CLEVELAND — The Indians have been among baseball’s hottest teams for the past week and a half, winning nine of 11 games to completely flip the script after the eight-game losing streak that immediately preceded it.
They changed course from the likely No. 8 seed to securing the No. 4 seed in the American League and home-field advantage for every game in the wild-card round, a three-game series against the New York Yankees that begins Tuesday night at Progressive Field.
They also played their best stretch of baseball as the season concluded, putting themselves on the positive side of the discussion on momentum entering the postseason that accompanies the game every September. But trying to quantify momentum is difficult. And once Shane Bieber throws the first pitch of the Wild Card round in Cleveland, all of it goes out the window. The slate is wiped clean.
“Momentum is confidence. You know, when you got confidence, you got momentum,” acting manager Sandy Alomar Jr. said recently on a Zoom call. “It’s very hard to have momentum when you lose games back-to-back-to-back. It’s very hard to have confidence. You tend to lose confidence.
“But when the regular season is over, in my experience, it’s a clean slate. You’re back to zero. If you’re worried about (your) contract, if you’re worried about your batting average, that’s no longer. You can be a hero in the playoffs and be an average player, basically. So, all that goes out the window.”
Tuesday night’s Game 1 features a true heavyweight pitching matchup between Bieber, who is a lock to win the 2020 AL Cy Young, and Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, the reigning AL Cy Young runner-up and a 2020 Cy Young finalist contender.
Bieber, also an MVP candidate, became the second pitcher in Indians history to win the pitching triple crown, leading the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts, since Bob Feller did so in 1940. Bieber is the first pitcher in either league to win the pitching triple crown since 2011, when Justin Verlander in the AL and Clayton Kershaw in the NL both did it, and he became the first pitcher to lead all of baseball in all three categories since Johan Santana in 2006.
He’ll now lead the Indians into the postseason as the Game 1 starter, with Carlos Carrasco following in Game 2 and Zach Plesac taking the ball in Game 3, if necessary, in his first postseason action.
In Cole, the Indians are facing one of the elite pitchers in baseball who this offseason signed a $324 million deal. And, as a new wrinkle to these playoffs in 2020, the Indians enter the biggest games of the season without having faced Cole or Masahiro Tanaka, the Game 2 starter, due to their 60-game schedule consisting of AL Central and NL Central opponents. That extra layer of unknown becomes an even bigger in a three-game series.
“That’s what makes it interesting,” said catcher Roberto Perez on a Zoom call. “It’s going to be a challenge. They’re in the same boat, too. They don’t know what we’ve got and we don’t know what they’ve got. In the past we’ve faced some of their guys, some of their guys have faced us, too. It’s going to be interesting. It’s going to come down to the pitching. They’ve got Gerrit Cole on the mound, we’ve got Shane Bieber.”
The three-game series has already shifted some rules with the Indians pitching staff as they try to take advantage of their pitching depth, some of which couldn’t be leveraged without some adjustments. Triston McKenzie and Aaron Civale will both be available out of the bullpen before moving back to the rotation should the Indians advance. The postseason already offers little room for error. A three-game series only further exemplifies that point.
“It causes a lot of challenges,” Alomar Jr. said. “Pinch-hitting situations, leverage situations, when to bring leverage relievers in and things of that sort. What you consider a leverage situation, who you run for. Looking at the dynamics of the bullpen. If you’re exposed too early, they’ve got two lefties in the pen. Stuff like that you have to look at all those variables and determine how to best use our roster.”
The Yankees lineup, now healthy, presents its own challenges to opposing pitchers. DJ LeMahieu is one of the leading MVP candidates after hitting .364 with a 177 wRC+ and 2.7 fWAR. A bevy of power hitters follow, including Luke Voit (22 home runs, 153 wRC+), Aaron Judge (140 wRC+) and Giancarlo Stanton (143 wRC+). The Yankees have also continued to receive strong offensive contributions from former Indians infielder Giovanny Urshela, who slashed .298/.368/.490, and former Indians outfielder Clint Frazier, who posted a 149 wRC+.
“Yeah, a couple guys you’ve got to be careful with,” Bieber said on a Zoom call. “There’s obviously some real good talent and some good bat-to-ball with LeMahieu and there’s some obvious power in that lineup. So I feel like you can compare them a little bit to some of the lineups that we faced recently and kind of in our division a little bit. So I feel like we’re well-prepared to combat that.”
The Indians officially return to the postseason Tuesday night after missing the playoffs last year. Since that time, Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, Mike Clevinger, Jason Kipnis and several other key players on many of the Indians teams in the past few years are gone. In terms of playoff experience, it’s a younger club.
“Enjoy the ride, boys. Enjoy the ride,” said Francisco Lindor on a Zoom call, when asked what he’d say to the younger players in the clubhouse. “And, they’re trying to be famous, this is the time to do it. This is the time to be famous.”
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