NO-K: Weaver, Angels Left Redfaced by Indians, Mathis

And that wasn't the first crappy joke of the night.

Bad comedy may not pay well, and it may not play nice, but you know what else doesn't pay when all is said and done?

It doesn't pay to have a personal catcher.

It certainly doesn't pay to have one who couldn't hit a taiko drum with a sand wedge.

The only thing Jeff Mathis hits night after night is his own personal wall, and Mike Scioscia must love jackass stunts, because he trots Jeffy out night after night to face-plant and ass-smack without fail.

On Saturday night, with a cool mixed vermouth in my bearpaw, and a sweet breeze coming into the den, I caught the flak and felt the pain as the scene went down again:

With two men on base and two outs, the Angels down by one run in the sixth inning, Mathis swung at one above the letters, and delivered Weaver his second loss of the year.

Not that it was all Premium's fault. Sure, he's the whiffiest player on the whiffiest team in baseball, and 22-yr-old Alex White and the Cleveland bullpen struck out nine Angels tonight. But Mathis is just an awful symbol of Anaheim's weak side, like the anachronistic grinning redface on the Indian shirtsleeves is an awkward symbol of MLB's cruel streak. One way or another, it's all just baseball being bad, and we saw plenty of bad baseball tonight, mostly from our boys.

Maicer Izturis ran the Angels pointlessly out of an inning in the bottom of the eighth, Torii Hunter struck out three times and went hitless, and Dream Weaver struck out no one.

Say what, Paleface?

I know. Mid-game, Victor Rojas shared the enticing tidbit that at no point in Jered Weaver's career has he failed to deliver a strikeout before his sixth inning pitched. For a flyball pitcher who lives on his Ks and his control, that's trivia that matters, because the result was WTY's first non-quality start of the young season.

Six full counts against only two 0-and-2 counts tell most of the story tonight. With no strikeouts –– but not for lack of trying –– Weaver looked wasted by the fourth inning, and Cleveland buried the hatchet quickly, though there was no peace dividend for the Angelic, and Mike Scioscia saw his Grover Cleveland snatched up like a prank bill on a line.

1000 wins? Not with this Cleveland in the house.

Jered Weaver fought his fastball control all night, and lacked the pitch efficiency he featured throughout most of April. In trouble most of the evening, it all caught up with him in the fifth. With two outs, he walked both Grady Sizemore and Asdrubal Cabrera, sandwiching a wild pitch in between, and Shin-Soo Choo did not waste the opportunity. He laced a linedrive double down the right field line, and it was 3-2 Indians. In the end, that was enough, though three hits later, Cleveland had added a fourth for good measure, and that was really enough.

The Angels outhit the Indians tonight by a single increment. Vernon Wells hit his first homerun at home and had three RBIs. But to know avail. It tooks the Indians to show us the new pollution, we whiffed it, and now all we got is the tracks of our tears.