Francisco Lindor’s monster home run pushes Indians over Astros

Wow.

We were just treated to:

• As good of a midweek baseball series there can be in April
• Another Corey Kluber gem of a start
• Francisco Lindor hitting the longest HR of his career, an amazingly beautiful go-ahead blast
• Yan Gomes doing Yan Gomes things defensively
• Cody Allen dancing the tight rope again before closing out the victory in dramatic fashion

So yes, the Tribe’s 4-3 comeback victory over the Astros was pretty darn great. With the win, the Indians take the series win and improve to 12-9 on the year. Let’s dig a bit deeper on a few of the fun bullets from above . . .

First off, Corey Kluber was far from perfect, but really battled back after a rough first few innings. The Tribe’s ace allowed a home run to Marwin Gonzalez in the second inning, which gave the Astros an early lead, and then two more runs in the third after RBI’s from Evan Gattis and Alex Bregman. That’d be all the scoring for Houston, as Kluber finished with a line of three earned runs on eight hits over seven innings. Kluber also struck out 10 Astros, his 25th time in the bigs of punching out 10+ batters.

The Lindor home run was great too. Everybody’s favorite shortstop absolutely belted a two-run homer to right-center field in the seventh inning to give the Indians their first lead of the game. The blast traveled an estimated 456 feet, the longest of Lindor’s career, and came off an 84 mph changeup from Houston reliever Chris Devenski.

Of course, the ninth inning wasn’t dull. The inning started with closer Cody Allen giving up a little dinky single to Jose Altuve. It seemed likely that Altuve would run, and he did, but Yan Gomes’ bullet of a throw got the speedster with plenty of room to spare. Next came singles from Josh Reddick and Carlos Beltran, setting up a huge matchup with Carlos Correa. The Astros stud shortstop didn’t deliver though, weakly popping up to first base. Allen then struck out Brian McCann on a dirty breaking ball to finish ‘em off and calm Tribe fans’ blood pressure.

Next up for the Indians is a weekend matchup with the visiting Seattle Mariners. Carlos Carrasco is scheduled to start tomorrow, facing off against left-handed Ariel Miranda. Let’s Go Tribe!