CLEVELAND – While the city of Cleveland has had their fare share of celebrating the World Champion Cavaliers this week, their neighbors across the street have quietly become one of the most dangerous teams in all of baseball.
With another outstanding pitching performance from their starter, the Indians Wednesday night wrapped up their home schedule in June with a perfect 11-0 mark, this after a solid 6-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays.
Trevor Bauer dominated the Rays, allowing just one run on three hits in going the distance. He’s 2-0 in June and has allowed just eight earned runs in 38.2 innings.
“He’s pounding the strike zone with really good stuff,” Indians manager Terry Francona said. “He’s changing speeds, it’s been fun to watch.”
Bauer walked one and struck out 10, the second time this season he’s done that, the other time was June 6th in a 3-1 win at Seattle over the Mariners.
The Tribe starter who began the year in the pen now has a 2.22 ERA on the year, and has six straight quality starts, the longest streak of quality starts in his career.
“He’s worked really hard to condition his arm and it shows,” Francona said. “He’s cut back some of his bullpens, which I think is helping.
“It’s been very consistent and at a very high level.”
The Indians push their record to 41-30, and now sit at 23-12 at Progressive Field. The team won’t play another home game until they host the Tigers on July 4th.
For now, the 11-0 mark in June is the best month the team has ever had at home, their first undefeated month in franchise history when playing at least 10 games.
Not too bad for a team that was under .500 at home last season.
“It’s always a weird thing with teams, one year their really good at home, the next year not as good,” Bauer said. “It’s nice to win at home I can tell you that.
“Fans come out and support us, we had a really good crowd here tonight, to hear the excitement and them getting really loud in the 9th was really cool.”
While the Rays couldn’t figure out Bauer, the Indians had little issues against Rays starter Chris Archer, who they roughed up for four runs on six hits over 6 innings.
Jason Kipnis started the offense rolling with his 9th homer of the season in center in the first, and then Jose Ramírez singled to center later in the inning, scoring Francisco Lindor to make it 3-0.
Ramirez had two hits on the night, and is batting .296.
Carlos Santana who was 2-for-3 with two runs scored, doubled to deep center in the fourth to score Lonnie Chisenhall to give the Indians a 4-0 edge.
After the Rays scored their only run in the 7th off Bauer, the Tribe came back with two more in the bottom of the inning to close out the scoring at 6-1.
They got RBI’s that inning from Santana and Lindor to put the game out of reach.
The team will travel to start a series at Detroit on Friday night after an off day on Thursday.
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