back.

Next: One reliever returns as another leaves

But let’s not focus too much on the negatives. You hope a game like this will give the Cleveland Indians a boost. After Tuesday night they need a wake-up call. That wake-up call looked like it showed up on Wednesday. That wake up call will need to stick around as the Yankees come to town to face the Tribe this weekend.