Tomorrow afternoon, the Cleveland Indians start their quest to end a 70 year drought without a World Series title.
To make matters tougher, they embark on the journey having to take on the defending World Series titlists, the Houston Astros, in the best of five Division Series.
We could be completely wrong on this, because well, baseball, but we feel it will be a very difficult series for the Tribe to emerge victorious.
The Astros lead the American League in run differential, meaning them, not the 108 win Boston Red Sox are the best team in the AL.
The Indians’ hallmark is their pitching, particularly their starters. Their staff ERA is 3.77, ranking 4th in the American League. However, Houston led the league in that category, more than a half run per game less at 3.11.
Cleveland has scored more runs, but only 21 more than the Astros on the season.
The teams are very similar offensively. The Indians scored three runs or less 58 times, which is over 1/3rd of their games. That seems like a lot, right?
Except the Astros did the same thing more often, having 64 games with three runs or less.
Using the 350/450/800 standard for being a very good offensive player, the Indians have three such players (Francisco Lindor, Michael Brantley, and Jose Ramirez), while the Astros have two in Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman.
Houston comes in as the hotter team, going 21-6 after September 1st, while the Indians went 14-14. But as we found out last year, being hot coming into the playoffs makes absolutely no difference.
As we said, both teams have exceptional starting pitching, and in our opinion, that’s what the series will come down to. Corey Kluber won 20 games this year, but at times has appeared mortal this season. His game one mound opponent, Justin Verlander, quite frankly had a better season.
The two teams met seven times in the regular season, with Houston having a 4-3 advantage.
In Houston, all three games were close. The Indians were either tied or ahead through 6-1/2 innings in each contest, and a tired starter gave up runs late. Remember, at that time, the Cleveland bullpen was having major issues.
At Progressive Field, Houston won in blowout fashion in the first two games, the latter with the Astros scoring 11 runs in the last two innings.
Even in the extra inning win the day before Memorial Day, the Tribe led 3-2 after seven, before Houston scored six in the 8th, matched by a five run rally in the bottom of the ninth by the Indians.
In that game, Trevor Bauer was left in to throw a season high 127 pitches.
So, this series could hinge on how well Allen, Miller, and Hand do. Only Allen was fully healthy at the time. Miller was about to go on the DL, and Hand was in San Diego.
If Ramirez doesn’t start hitting in this series, the offense could depend on whether or not Josh Donaldson can contribute.
The record says the Astros are better than the Tribe, but last year it said the Indians were the better team than New York.
We say it will be a great series, and these two teams are more evenly matched than it appears record wise.
If we have to make a prediction, we would go with the Astros in four. We also can’t tell you how wrong we would like to be.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 