![]() Cueto joined the Royals in Cleveland on Sunday night but won’t face the Tribe in this series. Cueto will be a free agent after the 2015 season, but the Royals are confident a guy like Cueto can play a role similar to that played by Madison Bumgarner in last year’s post season. To bolster their already solid pitching staff, Royals general manager Dayton Moore on Sunday traded for Johnny Cueto, formerly of the Cincinnati Reds. Clearly, this is a team that has learned what it takes to hit in the clutch. The Royals’ batting average with runners in scoring position (.276) is tied for third, and with two outs and runners in scoring position, their team batting average (.283), OBP, slugging percentage, and OPS are all tops in the AL. Their OBP is third, their slugging percentage is sixth, and their OPS is fourth. ![]() They may not hit a lot of home runs (they’re 13th in the AL with only 77) but their team batting average of. They may not have scored the most runs in the American League (they’re ninth with 420) but their run differential of +70 is second best. Offensively, the Royals are a well balanced team. In the Central Division (and given their season-long consistency), their 7.5 game lead over the Twins must feel substantial since the Tigers, White Sox, and Indians can’t even stay above the. The Royals know how to win at home (34-18) and on the road (25-20). ![]() They have the best record in the AL at 59-38, second only to the St. The Kansas City Royals are, today, American League royalty. What’s a mere 10 years compared to the 67 since the Indians last won a World Series? There may be seven other teams between you and the Twins, but, hey, didn’t that NASA spacecraft just reach Pluto? Launched in 2006, it just arrived in Pluto’s neighborhood earlier this month. Part of their glimmer of hope is that they are “only” 6.5 games behind the Minnesota Twins, the team currently holding on to the second Wild Card slot. (Hopefully these are ultimately steps of progress, or some smart aleck will start calling the Indians’ home park Regressive Field.) But when your home team loses a four-game series to the last-place team in your division - in your own ballpark - by an average score of 6.5 to 1.25, you begin to see the symbolic appropriateness of the off-season remodeling of Progressive Field which provides an in-the-park saloon at which fans can sit and watch these kinds of games.įollowing the completion of a four-game sweep on Sunday, the Indians held a closed-door meeting to acknowledge their uninspired play and to urge each other on. The Indians, on the other hand, offered up their most compelling case of the year that this is not their season, that they’re not prime-time ready, that they’re still rebuilding, that they are a work in progress. The ChiSox, with the most ineffective, unproductive offense in the AL, just swept the Tribe in a four-game series at Progressive Field by scores of 8-1, 6-0, 10-3, and 2-1, and made the emphatic statement that, with or without playoff aspirations, their season is certainly not over. However, just in case there were any remaining doubts about the Indians’ level of competitiveness in 2015, it would seem the Chicago White Sox have removed them. They knew the Tribe offense wouldn’t be confused with the one that blew the doors off Jacobs Field twenty years ago, but surely there would be enough firepower to win with their great pitching. Those who predicted big things from the Tribe this season surely did so on the assumption that their flag-bearers would be a young and talented starting rotation with a solid bullpen protecting their backs and, presumably, their leads. The Cleveland Indians, considered by the crystal-ball gazers at Sports Illustrated to be the favorites to get to the World Series this season, just landed with a thud in the basement of the American League Central. ![]() And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect illustration of why there is a Cleveland sports blog called Waiting for Next Year, for that is precisely what Indians fans find themselves doing here in late July.
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