The Cleveland Indians are coming off their second straight sweep of the Detroit Tigers and look to continue their winning ways against the Royals at home.
It was quite the weekend for the Cleveland Indians. Not only did the Indians sweep the Tigers for the second straight series, the arrival of Bobby Bradley punctuated Sunday’s victory. The Tribe have won three out of their past five series, the only two non-wins were splits. Now Cleveland is looking to win yet another series as they play host to the Kansas City Royals.
Cleveland has gone 8-2 over their past 10 games. The only two losses saw Cleveland struggling to score as they only managed two runs in each loss. Cleveland’s victories saw the offense explode as they are averaging 7.75 runs per game in their eight wins. The lowest run output came in Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Detroit.
The Indians pitching staff has been outstanding during this stretch as well. Cleveland is only allowing 3.3 runs per game over the last 10 including only 2.75 runs allowed in their eight wins.
Adam Plutko, Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer will start this series for the Tribe. They will look to continue Cleveland’s excellent stretch of pitching against the division rival Royals.
Jason Kipnis’ turnaround at the plate over the past six games is certainly helping the production of the offense. As Zack Meisel noted, Kipnis fixed his swing and has been on fire since.
Expanding upon the time frame, Kipnis is slashing .448/.515/.862 with an OPS of 1.377 with three home runs, one double, one triple and 13 runs driven in. Kipnis has also limited his strikeouts (2) and increased his walks (4). Kipinis only has 19 walks on the year and his four over the last eight games have accounted for nearly one-fifth of his overall total. Even if Kipnis does experience a dip in production any contributions from plate should help the Indians offense against the Royals.
