The Cleveland Baseball Club split their back-to-back doubleheaders with the Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago White Sox at home.
It was a daunting task facing the Cleveland Baseball Club coming into Sunday. Following the postponement of Saturday’s game with the Toronto Blue Jays it set up an uncommon occurrence in baseball, playing doubleheaders on consecutive days. A doubleheader with the Chicago White Sox was already scheduled for Monday due to a previous postponement. It wasn’t easy, but Cleveland managed to split the batch of doubleheaders.
Funny enough, Cleveland lost the first game of each doubleheaders while winning the second. It was a 4-1 loss early on Sunday and a 6-5 win against Toronto. Chicago won the first game 8-6 in extras, eight innings, while Cleveland came away with a 3-1 win in the second game.
The new rules for doubleheaders this season, seven inning games, helped Cleveland tremendously. Injuries to the pitching staff and inconsistent performances have left the rotation in a constant state of flux. If the previous length of games for doubleheaders was still in place, Cleveland would be a lot worse off pitching wise. It is a lot easier to fill 14 innings than 18 innings. Also, considering that some of the pitchers Cleveland used have had trouble going deep into games (Triston McKenzie, Sam Hentges, Cal Quantrill), this could not have came at a better time. Luckily McKenzie was able to go 5.1 innings while the others pitched a bit less. This should allow the team to reset their pitching rotation starting Tuesday with Shane Bieber.
