Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Indians series preview
By Chris Schad
About the Indians
As mentioned in the opening slide, the Indians are going to be playing this series with a sense of urgency. Some may have written Cleveland off when the Twins hung their big lead on them in the opening months of the season, but the Indians have clawed back thanks to a schedule that has lightened up and an offense that has seemingly come back from the dead.
The good news for the Twins is that these performances have come from teams that are toward the bottom of the American League. While beating up on Kansas City, Texas and Detroit recently, the Indians still showed they have some flaws as they also dropped a pair of 13-0 games to the Baltimore Orioles. Maybe those were just a bad pair of nights, but the Twins destroyed the Orioles in two three-game series in April by a combined score of 41-19.
Even with the two blemishes, the Indians are playing really good baseball despite suffering a slew of injuries on the mound. Corey Kluber remains out with a broken forearm and doesn’t seem close to returning. Mike Clevenger has also been in and out of the lineup while Carlos Carrasco recently revealed that he is battling leukemia and is out indefinitely.
The Indians have had some pitchers step up including All-Star Shane Bieber, but they’ll need some help from their offense, who has ranked 21st in MLB with 396 runs scored. A way to boost that number will be Twins killer Francisco Lindor, who has hit .455 with three home runs and four RBI against the Twins this season.