CLEVELAND — All-Star shortstop Tim Anderson moved on from a horrific fielding game and an interaction with a fan he probably regrets and turned the page Thursday. Anderson chalked up Wednesday’s game as a learning experience and went so far as to say he was “glad it happened.”
“You need things like that to happen,’’ Anderson said Thursday morning, a day after making three errors in the first two innings of an 11-1 loss on the front end of a doubleheader sweep by the Guardians. “You want to be great, so you’ve got to always go through the process where you learn, to where you understand yourself. It’s a situation I haven’t been in, haven’t been there before. It’s something you can learn and grow from.”
Manager Tony La Russa took the blame for his team not looking ready to play after two consecutive postponed games in Cleveland because of bad weather.
“That’s a lot for him to say, but he wasn’t the one out there fielding the ground balls, he wasn’t out there hitting,” Anderson said.
“It’s just understand that we’ve been sitting around for two days, no excuses, but you know you’ve got to get yourself ready to play. In those situations, you’ve got to understand that you have to up the level of focus more. I can understand that I wasn’t on point yesterday. But now it’s a new day.”
Anderson’s new day included another error, though. His throw on Amed Rosario’s routine grounder in the first inning pulled first baseman Jose Abreu off the bag. He failed to get a hit for the first time in nine games.
On Wednesday, Anderson appeared to let a heckler get the best of him and was seen on the TV broadcast raising a middle finger toward the stands. He declined comment on that Thursday.
“Move forward, flush it, keep growing and learning and try to make today better than yesterday,” Anderson said.
Leury in the 3-hole
La Russa batted Leury Garcia third for a second straight game, a move that raised eyebrows considering Garcia’s .069 average. Also, the team had averaged only two runs over its previous six games. La Russa cited Garcia’s .385 average (5-for-13) against Zach Plesac and his 1-for-3 game with a walk and fly ball to the warning track Wednesday night.
“And when you’re kind of in a funk, sometimes a change of scenery does something,” La Russa said. “It’s not really dramatic; it’s just that one move. But he’s been known to get hot, and if he can get hot, he does a lot of things for your offense. So we’ll see. I thought he was inspired yesterday. He took really good at-bats, ran the bases.”
Garcia went 0-for-3 with a walk, scoring a run after tagging up on a short fly to right.
Money
Lefty Tanner Banks, the 30-year-old rookie, has not allowed a run in 9„ innings covering four games.
“You can tell he feels confident; he’s making better pitches,” La Russa said. “The trick in this game is to maintain the anxiety that keeps you focused. You don’t want to drift into, ‘Oh, I got it now.’ Or you get spanked. But, man, he’s really done a good job.”
