Kluber gets call with season on line
Indians return home after losing two straight for first time in 7 weeks.
What the Indians CLEVELAND — have done since late August is hard to understand and harder to appreciate. They’ve played 41 games and won 35 of them.
Included in that stretch is an American League-record 22-game winning streak from Aug. 24 through Sept. 14. The 22-game streak is the longest in the big leagues in over 100 years.
And now they’ve lost two straight. Two straight losses to a big-league team is nothing. It’s a bad weekend or a split in a fourgame series.
But it’s a lot more than nothing in the postseason. That’s the predicament the Indians have put themselves in by losing Games 3 and 4 of the ALDS to the Yankees on Sunday and Monday night at Yankee Stadium.
It is the first time they’ve lost consecutive games since Aug. 22 and Aug. 23. The last time they lost three straight was July 30 through Aug. 2. If that three-game losing streak repeats itself tonight in Game 5 at Progressive Field, the Indians are shutting down for the winter.
They came to Yankee Stadium with a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series. One win is all they needed to advance to the AL Championship Series. They are still looking for it.
They lost Sunday’s game 1-0 to a Greg Bird homer in the seventh inning. On Monday they lost 7-3 in a game where all their flaws were on display. Yes, a team that
won 102 games in the regular season, most in the AL, has flaws.
For starters there was the convoluted decision to start Trevor Bauer on short rest in Game 4 when starters Mike Clevinger, Danny Salazar and Josh Tomlin were in the bull- pen and could have been prepped to make the start on full rest. As it was, all three ended up pitching in the game anyway.
Asked if he regretted giving the ball to Bauer, manager Terry Francona said, “No. I wasn’t happy with the outcome of the game, but we don’t ever just throw stuff at the wall and hope that it sticks. We try to have a good reason for it. I think we owe that to the players.
“I think we felt really good about Trevor starting. I know Trevor felt real good about it. I know our team did.”
Bauer lasted 1 2/3 innings. He allowed four runs, none earned and left trailing 4-0. He said he had better stuff than he did in Game 1 when he threw 6 2/3 scoreless innings. But he didn’t have better results.
Defensively, the Indians played great baseball during the regular season. Monday night, their four errors tied a postseason franchise record.
Third baseman Giovanny Urshela made two errors that led to five unearned runs. Urshela is a good defender, sometimes bordering on great, but on Monday night the stage was too big for him.
The Indians have gotten by with a patchwork outfield all season. It hurt them Monday night.
Give Jason Kipnis credit from moving from second base to center field, but in the fifth inning Kipnis caught a sacrifice fly from Brett Gardner when he should have let right fielder Jay Bruce, who has a better arm, handle it. Todd Frazier scored on the play to give the Yankees a 6-3 lead.
Offensively, the lineup looks like a collection of odds and ends instead of the smooth collection of hitters it resembled for much of the season. Cleanup hitter Edwin Encarnacion has not played since Game 2 when he sprained his right ankle.
MVP candidate J o se Ramirez struck out three times in 78 plate appearances during the 22-game winning streak.
He’s struck out seven times in 17 at-bats in the ALDS with two hits.
Leadoff hitter Francisco Lindor has one hit in the ALDS. It was a big one, a grand slam, to help the Indians rally to victory in Game 2, but the Yankees have done a great job against him and Ramirez.
Cy Young Award favorite Corey Kluber starts tonight against the Yankee veteran CC Sabathia in a rematch of Game 2.
“I can’t imagine giving the ball to somebody better,” Francona said. “We tried to set up a five-game series with plans, contingency plans. A lot of things have happened. So we go to Game 5, we’re at home and we have Kluber. We’re looking forward to it.”