Game 99 open thread: Nationals vs. Indians

I spent the past weekend out of town at a conference, and therefore paid a little less attention to the Indians than I normally do. I got back to Cleveland on Tuesday evening. As I’m on vacation for the rest of the week, I had thought that maybe I’d jump on StubHub to try to find a cheap ticket for today’s game. I figured that since I only wanted one ticket, and because the game is being played in the afternoon, I could get a decent seat for less than face value. But no such luck. Even bleacher seats were going for like $30 and up.

I told my son about that and he laughed. “Well, yeah. Strasburg is pitching. What did you expect?” Suddenly it all made sense.

In the unlikely event that you’ve been paying as little attention to baseball as I had been, Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals has been having an outstanding season. True, he got rocked in his last start, taking the loss. But it was his first loss of the year! The guy is 13-1 with an ERA of 2.83 and a WHIP of 1.003.

The Indians are countering with Carlos Carrasco, who has an ERA of 2.31 and a WHIP of 1.027. On paper, this looks like one heck of a pitching battle.

Here are the starting lineups:

Feel free to weigh in with your comments!