Cleveland Indians Claim Home-Field Advantage in the ALDS
The Cleveland Indians will host game one of the American League Division Series at Progressive Field on Thursday.
The Cleveland Indians could do nothing but watch to find out what their immediate future holds, both in terms of making up last Thursday’s postponed game against the Detroit Tigers and where they will be playing when the American League Division Series against the Boston Red Sox gets underway on Thursday.
The verdict is that game one of the ALDS will be played at Progressive Field, with the Indians claiming the No. 2 seed in the American League.
Cleveland defeated Kansas City before the conclusion of Detroit’s 1-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves and Boston’s 2-1 defeat at the hands of the Toronto Blue Jays, and were forced to watch from the clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium to learn their fate.
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With their loss, the Tigers were officially eliminated from the AL Wild Card race. Baltimore and Toronto will play the play-in game in Toronto on Tuesday for the right to face the top-seeded Texas Rangers in the other Division Series in the American League.
The Indians overcame a deluge of injuries throughout the season to win their first AL Central Division title since 2007 and secure their first postseason berth since 2013 when they fell in the Wild Card game to the Tampa Bay Rays.
Michael Brantley appeared in just 11 games all season, Carlos Carrasco missed roughly two months with two separate injuries, Danny Salazar was shut down in early September, and Yan Gomes missed two months of his own with a pair of injuries. If Tribe fans had known all those facts entering the season, a division championship and playoff series would have seemed impossible.
In game one of the ALDS, Cleveland will send Trevor Bauer to the mound against Boston’s Rick Porcello, while former Cy Young award winners Corey Kluber and David Price will match up in game two before the series shifts to Fenway Park.
Playoff baseball is coming to the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, Tribe fans. Anything can happen, and as the Indians have proved all season long, they can never be counted out.
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