[jksander]

May 21, 1947: A blockbuster trade just happened between the Cleveland Guardians and the St. Louis Cardinals, news that broke last night in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and that is sure to be front page news around the country today ... the 19-16 Cardinals made a big bet on their future by acquiring Sporting News #5 prospect righthanded pitcher Mike Garcia, #9 prospect 23-year-old second baseman Ray Boone and 32-year-old shortstop Buster Clarkson along with cash considerations. In turn, they are sending Cleveland, who clearly are in a “we want to get back into this race NOW!” mode, two proven players: 31-year-old lefty hurler Max Lanier (currently 7-2 with a 2.42 ERA through 70.2 innings, with 2.7 wins above replacement) and 29-year-old third baseman Whitey Kurowski (who is currently hitting .296/.373/.467 with 19 runs batted in and a game worth of WAR). Kurowski and Lanier give the Guardians a much needed leadership core, and Lanier’s curve and changeup are scary as hell ... he has a 93-61 record with 12 saves through 1,300+ innings with St. Louis over the last ten seasons and immediately gives the Guardians the ace they didn’t have before. But they gave up a lot in this move ... though St. Louis gave up a great deal now to gain future ammunition. Boone and Garcia have extreme development risk attached to them.

We’re definitely gonna have to watch out for the Guardians now, who clearly have a shrewd GM at the helm -- this deal looks like a clear winner for the city of Cleveland. And the crazy thing is, while the Cards now have the #2 farm in baseball, the trade only drops Cleveland’s down to fifth overall. So they’ve still got plenty of young talent in the hopper, only now they have their ace.

After perusing the news, we had a game to play today, with Tom Seats (4-3, 4.53 ERA, 47.2 IP, 16 K, 1.55 WHIP) going up against Washington’s Leon Day (2-4, 4.03 ERA, 51.1 IP, 18 K, 1.69 WHIP). Seats has been ice cold of late, losing his last three in a row after a blistering 4-0 start to his season. So he came in this evening really looking to regain his composure against the surging Senators. We took the lead in the top of the third with an RBI single by Cavarretta, but they fired back quickly with a two-run single by Leon Day in the bottom of the fourth to give Washington a lead. Vern Stephens batted in a run with a double in the top of the sixth to tie the score, but Seats unravelled in the seventh, giving up an RBI double to Bobby Lewis, loading the bases, and letting Stan Spence walk one home to put them up 4-2 as Jack Kramer came out -- bases loaded, one out -- to try and clean up the mess. A sac-fly by Jerry Priddy let one of Seats’ runs score, but Kramer got us out of the inning with a three-run deficit when it could have been a lot worse. And this time our bats delievered in the top of the eighth ... Harry Walker scored off a wild pitch, Wally Judnich then hit a sac-fly to cut their lead to one, and Arky Vaughn tied the score with a single through the gap that scored Vern Stephens! With two outs, Joe Schultz then hit a line drive single that drove in Vaughn, giving us back a 6-5 lead! Kramer held it through the eighth, and with the one run lead in the bottom of the ninth we brought out Amos Watson to finish the job. He pitched around runners on the corners, getting Henry Kimbro to pop out harmlessly to left as we won the game 6-5! Kramer (3-1, 3.26 ERA) bailed out Seats with 1.2 innings with just two hits, while the starter had gone 6.1 innings but allowed 12 hits, three walks and five runs (three earned) while striking out one through 125 pitches. Watson earned his third save with a hit and a walk, improving his ERA to 1.20 as the rookie continues to impress. They outhit us 15-10, but Cavarretta hit three times for two runs and an RBI, while Vern Stephens added two hits, a run and an RBI.

May 23, 1947: Cleveland dropped two games over the last two days, coming into our series with a 15-19 record. We’re 18-17, leading them by 2.5 games, but both of our teams are going to benefit from chances to rest our players, with just one game today and then a day off before our Sunday doubleheader (one game of which is almost certain to feature their newly acquired ace. Today we had Diomedes Olivo (2-5, 4.18 ERA, 56.0 IP, 26 K, 1.16 WHIP) against Jim Bennett (1-4, 5.86 ERA, 46.1 IP, 12 K, 1.51 WHIP), and once again Olivo got absolutely no run support. Of course it didn’t particularly matter, since Cleveland scored a run in the second and then two more each in the fourth and seventh, but when your pitcher allows only seven hits all game you tend to hope the bats can at least put up a fight. Ours did not ... we only notched seven hits of our own, and none of our nine baserunners were able to do anything but stand there and wonder how this 5-0 beatdown happened in the first place. Olivo may be the unluckiest pitcher we’ve got ... he’s now 2-6 with a 4.36 ERA but he’s only allowed four homers all year and he has 28 K’s against 19 walks ... our defense just lets all his groundball hits sneak through. Even Cavarretta, with three hits, couldn’t do anything today, though he gave it the old college try.

