Cleveland Indians: Close Games May Be Tribe's Secret Weapon
Fans of the Cleveland Indians may want to invest in antacid before the World Series gets underway, because the Tribe thrives in close games.
It might be hell on the nerves, but the Cleveland Indians should be hoping not for blowouts in the World Series, but for tightly-contested games. The Tribe was among the very best in baseball in one-run games during the 2016 regular season, and advanced stats show that they may have an advantage over the Chicago Cubs when it comes to close games.
Cleveland went 28-21 during the regular season in one-run games, good for fifth-best in Major League Baseball, and have tacked on another three wins in such situations during the postseason. Chicago, on the other hand, had a 22-23 record in one-run affairs during the regular season, which ranked 15th, and is 2-1 in those contests in the playoffs.
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Another positive for the Indians comes from FanGraphs’ “Clutch” metric, which measures how well players perform in high-leverage situations. Cleveland ranked 14th out of the 30 teams in MLB offensively by this stat, while Chicago came in at 25th.
Of players that would be expected to be in the lineup in most games, only Addison Russell has a positive Clutch rating for the Cubs, while Jose Ramirez, Lonnie Chisenhall, and Carlos Santana are all in the black for the Indians.
While regular season rankings have no impact on what happens during the small sample size of a best-of-seven series and can be misleading for predictive purposes, the difference between the two clubs in high-leverage situations is not small by this metric.
These two bits of information suggest that in a tight game, Cleveland may well have the upper hand. As we have seen throughout the postseason, that plays directly into the team’s blueprint for winning games.
The Tribe’s strategy in the playoffs has been simple: get an early lead, pitch your starter into the fifth or sixth inning, and then let the bullpen take over to close things out. It’s been terribly effective, too, as the relief corps has posted a minuscule 1.67 earned run average, led by the utter dominance of Andrew Miller and Cody Allen.
Of course, the Cubs present a more formidable challenge for Cleveland than either Boston or Toronto did in the effort to score early. In the first three innings of games this season, Red Sox pitchers posted a 4.35 ERA, while Blue Jays pitchers came in at 3.13. By comparison, Chicago’s staff allowed a mere 2.85 ERA early in games, making an uphill climb for the Indians to play to the script that they’ve followed in October.
The one thing Tribe fans can hang their hats on, though, is that just as statistics from the regular season cannot predict how a team will fare in close games and clutch situations, they also can’t say for certain that a pitching staff that has been stingy early on in games will continue to be so.
We’re only a few hours away from first pitch in this World Series, when all of the analyzing, scrutinizing, and prediction will be rendered moot. For Cleveland, the recipe for success in the postseason has been clear, and closely-contested games are one of the main ingredients. If the Indians can continue that trend against the Cubs, they may be able to grasp baseball’s ultimate prize.
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