Morning Update: Carmona Comeback Tour Hits Akron

Have you heard the news?

Fausto Carmona is coming back.

And after making a successful return to Lake County, the Fausto Carmona Comeback Tour took a stop in Akron last night.

What's the goal for Carmona?

After staying in his delivery last time out, the Indians wanted him to repeat that and turn in another good performance in a row.

That he did.

He didn't walk anyone and to me, that's awesome.

Now, I imagine they'll have him have one more go at it in Columbus before they consider getting him back to the big leagues.

Man if this is what he's needed, then I'll take it. We know what Carmona is capable of and if all it took was a hiatus away from the world and a little comeback tour throughout the minor leagues, then let's get that 19-game winning, nasty stuff Carmona back.

Or at least someone who can get hitters out.

Injury updates galore from yesterday, but thankfully these are starting to dwindle.

Rough set-back for Scott Lewis, who removed himself from a rehab start on the 21st after just four inning of work. Lewis will visit Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion after no structural damage was found. Who really knows what's up with him.

As it was pointed out in numerous places, Grady Sizemore will have surgery on that bothersome elbow, but not till after the season. No biggie right now, unless of course you are Grady, who's playing through the pain. He's a bit of a warrior though.

Tomorrow Jake Westbrook begins to throw again and apparantely he's feeling good. It's going to be another week of throwing just from flat ground before they put him back on the mound. What an irritating process this must be.

Rafael Betancourt might be on track to return soon. If all goes well on Thursday's session, he can be cleared to make his rehab assignment starting Friday.

He could join Aaron Laffey, who will make what he and most of us hope is his final rehab appearance for Columbus. Laffey is healthy and ready to go, but the performance of his last game left a lot to be desired and Eric and Mark want him to be coming in on a good note, not a shaky one. Laffey, given the volatile situation with the pitching staff right now, understands.

"We need to see more than that before we bring him up here," manager Eric Wedge said before Monday's series opener with the White Sox.

"I can't do the same thing everybody else is doing," Laffey said. "They need someone to come in and give them quality starts and not go to the bullpen after five innings. You want to get at least six innings out of your starter. With me walking six guys, I understand why they're tentative about bringing me back."

Finally on the injury front, it wasn't mentioned anywhere, but the great Mark Schwab mentioned it yesterday on the radio. Adam Miller is headed for his second surgery in his rehab process soon. This was that planned second surgery that is supposed to help fix something that they had to do in the last one to fix something else... Or something like that. In other words, this is really important and things need to go really well if Miller wants to pitch again.

Now let's get down to business.

There was a bee in the house, I think, earlier. I'm not at the house that usually has the stunned bees that are like half-challenged. This was a big-time bee man. I heard it buzzing and the dog was following it with his head. Fearing that he'd get stung, I yelled at him to get away from it. Well I wanted to hit it with a shoe, but he disappeared and now I don't know where he went. Was he outside or what? How did a bee get in without my knowledge? I'm the damn gate-keeper right now.

Anyway.... Real Business.

First off, Luis Vizcaino's era with Cleveland was short-lived as he was officially released yesterday after being DFAed a few days ago.

I listened to a lot of Eric Wedge yesterday, both on TV and on the radio and I heard a lot of interesting things.

The first thing he talked about that I want to say something on is the outfielder situation right now.

With DeRosa traded the Indians only really have three true outfielders. They've got Barfield who was optioned, Carroll, Gimenez and Garko to some extent who can all play out there, but still, this is a team that typically carried not four but five true outfielders for extended periods of time.

So now, Gimenez gets a few looks, Garko's been used there since the trade. But when Ben Francisco is hitting as poorly as he is, you can't run him out there everyday.

Wedge hinted that this won't be like this for that long, so Matt LaPorta better be up here soon and when he does, I'd expect him to be the everyday left-fielder.

Wedge was forgiving of Chris Perez and said he deserves a mulligan. I felt the same way after watching him. A little too excited to be a Cleveland Indian bud, tone it down.

Wedge was hilarious yesterday talking about the reversed call and his ejections. Me repeating what he said doesn't do it justice, plus I can't remember everything he said. But it was all gold.

You know what else is gold?

I just heard something hit the sliding glass door downstairs and I went down to see what was going on. It was the dog standing over the stunned bee.

Yes, the bee was in the house and my dog stunned it enough for me to come in and knock it completely silly with a shoe and then throw it down the toilet.

How did my dog just stun a bee? What did he do without getting stung by it?

Unsolved Mysteries...

Finally on the Wedge front. He talked about getting Ryan Garko more time since he's coming around. I look at it as he's coming around because he's getting more time.

Of course, he was out of action last night because Cliff Lee was pitching.

However, Pavano pitched the previous night and Shoppach was not in the lineup. That's the one thing I've been saying for awhile now. Stop letting him catch Pavano. As you could see, it didn't matter, Pavano still pitched well.

Chalk it up to a bad outing for Cliff Lee last night. Actually, chalk it up to one of his worst starts ever. Lee hasn't turned in that short of an outing since early 2006.

"It was a bad outing," said Lee, who turned in his shortest start since a 2 2/3-inning effort against the White Sox on May 29, 2006. "That's not what my job description is. I need to go deep into the game, give up less runs and give us a chance to win the game. It was not a good game. Period."

Wedge kind of hit it though. Everyone has these types of games at some point, Cliff has had them before. But we've seen nothing but greatness out of the guy the past two years, and the fact of the matter is, it's the first time he's done something as bad as this since 2006, which was before he even had his meltdown.

I blame this all on the person who mentioned that stat about him being the second Indian to turn in a bunch of starts of at least five innings. I think it was Castrovince who brought it up, but whoever told him and the rest of the media about it needs to be talked to for jinxing things.

Even though the game was seven innings long, the Indians still managed to use three pitchers. If anything, I'm sure Wedge is glad the game got called, this way he didn't have to exhaust his bullpen for meaningless innings.

The bright spots last night were obviously the men who drove in all the runs.

Asdrubal Cabrera hit a three-run double and Travis Hafner hit his eighth home run of the year.

The biggest travesty about the All-Star game is the blind voting for Yankee and Red Sox fans and just people in general. How Jorge Posada and Jason Varitek are ahead of Victor Martinez in voting is known only to those nincompoops voting for them.

Joe Maddon will no doubt pick Martinez to the team when Mauer gets selected as the starter (at least the starter is a deserving player, which eliminates a snub from happening), but it's still frustrating to see Vic fifth in voting behind those two and.... Jarrod Saltalamacchia? Really?

Now is not the time. But when I do get my issue of SI, I'll talk about it. But there was a poll conducted and Wedge finished fourth as the "Manager ML's least want to play for."