The Cleveland Indians have been “Team Streak” over the past two major league baseball seasons, and they have already had two winning skeins this year of over five games.
Last night’s 4-0 loss to St. Louis ended a seven game streak.
In 2016, the Tribe broke a club record by being victorious in 14 consecutive games from June 17th through July 1st. The last win in that span was an epic 19 inning game in Toronto, a 2-1 decision over the Blue Jays.
Last season, Terry Francona’s squad had a record 22 game streak, starting on August 24th with a 13-6 victory over Boston and ending on September 15th with a 4-3 loss to the Kansas City Royals.
You can say the streaks have some luck involved and anytime you have one of let’s say ten games or more, there is obvious some good fortune involved.
However, when you have starting pitching like the Indians do, it’s easy to see why these streaks have occurred in each of the past two seasons.
In 2016, Cleveland hurlers allowed just 27 runs in the 14 wins, with three shutouts. The most runs allowed in one game was in a 7-5 triumph over Detroit, and the Tigers scored two of those runs in the bottom of the ninth.
In fact, they allowed three runs or less in 12 of the 14 victories. It doesn’t take a lot of offense to win when you are getting that kind of performance from your pitchers.
But Cleveland scored 82 runs in the run, outscoring their opponents by 55 runs.
Last season, it was much the same. Tribe pitchers gave up only 37 runs in the 22 wins, with an incredible seven shutouts in that three week span. The most runs allowed came in the first game of the streak.
Opponents were held to three runs or less in 19 of the 22 contests. And with the second best hitting attack in the American League a year ago, the Indians put up 142 tallies in the streak, so they outscored teams by a whopping 105 runs in that period.
It seems simplistic to say this, but when the pitching staff isn’t allowing any runs and the hitting is clicking, it’s tough to lose games.
This season, the six game string in late May/early June was a little different because the Tribe won a lot of high scoring games, allowing 33 runs in the half dozen games. The bats were red hot though, getting seven runs or more in every game.
The streak that ended yesterday is much like the ones in each of the last two years. The pitching staff gave up just nine runs in the seven games, with two shutouts. Opposing hitters have not crossed home plate more than three times in any of the games.
Meanwhile, the Indians have scored 54 runs, six times more than the other team. Once again, it’s hard to lose when that happens.
The point is when all of the Indians’ starters get on a roll, you can expect a long period of winning baseball. As we’ve seen, they can go through periods where the opposition averages just around two runs per game.
That would seem to guarantee you a substantial winning streak.
Will this year’s Tribe run off another 10+ game without a loss? That’s not probable, but there is no question the Indians are very capable of putting together a period where they win 20 out of 25 contests.
And that will probably get them back in the race for the best record in the American League again.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 