Double or nothing

After a loss like the Indians endured last night, us crack analysts are put in the position of assessing blame.
Last night's 7-6 loss to the White Sox was a very winnable game. The Indians squandered leads of 2-0, 3-2 and 5-3. For one of just a few times all season, the bullpen appeared incapable of keeping the other team off the bases.
Last night's loss means tonight's game is a double-or-nothing proposition. Win, and you exit Chicago a game closer to first place than when you came to town. The division is still a manageable 2 1/2 games away with 11 games to play. You are still guaranteed first place in the wild card standings, no worse than 1/2 game up on the Yankees.
Lose, and you are 4 1/2 games out with 11 to play. If the Yankees win, (and they have, with few exceptions, since September began) you are out of the wild card lead.
Tonight's game isn't an elimination must-win. But if the Indians lose tonight, it is going to make life a lot harder the final week-plus of the the season.
So back to the subject at hand: who is to blame for this rock the Indians now find themselves over?
I needle three culprits: Jose Hernandez, David Riske and Eric Wedge.
Hernandez, playing first base, made the kind of overzealous error you simply cannot make in a pennant race. In the seventh inning, he cut off a throw to the plate from right fielder Casey Blake. The tying run had scored to make it 5-5, but instead of eating the ball, Hernandez tried to catch Chicago's A.J. Pierzynski napping as he rounded third. Hernandez quickly whistled a throw to Aaron Boone, but the throw sailed past him. Pierzynski scored.
Replays showed Pierzynski, a notorious, agitating pain in the butt when he was with the Twins, stepped on Boone as he rounded third, which might have caused the error. But it doesn't excuse Hernandez trying to play hero with an ill-advised snap throw in a hotly-contested September game. When in doubt, play it safe.
The Riske and Wedge blame kind of go hand-in-hand. Granted, the losses of Arthur Rhodes and Matt Miller for the season thinned out the bullpen a bit. But David Riske in a pressure situation, trying to hold the phone until the Indians could get a lead and send Bob Wickman out?
I'd rather have seen Fernando Cabrera. I'd rather have seen Jason Davis. I'd rather have seen anyone but Riske out there.
Heres the skinny on Riske: he throws 90 MPH on a good day. That's crush-me speed to a major league hitter. Riske is not an ideal late reliever. He relies on guile and a sleight-of-hand delivery that conceals the ball until very late before he releases it. In other words, if his delivery shows the hitter the ball a split-second too soon, he'll have time to react and deposit the ball int he next area code, which is exactly what Joe Crede did to start the bottom of the 10th last night.
Whith Riske, there is very little margin for error. Very little separates a swinging strike from a 400-foot moon shot. He doesn't have a devastating sinker or slider like other late-inning relievers, so he doesnt have much to take hitters off his fastball. In most cases, he relies on moving his fastball around in the strike zone, which he didn't really do a good job of last night, either (reference him drilling Aaron Rowand with a two-strike hit-by-pitch in the ninth inning).
Wedge likes to brag about how confident he is in every pitcher in his bullpen. Hopefully he's not wearing rose-colored glasses with regard to Riske, who had a deer-in-headlights look in the dugout after he barely escaped the ninth inning last night.
If guys like Cabrera and Davis are going to be your bullpen horses in the coming years, now is the time to start showing them what a big-league pennant race is all about. It's probably better than trotting out the flammable Riske, who is probably as good as he's ever going to be.