Indians snap streak of unlikely awfulness with streak of unlikely greatness

Yan Gomes walked it off to beat the Royals by a score of 3-1. That’s all you really want to know about this game.

Mike Clevinger did some pretty good things, like holding the vaunted Kansas City Royals offense to one run over 7.1 innings, but he wasn’t particularly sharp. He was able to spread out nine hits and induced enough double plays to get out of trouble, though, which was enough to make up for a lack of strikeout stuff. The bullpen came to his aid for the final five outs, four of which were strikeouts.

I’m not even going to bother recapping the offense for the first seven innings of this game for you; you don’t want it. Just know that the Cleveland Indians wrapped up an astounding 23-straight innings of no scoring this afternoon, and they looked every bit of. Several fly balls that looked like they would be home runs in June died in the outfield.

Here’s a GIF of it felt, just pretend it ends “April 8 around 3:30 p.m.” because after that good things started happening:

In the eighth inning, Bradley Zimmer drew his first walk of the season (yes, more than a week into the season), and stole second base during the next at-bat. Francisco Lindor worked a favorable count to 0-2... then... just... bunted.

On a pure numbers level, it didn’t make sense, and it actually lowered the Indians’ win expectancy by over three percent. On a basic common sense level, it made even less sense. Lindor is the Tribe’s best hitter, Bradley Zimmer is one of the league’s fastest players already in scoring position. There were zero outs, Lindor already had an 2-0 count. Literally everything was working in his favor, yet he gave away an out to move a fast player to third, where his speed is negligible. It worked by completely luck when Jason Kipnis reached on a throwing error and Jose Ramirez had a weird quasi-bunt that almost resulted in a hit itself because of an errant throw.

But hey, whatever works. If that bunt unlocked some kind of mental block the team had, go for it. I’m never going to like it but I’m just some loser on a couch huddled in front of a heater snuggled in an oversized Frozen blanket.

None of that mattered anyway, because two innings later, Yan Gomes played the unlikely hero and hit a two-run home run that carried over the left field wall instead of dying at the warning track, nullifying the importance of the eighth-inning run, and more importantly locking down a series win for the Tribe over the Royals. And it was glorious. The only thing missing was the Chisentray.