Francisco Lindor clubs a grand slam in the in the fourth inning of Monday night’s game. He would homer again, a three-run shot, in the sixth inning as the Indians beat the Royals 9-3.
The first inning of Monday night’s game against the Royals made me a little nervous. It likely made a lot of Indians fans a bit nervous, as it was a little too familiar when compared to Corey Kluber’s last start against the St. Louis Cardinals. On the third pitch of the game, Kluber surrendered a solo home run to Whit Merrifield. He got the next batter, Rosell Herrera to ground out, then gave up a double to Mike Moustakas (who has plagued the Indians for years). Moustakas later scored on a Salvador Perez single, which gave the Royals a 2-0 lead by the end of the first inning.
Last Tuesday, when Kluber pitched the shortest start of his career, he gave up a home run to Matt Carpenter on the fourth pitch of the game. That was the only run he allowed in the first inning of that game, although he did allow five runs in the second. It was enough to make me dread what the next inning would bring.
However, Kluber turned it around almost immediately. He made an adjustment, and the ball was no longer up in the zone, just waiting for the Royals to slap it around the field. In fact, after the Perez single Kluber retired the next 10 Royals hitters in a row and seemed more like the pitcher we all know and love. The only other inning where the Royals really threatened was in the sixth inning, when they picked up a third run on three singles and stranded two runners on base.
Kluber was able to get ample run support for his cause, continuing his winning streak when the Indians score four or more runs. Kluber is now 74-0 when the Indians hit their four-run magic number, a streak that dates back to June 11, 2013. The Indians also got scoreless innings from Dan Otero, George Kontos, and Marc Rzepczynski in relief. In case you missed it, the Tribe snagged Scrabble off waivers on June 18 after he was released by the Mariners. They sent Adam Plutko back to Triple-A Columbus since Carrasco will be returning in a few days, and just like that Rzepczynski is back with the major league club. If nothing else, I’m glad that all of my hard work to learn to spell his name without looking it up didn’t completely go to waste.
The reason the Indians had so much run support on Monday night was thanks to a massive, big, huge, gigantic game from Francisco Lindor. He hit a grand slam in the fourth inning, to put the Indians up 6-2. Then in the sixth inning Lindor hit a three-run shot to give the Indians a 9-2 lead that eventually put the game to bed (as I mentioned, the Royals scored one more run in the bottom of that inning). The Tribe’s other two RBI came from sacrifice flies from Michael Brantley and Edwin Encarnacion in the third inning, which tied the game at two.
One of the things that will occasionally make me crazy when it comes to the Indians is when they continue to pitch to a crazy hot hitter. Like when they faced the Twins, and they just kept pitching to Eddie Rosario, letting him beat them again and again. I feel like we’ve seen this for the past couple of seasons – there’s a hot hitter that the Indians could easily pitch around, yet they never did. So at first, I found myself thinking “wow, I’m surprised the Royals are still pitching to Lindor.” Not complaining obviously, just a little surprised that they gave him the opportunity to pile on seven RBI. But then I thought about it…it’s not like they could pitch around Lindor and everything would be okay. You’d still have to face Michael Brantley, Jose Ramirez, and then Edwin Encarnacion. And we saw last week what happens when you pitch around Ramirez to get to Encarnacion – he hits a massive homer, and it was quite obvious that he was not pleased about being overlooked. So the Indians have created a pretty formidable lineup, from 1-4 in particular.
As I mentioned in the open thread for Monday night’s game, the Royals have been really struggling so far this season, with just 25 wins after 84 games (they’ve played one more game than the Indians so far). But sometimes those teams with nothing to lose can end up being a huge thorn in a contender’s side…I was glad to see that Francisco Lindor and Corey Kluber took care of that threat on Monday night.