Peralta hits the ball far when a lot of men are on base; Indians win

Jhonny Peralta hit his first career grand slam as the Indians beat down Devil Rays 9-4 to improve to 11 games shy of mediocre. Travis Hafner set a career high in RBIs when he hit is 38th homer of the season in the third inning. Not to be outdone, Ryan Garko also set a career high in RBIs when he followed Hafner’s homer with a home run of his own, his third. To be fair, every RBI Garko records sets a new career high. All told the Indians had 17 hits, six for extra bases, and grounded into only one double play. The lowlight was Shin-Soo Choo, who left 10 (!) runners on base. Andy Marte also regressed to form, going 1-5 with two strikeouts and five stranded.

Next up is Kansas City. If only every series were against either the Royals or Devil Rays.

Cavs in Japan update

The US crushed China this morning, 121-90. It took all of four minutes before the US had its first double-digit lead, and at one point were up by 36. With the victory the US improves to 2-0 in the FIBA World Championship. LeBron James played 22 minutes, scored 11 (5/10 from the field) points, and had seven rebounds and four steals. In yesterday’s 111-100 defeat of Puerto Rico LBJ went for 15 and six.

The other Cleveland Cav playing in Japan is Anderson Varejao, who plays for Brazil. In Brazil’s 77-83 loss to Australia yesterday Varejao had 15 points (5/14) and 10 rebounds with four blocks. Today Brazil stomped on Qatar, 97-66, and Varejao had 13 points (5/8) and seven rebounds in 25 minutes.