I watched the first few innings of Monday’s Indians-Rangers game on TV, but Carlos Carrasco was getting shelled, so I shut it off once the Rangers took a 9-2 lead. I mean, why bother? The Indians were going to lose, right? I mean, what did I think was going to happen, that the Indians would score, oh, I don’t know, 13 unanswered runs, and come back to win the game 15-9? As if.

Seriously, though, what an amazing comeback that was. At some point in the late innings, Tribe radio broadcasters Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus were talking about how like a comeback of that magnitude was just the thing the Indians needed to turn the season around, and to keep them focused on playing steady ball for the rest of the season. I hope they were right about that. Sure, comeback victories like that are thrilling, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the Tribe reel off a string of victories with scores like 5-3 or something like that. My aging heart can take only so much excitement! I’d rather have my heart attack ten minutes after winning the fourth game of the World Series than to have it during the last week of June. Help a guy out, Indians!

Righty Mike Clevinger makes his ninth start of 2017 for the Indians tonight. Clevinger is 3-3 with an ERA of 3.86. Clevinger tends not to work deep into games, averaging less than 5 1/3 innings per start this year. Considering how many innings the bullpen had to work yesterday after Cookie crumbled, it’d be nice to see Clevinger pitch into the seventh inning or more today.

The Rangers are starting Tyson Ross, another righty. A few years ago, Ross’s future looked bright. As a member of the San Diego Padres, he made the National League All-Star team in 2014, and recorded an ERA of 2.81 while pitching nearly 200 innings. But after leading the National League with 33 starts for the Padres in 2015, Ross was injured on Opening Day 2016, and didn’t pitch in another game all season. After undergoing surgery last October, the Padres released Ross; months later he was signed as a free agent by the Rangers. Today he will make his third start of the season. He brings a record of 1-1 and an ERA of 9.35. Let’s hope the Indians offense does nothing to bring that figure back down to earth!

Here are tonight’s starting lineups. Thanks for reading IPL, and feel free to leave comments below.

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