Omar Infante provides further evidence that the baseball gods hate Cleveland

Royals 8, Indians 4

box score

Tribe falls to 72-73

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The Kansas City Royals are a good team. I don't think they're a great team, but they're a good team, and there's no shame in losing to a good team. It's going to happen sometimes. However, losing because Omar Infante hit for three-fourths of the cycle and drove in seven runs, that's a different story.

The story of the night coming into the game was the return of Corey Kluber, who'd been on the shelf for almost three weeks. A(nother) great play by Francisco Lindor helped Kluber get through a scoreless 1st inning, but a bad throw by Giovanny Urshela allowed the leadoff man to reach base in the 2nd, and Kluber then allowed a single. That meant there were two runners on with nobody out, which isn't a good situation, but Omar Infante was coming to the plate, and Omar Infante has been awful at the plate this season, like, arguably the worst hitter in baseball among all regulars.

So of course, Omar Infante hit a three-run home run. It was only his second home run of the season, and if you can't figure out what team he hit that other home run against, you are not able to use context clues at a the grade level.

The Indians got right back into the game though, when a Jason Kipnis single combined with one of four Kansas City errors on the night (not a typo) allowed a pair of runs to cross the plate in the bottom half of the 2nd, cutting the deficit to one run.

Kluber allowed only one base runner during the next two innings, and struck out four in the process, but Terry Francona wasn't going to let him go very far, and pulled him after just 62 pitches. Kyle Crockett, Jeff Manship, and Gavin Floyd soon worked together to turn that one-run margin into a five-run hole, and that was that. Infante drove in two runs with a double in the 5th, and two more runs with a single in the 7th, giving him a career-high 7 RBI for the night. That shouldn't have happened.

Carlos Santana had three hits, and Kipnis and Jose Ramirez each had two. Their contributions weren't nearly enough though, and the Indians are back below .500 again. The Astros are losing right now, so the Tribe will likely remain four games back in the Wild Card chase, but whatever slim postseason hope remains won't survive another game like this from the likes of Omar Infante.

Win Expectancy Chart

Source: FanGraphs

Roll Call

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