Cleveland Indians Make Final Trip to West Coast for Series with the A’s

Numbers to Know

14

Oakland comes into the series ranked 14th out of 15 teams in the American League in runs scored, averaging four runs per game and being outscored by a 101 runs on the season. The team is dead last in the league in both on-base percentage and OPS.

Cleveland, on the other hand, is outscoring its opponents by 105 runs in 2016, the second-best run differential in the AL, and boasts a pitching staff that leads the league in bWAR. Tribe pitchers have a combined earned run average of 3.83 and a batting average against of .241, both of which rank second behind only the Blue Jays.

As the Indians average over five runs per game and feature one of the stingiest pitching staffs in the league, the advantage on paper is clearly in the club’s favor against the woebegone A’s.

32

Despite Oakland’s offensive struggles as a team, one player who can do major damage is Khris Davis, who comes into the series third in the American League with 32 home runs and just outside the top ten in both RBIs and slugging percentage. The 28-year old is in just his third full season in the big leagues after being picked up in a trade with the Milwaukee Brewers in the offseason.

When the A’s and Indians hooked up for three games at the end of July, Tribe pitching limited Davis to a 1-for-11 line, with a home run, an RBI, a walk, and four strikeouts. But he comes into this series hot, having gone 5-for-11 in his last three games (against the Chicago White Sox) with two homers, five RBIs, and four runs scored.

Davis is hitting .290 in the month of August, and has hit 17 of his home runs in his home ballpark. With the departure of Reddick, much of the pressure to produce in the middle of the lineup has fallen to him, and he has thus far responded.

81.6

Cleveland leads the AL with 102 stolen bases and an 81.6 percent success rate. As has been on display in recent weeks, particularly in the series at Progressive Field against the Los Angeles Angels, the Indians are using their baserunning as a weapon.

According to FanGraphs, the Tribe is tops in all of baseball in weighted stolen bases and it isn’t even close. The club is also second in MLB in speed score. All of which is to say Cleveland will exert pressure on Oakland’s pitching staff and catchers when it reaches base.

Regular A’s catcher Stephen Vogt is throwing out about 29 percent of attempted base stealers in 2016, which puts him in the bottom half of the American League. It is an advantage that the Indians will want to exploit.

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