If you happened to have been out of town for the past week, as I was, you missed watching the Cleveland Indians play their best baseball of the season. The Tribe has won their last five games. The starting pitching and relief pitching has been effective, and perhaps most importantly, they’ve been hitting the cover off the baseball, scoring 40 runs during the winning streak. The Indians averaged 6.3 runs a game over their last ten games. Edwin Encarnacion is looking more and more like the player the Indians had hoped he’d be, and Lonnie Chisenhall has been hitting well, too.

Also swinging a very hot bat: Jose Ramirez, who was selected as the American League Player of the Week, the first Indian to be so selected this season. Ramirez has banged out sixteen hits over his last six games, and has had at least one extra-base hit in each of his last five games. In last Saturday’s doubleheader, Ramirez went 5 for 10, including two doubles and two home runs.

By sweeping the recent four-game series with the Minnesota Twins, the Tribe has gone from two games back in the AL Central to two games ahead of the Twins. They’ll see the Twins again later this week. But first, the Indians are playing a four-game series with the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards. Tonight Corey Kluber will take the mound for the Indians. Kluber had a no-decision in his last outing, but he pitched very well, allowing only two runs over seven innings while striking out ten.

The Orioles will counter with Dylan Bundy, who began the 2017 season strong, notching an ERA of 1.65 for the month of April. But his May was worse, with an ERA of 3.92, and his June has been worse still: 5.08. If the Indians can keep bringing the lumber, Bundy soon may wish he’d taken up his brother’s offer to work alongside him in Chicago as a shoe salesman.

Here are tonight’s starting lineups:

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