The Cleveland Indians held a 6-3 lead heading into the ninth inning but a disastrous appearance from Brad Hand has the Royals coming out on top.
Perhaps it is time to give Brad Hand a few days off. Hand was making his fifth appearance in six days and things could not have gone worse. The Indians were up by three runs and a win seemed extremely likely. Unfortunately Hand gave up five consecutive hits including a grand slam to Hunter Dozier as Hand was unable to hold onto the lead in the ninth and the Tribe fell 8-6.. The Indians will now head into the rubber match on Wednesday needing a win to come out on top in the series.
The unfortunate part of the result is that a decent start from Shane Bieber was wasted. Bieber had to work around some baserunners throughout the contest, but only allowed two runs on five hits in 5.1 innings of work. A third run did score but that was unearned.
Here is some good news for the Indians. Cleveland got home runs from Roberto Perez, Mike Freeman, Tyler Naquin and Carlos Santana. The power surge for the Tribe has been a welcome sight for a team that could not hit their way out of paper bag back in April. In fact only one run did not come via the long ball. Oscar Mercado drove in Francisco Lindor in the bottom of the first. Lindor and Mercado both went 2-5 on the day.
There were only two hitters in the Cleveland lineup who did end up with a hit on Tuesday. Jason Kipnis went 0-3 with a walk and Bobby Bradley was 0-4. This was a rather unwelcome sight for Cleveland. Kipnis has been on fire as of late. Bradley had back-to-back games with RBI doubles to start his career.
