This season has been a test for the Cleveland Indians offense but they may have shown signs of life in the series win in Boston.
Even though the Indians offense look like it broke through previously, this time it was against a real team. This time it seems real. The competition in Boston is much better than the collection of players that currently wear a Baltimore Orioles uniform.
Cleveland needed to score runs in order to win games and they did just that. The Indians averaged 8.7 runs per game and 11.7 hits en route to a series win against the Red Sox. Cleveland really needed those runs as the Boston offense is no joke and can slug with the best of them.
The Tribe have struggled in the extra-base hit all season long but things were much different over the past three games. Cleveland collected 16 extra-base hits against Boston. This includes 10 doubles, three triples and three home runs. The three triples came in the third game of the series. Prior to Wednesday’s game the Indians were only one of two teams without a triple this season. Greg Allen came away with two while Carlos Santana surprisingly had a triple of his own. Santana was actually a single shy of the cycle in the 14-9 victory.
The Indians slash line over the past three games is a shocking .310/.409/.531 with an OPS of .940. This is not the most sustainable number but it appears that this offense is finally heading in the right direction after being quite lackluster up to this point. As everyone knows baseball is a game of averages. If a certain statistic is extremely high or low it will eventually level out. Cleveland’s offensive statistics were the lowest of the low and with it’s performance over the past three games things appear to be correcting themselves.
