The Aftermath: Three Takeaways from the Indians’ 2-1 Win Over Kansas City

The Cleveland Indians knocked off the Kansas City Royals with yet another walkoff win on Tuesday night.

Pack it in. The season’s over, right? The Cleveland Indians have just endured too much.

That was not the case on Tuesday night at Progressive Field, as the Tribe defeated the Kansas City Royals 2-1 with their 11th walkoff win of the season. This team is never out of it, and it’s foolish to ever think otherwise.

The hero in this one was Brandon Guyer, who delivered a two-out game-winner down the right field line off Joakim Soria, just beyond the outstretched glove of Paulo Orlando, to drive home Coco Crisp and put Cleveland back in the win column once again.

With the win, the Indians’ magic number shrunk to six with just 12 games remaining in the regular season. The Detroit Tigers won big in Minnesota against the Twins, so the Tribe’s lead in the American League Central Division remains at seven games.

Josh Tomlin put together his second straight solid start after having lost his spot in the rotation due to a nightmarish July and August. In just his third appearance in the month of September, the right-hander tossed 6.2 innings, allowing just one run on five hits, not walking a batter and striking out three.

That’s now two runs in 11.2 innings (1.54 ERA) for Tomlin since being pressed back into duty with the injuries to Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco, as he begins to once again build up his pitch count.

The lone blemish for Tomlin came courtesy of an Alex Gordon RBI single in the fifth, though a misplay by Abraham Almonte contributed. KC catcher Salvador Perez scored on the play, but had Almonte come up with the ball cleanly, it likely wouldn’t have happened.

The Gordon RBI tied the game after a third inning solo home run from Cleveland’s Carlos Santana, his 33rd of the season, and was all the offense allowed until the bottom of the ninth.

The two sides will square off in the second game of the series at 7:10 p.m. ET on Wednesday night, with Corey Kluber facing off against Ian Kennedy.

JT is OK

After coming through the first half of the season with a 9-2 mark, 3.51 earned run average, and allowing exactly a league average OPS+ of 100, Tomlin began to wear down. He had just a 3.05 ERA in 20.2 July innings, but began to give up home runs at a higher clip, and everything exploded in August.

In 26.2 August innings, he allowed 34 earned runs (11.48 ERA), serving up 21 extra-base hits including 10 homers, and yielded a .365/.394/.690 slash line to opponents. After an August 25th start against Houston in which he gave up eight runs, seven earned, and lasted just 4.1 innings, Tomlin was demoted from his spot in the rotation.

In his three September outings (two starts, one relief appearance), he has looked much fresher, with fastball command on the outer reaches of the strike zone, greater feel and movement on his cutter, and better depth and location to his curveball.

With the injuries the Indians have endured to the rotation, Tomlin’s importance in the postseason cannot be overstated. If he can continue to pitch as he has the last two times out, he can be an asset to the club, and ease some of the burden that Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer will be forced to shoulder.

Slamtana

Santana’s home run in the third inning not only added onto his career-high total this season, it was the 150th of his career. Despite what many fans and social media accounts may perceive as a player who has not reached his potential, all the 30-year old has done during his six and a half MLB seasons is average 33 doubles, 25 home runs, 85 RBIs, a .364 on-base percentage, and an OPS+ of 120.

The Tribe must decide after the season whether or not to pick up his team option of $12 million for 2017, and there simply isn’t a world in which that doesn’t happen. If the club is smart, they’ll lock him up for an additional 2-4 years with an extension.

The narrative with Santana is that his batting average is dismal, he doesn’t hit in the clutch, can’t run the bases, and can’t play defense, when in fact he consistently proves these ideas wrong (other than maybe the batting average, which is a supremely flawed statistic). On the free agent market, he would fetch more than $12 million per year, and the odds are not in favor of Cleveland finding similar production for the same price unless they hit on another Mike Napoli-like free agent.

Learn to appreciate Carlos, Indians fans. He’s been better than you think for longer than you think, and he probably won’t be around forever.

Air Conditioning at Napoli’s

We love Napoli here at Wahoo’s on First, and there’s no denying he has been the “right-handed power bat” that Tribe faithful have pined for since the early days of the millennium. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that he reached some rarefied air on Tuesday night, and not the good kind.

When he struck out swinging to end the third inning, Napoli logged his 185th K of the season, which put him in a tie with Jim Thome for the most in a single season in franchise history. In the eighth, he again went down swinging to end the inning, his 186th on the year, and the record was all his.

Next: Could Corey Kluber be the Indians' MadBum?

This team wouldn’t be in the position it’s in without Napoli, and won’t get to where it ultimately wants to go without him, either. That he is now the Indians’ all-time single season strikeout king is, hopefully, just an asterisk on the way to something much bigger.