CLEVELAND -- Terry Francona was in a meeting with coaches and front office personnel reviewing end of the season matters when he received a text message from Carlos Carrasco.
After Monday's 2-0 loss to the Royals, Carrasco didn't mince words about the Indians' fielding lapses that ended up leading to both runs. On Tuesday morning, Carrasco was regretting those remarks.
"It was a terribly immature and foolish thing to say. I know better and I apologize for saying it," Carrasco said in a statement released by the club. "I have made some terrible pitches in my career and position players could have questioned what I was doing. No one wants to be criticized when making their (sic) best effort.I will apologize to everyone and it won't happen again."
With two outs in the first, Eric Hosmer hit a liner that went off first baseman Chris Gimenez's glove into right field to score Nori Aoki. In the fifth with one out, Jose Ramirez couldn't cleanly field a hard-hit grounder by Alcides Escobar as it went off his glove and skipped into left field to score Omar Infante.
Both were ruled hits and didn't add to the Indians Major League-leading errors total of 113, but manager Terry Francona called both of those makeable plays.
Said Carrasco after the game: "You know what? Everything was good. Everything went perfect. We should've made those plays right there. That cost me two runs. I thought they had a pretty good chance of making them, but sometimes we don't make those plays. That can cost us."
Francona said before Tuesday's game against the Royals that he did not know about Carrasco's remarks until the right-hander called him. Carrasco sent Francona a copy of the apology and both discussed it before it was released.
"I kind of explained to him, 'what you did was, you know you gotta do it better than that.' And he said he understood. I also said, 'I'll tell you what you said after that is more important to me.' He's a good kid. He just…to me that's not the end of the world," Francona said. "The fact that he was upset that he said it and he caught it and he didn't try to back track, he just apologized. And I thought his apology was really sincere. He was in my office all about eight seconds."
The Indians begin Tuesday 3 1/2 games behind the Royals for the final wild card spot and have an elimination number of three. Francona chalked up Carrasco's remarks more to frustration about the loss denting the Tribe's playoff hopes.
If the rotation holds, Carrasco would start the final regular-season game on Sunday against Tampa Bay. The right-hander is 5-2 with a 1.32 ERA in nine starts since rejoining the rotation last month.
