The Indians are poised to extend the Summer of Cleveland into the fall
Summer 2016 is unquestionably the Summer of Cleveland.
A new day has dawned along the Cuyahoga thanks to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The pale that once hung over the city is gone — The Curse has been lifted — and these warm summer months are the perfect time to keep the party going.
Sitting atop the American League Central division, thanks in large part to a franchise-record 14-game win streak, the Cleveland Indians are feeling the good vibes. The Indians won't be the team to break The Curse, but they can double down on Cleveland's good fortune.
"There's definitely a different energy about the city right now," says Indians ace Corey Kluber. "The way the Cavs won it, it lifted everybody — everybody has that sense of belief right now. Maybe in the past, they might have been waiting for something to go wrong, now it's everyone believing 'hey, they did it, why can't the Indians do it?'
Yes, people in Cleveland are finally asking "why not?" and to this point, there hasn't been a good retort.
The Indians look as if they're going to extend the Summer of Cleveland to the fall.
Make no mistake, these Indians aren't some scrappy upstart, riding a wave of momentum into the All-Star break. They're the real deal, and they're not going away anytime soon. They have a starting rotation that has the best xFIP (fielding independent pitching) in the American League, a bullpen that strands 76 percent of runners, excellent hitting, league-leading base running, and equally important to all of that is Francisco Lindor.
Cleveland Indians SS Francisco Lindor.
The Indians' supernova shortstop might be the best player in the American League, but he was relatively unmolested Monday morning at All-Star player media availability. While Bryce Harper and Mike Trout were mobbed, the young, dynamic leader of arguably the best team in the American League spent a good deal of time on his phone. He didn't mind.
The effect Lindor's had on the Indians comes across as hyperbolic. Cleveland was a good team before the phenom shortstop showed up, but they became a true title contender when he arrived.
Lindor knew last year that this Indians team could win a title. At 21, he deduced it was only a matter of time. He's unflappable in this belief.
"The chemistry that we have, the work ethic that the guys have. I always believed in this team. It was just a matter of putting it together," Lindor says. "August of last year, maybe late July, we started to pick it up, and we started to get closer. We got in the race. We just ran out of time. At that moment, I knew we had something special. It was just a matter of putting it together. Our pitching staff is the same — the exact same. Our infield is the same. It's the same thing, the team. We just added a couple of guys."
Defensively, the Indians' infield defense has gone from below average to among the league's best in the last two years with Lindor at shortstop. Lindor is probably the best defensive player in the sport — only the Giants' Brandon Crawford is in his class in defensive WAR, and no one comes close to Lindor when it comes to making spectacular plays. According to Inside Edge Fielding, Lindor makes more than a third of the plays the system labels "remote" — less than a 10 percent chance of being converted — three times as many as the second-best shortstop. Having a how-did-he-do-that defender up the middle solidifies the entire Indians defense — before Lindor, the Indians were a negative defensive squad, but when No. 12 showed up, in 2015, Cleveland jumped to 37.5 runs above average in the infield. This season, they're already at 37.6.
At the plate, Lindor has an impressive slash line of .306/.363/.460, putting him in the top five of shortstops, in the company of Corey Seager, Xander Bogaerts, and a notch above Carlos Correa.
If Lindor keeps this up, and there's little reason to believe the 22-year-old from Puerto Rico won't, he should receive plenty of votes for American League MVP.
Not that you'd get any indication he's the best player on one of the best teams in baseball from hanging around him.
"It's weird and amazing," pitcher Danny Salazar says. "In the place he is, the way he works — it's something from a different world. It's crazy. A lot of guys, they have a name, they're the No. 1 prospect in the organization, they stop working because they think they have everything."
Not Lindor. Salazar laughs at the notion the shortstop could ride on his reputation.
Barring injuries or an out-of-this-world run from a division rival, the Indians will be in the playoffs this fall, but unlike years past, they won't have the burden of a city's losses on their shoulders. Who knows what can happen when, as Kluber puts it, the worst-case scenario isn't the only thought running through everyone's mind.
Perhaps it could even be fun — an extension of the Summer of Cleveland.
"The positive energy has been great. You only want to feed off of positive stuff," says Lindor. "It's been real fun. Lots of fun."
