Today is the last day you'll see baseball in Cleveland this year.
Last Night's Game
Saturday Recap: Michael Brantley notches hit #200 but Indians lose to Tampa Bay 2-0 - Let's Go Tribe
Tampa Bay shuts out Cleveland Indians, 2-0; Michael Brantley reaches 200 hits | cleveland.com
Tampa Bay Rays at Cleveland Indians - September 27, 2014 | MLB.com CLE Recap
Last night's 2-0 defeat was a rather typical second-half loss for the Indians, in that a great pitching performance was wasted because the other club's pitchers were also great. It is Chris Antonetti's task this winter to ensure that these types of losses are few and far between in 2015.
Tribe News
Later today the BBWAA writers must turn in their ballots for the year-end awards. The reason why today is the deadline and not the day after the World Series is that the playoffs could influence the voting of a regular-season award. So although the winners are announced in November, the winners are selected in late September.
Castrovince makes the case for Kluber for the AL Cy Young, and he has a lot of evidence and logic to stand on. A couple rather questionable scoring changes have made the gap between Hernandez's and Kluber's ERA larger than it should be (as well as tell you relying on ERA to evaluate a pitcher is not something you should be doing). In addition, Kluber did his pitcher in front of the worst defense in captivity, he did it in a more difficult home pitching environment than Hernandez, and in several alternative pitching measures has actually been the better pitcher. But I believe that all these arguments will be thrown to the side, as Hernandez this afternoon will pitch with the season on the line, and the last thing voters will see before turning in their ballots will be Felix's performance - good, bad, or indifferent - and that will tip the balance in the voting.
Carlos Carrasco: "They trusted me, now I trust myself:' Cleveland Indians notes | cleveland.com
Carrasco's emergence as a top-flight starting pitcher may not have saved the 2014 season, but it has greatly changed the outlook for 2015. With Kluber and Carrasco at the top of the rotation, and Danny Salazar and Trevor Bauer behind them, the Indians already have their main starters in place. Although I'm sure Chris Antonetti will obey the GM dictum "to go and find more pitching even it thou thinkest thou hast enough". starting pitching will not be the priority that we thought it would several months ago. By the way, remember the Justin Masterson extension negotiations in Spring Training? Good times.
MLB News
If everything breaks right today, there will be three tiebreaker games tomorrow. One (Seattle-Oakland) to determine the second AL Wild Card spot, and two (Detroit-Kansas City and St. Louis-Pittsburgh) to determine the AL Central and NL Central champions, respectively. The reason why divisional tiebreakers are held now (prior to 2012 they broke the tie by head-to-head record) is because the difference now is so great (5-game series for division winner vs sudden-death playoff for Wild Card team) that it would be unfair to decide the fates of the two teams in an off-field calculation.
What is fascinating, though, is that Pittsburgh is likely not starting Gerrit Cole today, even though that would likely mean the Pirates would not have a chance to win the division. The thinking being that Cole in a one-game Wild Card matchup would give the team a better chance to make it to the Division Series than Cole in Game 162 and another starter in a potential tiebreaker (assuming that the Cardinals lose to Arizona this afternoon). Now had the Pirates won yesterday, they would have controlled their own destiny, as so perhaps would have sent Cole to the mound today. And perhaps Clint Hurdle might change his mind this morning.
Anyway, here's the games that have playoff implications.
All games are free on MLB.TV today, so if you are reading this, you will be able the following games live:
AL Central - Detroit leads Kansas City by 1 game
Minnesota (Gibson) at Detroit (Price), 1:08 PM
Kansas City (Ventura) at Chicago (Bassitt), 2:10 PM
AL Wild Card - Oakland leads Seattle by 1 game
Oakland (Gray) at Texas (Martinez), 3:05 PM
LA Angels (Rasmus) at Seattle (Hernandez), 4:10 PM
NL Central - St. Louis leads Pittsburgh by 1 game
Pittsburgh (Cole or TBA) at Cincinnati (Cueto), 1:10 PM
St. Louis (Wainwright) at Arizona (Collmeneter), 4:10 PM
Latest 25-man/40-man Roster
(click to embiggen)
Note - this does not include last night's game. I'll update this later this morning.
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