Tickets move for Strasburg's next start, INDIANS getting boost at the box office

[mjp28]

06/09/10 12:28 PM ET

CLEVELAND -- The phone rang in Mike Mulhall's office at Progressive Field at noon ET. Just minutes earlier, the Nationals had confirmed what had been speculated for about a week: Stephen Strasburg will make his second Major League start and his first road start in Cleveland on Sunday.

"As we speak," said Mulhall, the Indians' senior director of ticket sales, "we just sold 115 more tickets."

That pretty much tells the tale of how the morning went for Mulhall and his staff and how things are expected to continue in the days leading up to the phenom's highly anticipated encore to his magical debut Tuesday night in Washington.

Strasburg struck out 14 batters without a walk in seven innings in the Nationals' 5-2 win over the Pirates, living up to the inordinate hype that surrounded him when he was taken by the Nats with the No. 1 overall Draft pick and signed to a $15.1 million bonus one year ago.

And as the highlight reels of Strasburg's dominant debut played across the country overnight, the Indians found more and more takers for the available tickets to Sunday's 1:05 p.m. game. As of noon, almost 19,000 total tickets had been sold, meaning plenty of good seats were available on Indians.com.

But they were starting to go fast.

In the past week, the club sold 4,000 tickets to the game, which will pit Strasburg opposite Indians left-hander David Huff. More than 1,400 of those tickets were sold since the morning of Strasburg's debut, and more than 1,000 had been sold since midnight Wednesday.

"We had 425 sold between midnight and 8 a.m.," Mulhall said. "That was interesting.'"

Mulhall and the Indians needed this. With 372,658 total tickets distributed through 24 home dates, Cleveland has been drawing the lowest average attendance (15,527) of any team in the Majors.

"We're obviously excited about these next few days," Mulhall said.

In his 11 years in his current post, Mulhall has seen spikes in sales tied to pitching assignments, such as a CC Sabathia vs. Roy Halladay matchup or pretty much any time Cliff Lee took the mound in his 22-win season in 2008.

But Mulhall has never seen anything quite like the impact Strasburg has had already, and that impact only figures to grow in the coming days.

"We're in unchartered territory," Mulhall said.