Squeaky clean Jose Ramirez leads Indians past White Sox

Jose Ramirez would like you to know reports of him being on PEDs are completely fabricated. He would also like to keep playing like a man on fire, because why the hell not?

Continuing his amazing 2018 campaign, The Angry Hamster went 2-for-4 with a double and home run. His double gave the Indians their first (and only required) lead of the game, and his home run was a blistered 102.2 mile-per-hour home run that hopefully flew directly into the soul of whatever rando blogger decided it was a good day to just go on the internet and lie.

Jose wasn’t the only hero, tonight. All three arms of the Indians’ deadly Crimson Typhoon came out to play tonight — Ramirez’s aforementioned two hits were there, as were Lindor’s 2-for-5 night and Michael Brantley’s 2-for-4 night with a home run. Combined, the trio went 7-for-13, tying the entire White Sox lineup’s hit total. Their three combined extra-base hits were also better than the White Sox, who could only muster two.

You’re probably tempted to fire up those “Well the Indians only won because they played a bad team!” takes and I’m here to politely ask you to save them for another time. Like never, perhaps.

The April 2018 Cleveland Indians faced some bad pitchers in their day, but they never put seven runs on them, and they sure as hell didn’t hit three home runs in the same game. Facing bad pitching helps, but if you can’t, you can’t hit. And right now, the Indians can hit. Don’t start looking for ways to cheapen the Indians winning, just enjoy it while you can, before the inevitable slump hits. Baseball is fun, and the Indians offense is fun, damnit. Jason Kipnis homered! His batting average skyrocketed to .197 on his 2-for-4 night. What more do you want as proof that these guys might finally be coming around.

Mike Clevinger took a couple innings to get the strikeouts working, but he eventually finished with seven over 6.2 innings of work. I don’t have a lot of insightful things to say about Clevinger’s outing here, it was just... good? He induced 12 swinging strikes and 18 called, neither of which are outrageous numbers, and he spread out a handful of hits to eventually turn in one of his better pitching performances of the season. He was quietly impressive, which at this point is a compliment. The guys in the booth talked a lot about Clevinger has worked to calm himself down before and during starts and it feels like it’s working. He’s not a surprisingly good pitcher anymore — he’s just good.

The bullpen, on the other hand, was surprisingly good. Jeff Beliveau didn’t record a single out before giving up a home run, but at least Tito had the confidence in Zach McAllister to yank Beliveau immediately, and we didn’t have to see Cody Allen’s zombified arm forced to pitch again.

The Indians are now on a four-game winning streak and will look to finish off the sweep of the Chicago White Sox tomorrow. Hell yeah.