Cleveland Sports Forum

No problems now. Tribe has Mr. O_H_I_O back.

If I'm figuring this correctly, our one last hope is to tie the Royals by winning our last 3 games and watching them lose 3. Good luck.

Is that right? I though that KC is now out of reach, so the only chance is the 2nd wildcard, which means Tribe must sweep TB and Oakland must lose their last three, yielding a tie (to be resolved by, I dunno, sunflower seed spitting?)

Maybe I mixed up the Royals and the A's?? It's one of them

Yep. The Royals won last night, thereby clinching a WC spot. Our only hope is the A's losing the next 3, while we win out.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings/_/type/wild-card

But if Seattle wins out, we can't catch them, b/c we have 76 losses, and they have only 75.

OK its over

Now lets pull for Kluber to get the Cy Young so we can trade him for some prospects a few of which will be good players in 4-5 years. (Ironic)

I do think Corey should win the Cy Young, although I do not know if he will. He has won 4 games more than Hernandez. Usually Felix wins the Cy despite lower win totals because he gets no support. Neither of them did this year. Felix's team was better overall than Corey's.
Corey was at his best down the stretch, 39 K in his last 3 starts, won his last 5 decisions.
Felix' start on Tuesday could doom his chances.

Kluber will finish no worse than in a tie for Wins in the AL.
No worse than 2nd in strikeouts depending on Price's final start Sunday.
No worse than 3rd in ERA with his 2.44 depending on Felix' start Sunday, which I assume will be deferred to the playoffs.

[The only blemish that we will ask everyone to forget is his last bad start, against the Tigers so it was important, at the start of September. And then of course there's the fact that until about a month ago no one outside of Cleveland had ever heard of him.]

One thing I hope nobody forgets about Kluber's performance this year: His utter cool, his sangfroid, his level-headedness, his absolute imperturbability when being pelted with popcorn, sunflower seeds, and whatever else that was during a TV interview in the dugout.

He is so much more than we had any reason to anticipate. My outside hope was that he would develop into an equivalent of who traded for him: Jake Westbrook, a middle of the rotation reliable innings eater. But my realistic expectation was that he would get a couple September tryouts and would spend the rest of his pro career in AAA. Never a particularly highly rated prospect. He personally and the coaches deserve tons of credit for his development.

NY Times baseball writer Tyler Kepner makes his case for Kluber for the Cy Young based on his "surge to the finish. . . Kluber was better [than Felix] at the things he could control, allowing fewer home runs and walks, with more strikeouts. For durability and dominance, especially in the pennant rate, Kluber gets the slight edge"

Now Felix is trying to screw things up with 6 strikeouts in 3 one-hit innings so far today.

And Price edged Corey for strikeout total by about 3.

is Kepner from Cleveland? He also names Brantley No. 2 to Trout in the AL MVP race, a spot of Victor and the rest of his top 6 include a couple of Joe's friends: No.4 Jose Bautista No.5 Jose Abreu No.6 Nelso Cruz

Peter Gammons ‏@pgammo Sep 27

Hard to believe that on the second to last day the Rays, Red Sox and Yankees are the AL's 3 lowest-scoring teams.

Felix went 5 1-hit innings and exited. Fanned 7. Won the game to finish at 15-8. ERA 2.14.

Wishing all Forumites a happy offseason and a better 2015. I was not disappointed in the team's results in 2014. Some individual disappointments. Some unexpected improvements. I'd much rather be an Indians fan than a Yankees fan at this point with our pitching and core of position players under contract. Need more starting pitching depth in the likely case that at least one of the young strong 5 regresses or is hurt. Need Kipnis to hit 270 with 15-20 homers and ditto steals. Need a RH hitter as DH or RF. And then we are back in the playoffs.

If the Indians could somehow sign Victor, they could have a pretty nice line up

CF - Bourn
2b - Kipnis
LF - Brantley
DH - Victor
1B - Santana
C - Gomes
3B - Chisenhall/Avilles platoon
RF - Swisher/Murphy platoon
SS - Ramirez