Cleveland Indians: Thoughts after a much-needed victory in Kansas City

The Cleveland Indians ended a four-game losing streak this afternoon with a big win over the Kansas City Royals to end the series on a positive note.

Cleveland Indians fans weren’t given much to be excited about this weekend. That changed today as the offense put up 12 runs in the win over the lowly Kansas City Royals.

Perhaps the best thing from the whole game was Jason Kipnis picking up four hits and driving in four runs. This included an inside-the-park home run that drove in Melky Cabrera, who had two doubles and came around to score four times.

Francisco Lindor drove in two runs and so did Edwin Encarnacion. The only real negative on offense was Jose Ramirez going 0-5. He ended the series with just one hit. This is not ideal and while he has struggled this month, it doesn’t seem like anything major to worry about.

A win like this is what a game against the Royals should be like. The team entered the day with a record of 40-90. That is insane and the Indians need to take advantage of games like this to pick up easy victories and fight for that second seed in the American League. They can’t win every game but the way the series started was concerning.

A lot of the concerns began after Cody Allen‘s blown save Friday night. He gave up two home runs before anyone knew what happened and the Royals won a game they should have lost. Allen was back on the mound today and pitched a scoreless ninth inning, though it wasn’t exactly a stressful situation as the Indians held a 12-5 lead.

Terry Francona made it clear that he isn’t going to stop using Allen. That is the right move, even if some people on Twitter and in our Facebook comments think Allen needs to be removed from the roster. He will continue to get work late and be relied upon in the postseason. A scoreless ninth today is a nice start toward getting back to normal.

Shane Bieber got the start today and went 5.1 innings, allowing four earned runs. Not great, not terrible, but enough to get the win on a day when the offense went off.

Games like this will hopefully be the norm for the final month of the season. Aside from another series against the Red Sox, the schedule is rather easy until the postseason begins. Most of the AL Central should be giving call-ups a lot of action, so the Indians may be taking on some glorified Triple-A teams throughout September.