May 25, 1947: Today in game one Dutch Leonard (4-3, 2.38 ERA, 68.0 IP, 26 K, 1.15 WHIP) went up against Max Lanier (7-2, 2.42 ERA, 70.2 IP, 57 K, 1.19 WHIP), in what was widely expected to be an epic pitching duel. So it was a bit unexpected that we traded runs in the first ... Vern Stephens batted in a run with a single in the top of the inning, while Ken Keltner hit an RBI double to tie it in the bottom of the inning. Sherm Lollar got them the lead with an RBI single in the bottom of the second, but we answered with an RBI groundout in the top of the third by Stephens, followed by an Arky Vaughn solo homer in the fourth that gave us a 3-2 lead. That’s when the duel began, and the game was scoreless the rest of the way as Dutch Leonard locked in ... he pitched around a runner on first in the bottom of the ninth to keep the one run lead as we won 3-2! Cleveland outhit us 7-5, but Leonard got the win to improve to 5-3 with a 2.34 ERA, walking two and striking out one with two earned runs, while Lanier pitched a complete game five hitter with two walks, four strikeouts and three earned runs in his Cleveland debut. Vern Stephens led the team with a hit, a walk, a run and two RBIs.

With all our days off in the coming week, we had no need to use a bullpen arm for game two, letting Fred Sanford (2-1, 3.80 ERA, 47.1 IP, 17 K, 1.42 WHIP) pitch on five days’ rest. Cleveland pitcher Steve Gromek (3-2, 2.47 ERA, 47.1 IP, 9 K, 1.25 WHIP) came in similarly well rested, and both teams remained scoreless until Cleveland took the lead in the bottom of the fourth with an RBI single by Dale Mitchell and a bases loaded walk for Babe Young that scored Hank Edwards. We got a run back in the fifth off a single by Les Moss, and Sanford kept us in this game the rest of the way, though we still needed a miracle in the ninth trailing by the one run. Les Moss took a one-out walk, and we kept Sanford in the game and were rewarded when he too drew a walk, pushing Moss into scoring position! That’s when Robinson hit one through the gap in right ... Moss got greedy and tried for home and was out on a 9-3-2 play, but Sanford reached third and Robinson turned his single into a trip to second as the trailing runner. That brought up Harry Walker, who took the count to 2-2 and then swung ... grounding out harmlessly to first as we lost 2-1. Sanford fell to 2-2 with a 3.58 ERA, but had an excellent game, pitching eight innings with five hits and two runs, striking out one. Had he not walked six batters his night would have gone completely differently. We outhit them 7-5, but we only had eight baserunners all game. And though Cavarretta had three hits and a walk, he got nowhere, as backup catcher Les Moss was our only truly potent offensive force -- he hit twice, walked once and batted in our only run.
 
So far we are 3-9 on this road trip, with just four games remaining: after a day off tomorrow, we’ve got two against the White Sox (15-26) on the 27th and 28th, and two against the Tigers (20-20) on the 30th to finish the month. Only Chicago seems far out of contention -- every other team in the league is within six games of first place, and the difference between third and seventh is just two games.

May 27, 1947: Tom Seats (4-3, 4.50 ERA, 54.0 IP, 17 K, 1.65 WHIP) pitched against Johnny Rigney (3-5, 4.57 ERA, 61.0 IP, 24 K, 1.44 WHIP) in our first game on the Southside, and the duel was intense early; we only got the upper hand in the top of the sixth when Harry Walker singled in Robinson to put us up 1-0 in a game where each team had put up just four hits apiece. Seats pitched a remarkably consistent and efficient game, looking more like the player who had won four in a row to start his season, and in the top of the ninth we bought him plenty of insurance with a two-run homer by Vern Stephens which gave us a three run lead going into the bottom half. Seats finished the job, and we got out of there with a 3-0 shutout win! He improved to 5-3, allowing six hits and a walk with two strikeouts in the complete game, throwing 105 pitches as his ERA improved to 3.86. Meanwhile, we picked up seven hits ourselves, led by Stephens’ two-run homer and a hit, a walk and an RBI by Walker.

May 28, 1947: Diomedes Olivo (2-6, 4.36 ERA, 64.0 IP, 28 K, 1.14 WHIP) has been ice cold and giving off plenty of runs over his last five starts, all of which have resulted in losses. So he wanted a bounceback game in this one against Chicago’s Ray Prim (2-5, 3.13 ERA, 54.2 IP, 13 K, 1.34 WHIP), hopefully balanced by tons of run support from our bats. And in the top of the third he got his wish ... he scored our go-ahead run with a single by Vern Stephens, Jackie Robinson then hit a three-run homer, and Joe Schultz doubled home Arky Vaughn to put us up 5-0 midway through. By the time the White Sox got on the board with a run in the bottom of the sixth we already had a seven run lead, and Olivo gave us our second compete game in a row with a 9-1 victory! He allowed just five hits, with three walks, five K’s and the one earned run as he improved to 3-6 with a 3.95 ERA. We outhit them by a staggering 18-5 margin, led by Stephens with three hits, two runs and two RBIs, while Walker added three hits and two runs and Robinson had two hits, a run and three RBIs. The White Sox are in freefall, so it’s hard to take much from these two wins beyond that we got bounceback games for two pitchers who greatly needed one.

Next up we finish the month out, and this long road trip, with a doubleheader against the 21-22 Detroit Tigers. We’re now in a tie for third with the 23-21 Senators, two games behind New York (25-19) and three back of Philly (26-18).