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The Indians won again last night. Corey Kluber pitched like his usual awesome self, Andrew Miller pitched like his usual awesome self and Cody Allen pitched like his usual awesome self. Add in some great Lindor-and-Ramirez defense and Jason Kipnis' bat and you have a 3-1 victory over the White Sox.
Corey Kluber has been on quite a run of late. Almost like he's one of those A-word things. And Miller's past two outings have been as good as humanly possible, retiring 12-of-12 batters on 36 pitches. I guess it's possible he could have gotten 12 outs on 10 batters faced with some inherited runner DPs mixed in, but let's not be too nitpicky.
News and Notes
• Michael Brantley had surgery and is expected to make a recovery in 4 months. Sooo, 7-to-9.
• Corey Kluber's Cy Young case continues to pick up steam. This time, when a national writer needed some content, Kluber was ranked #1 on a list of contenders for the award.
• The Tigers traded Mike Aviles (AKA The Weather) and their 4th round pick last year, Kade Scivicque, to the Atlanta Braves for Erick Aybar. Assumedly, Aviles had negative trade value and they had to give up a better minor leaguer to unload his contract. The bad news here is that the Braves will probably DFA Aviles now—and he'll be available for Tito to squee over.
• Replacing Aybar on the Atlanta infield will be top prospect Dansby Swanson. Meanwhile, Shelby Miller...
• Charlie Blackmon has become really good. Just a few months ago, some Rockies fans were willing to package him with CarGo for some juicy Indians prospects. Alas, hard to complain about the current production of Davis-Naquin-Chisenhall-Guyer. And on the horizon, [cries]... the Yankees have.................nevermind.
• Joe Nathan signed a MILB deal with the Giants.
• I wanted the Indians to inquire about Nathan Eovaldi at the deadline. It's a good thing they didn't ultimately land him, as Eovaldi has a UCL injury and will miss both this season and next.
• Shawn Armstrong is still dominating minor league hitters.
• The enviable Cubs got to play the Brewers twice yesterday. That's just not fair. They won the first 4-0 and the second 4-1. And Anthony Rizzo made another of these catches.