Cleveland Indians: Can Tribe carry momentum into Minnesota series?

Can the Cleveland Indians carry momentum into Minnesota series?

Following the win over the New York Yankees on Sunday (April 25), the Cleveland Indians will enter the series against the Minnesota Twins with the hope of doing something they’ve done just once this season. Win a second straight game.

So far this season, the Tribe have tallied nine total wins, but they’ve registered two consecutive wins just once. Now, it was part of a four-game win streak, but nonetheless they haven’t been able to string together a pair of wins or more on any other occasion so far this season. Luckily, the stars could be aligning as the Twins are next up on the schedule, entering having lost six of their last seven and being the concluding series of the current homestand at Progressive Field.

With the win against the Yankees, the Tribe’s offense exploded for seven runs including a near cycle by Franmil Reyes, falling just a double shy. The win moved the Cleveland Indians to 8-1 on the season when scoring four runs or more. The problem is that they are 1-10 when they can’t tally four scores.

Even with the 7-3 win to close out the series, the Tribe were still outscored by the Yankees 16-14 over the four game stretch with half of their runs coming in the series finale. The series against Minnesota will be one game shorter with only three on the schedule and the pitchers on the bump for the Twins could open the door for Cleveland to put a few more tallies in the win column.

In the first game, the Indians will get a matchup against Jose Berrios while putting Zach Plesac on the rubber. Plesac has had a rough start to the season, allowing six runs in each of his last two starts, and he’s faced Minnesota just once in his career when he gave up five runs last year in an 8-4 loss. Berrios, though, hasn’t had the best of luck against the Tribe either, being 0-1 with three no-decisions over his last four starts against Cleveland while the Twins are 0-4 in the contests.

For the second game, the Tribe will turn to Aaron Civale who is off to a strong 3-0 start this year. Civale faced the Twins twice last year and allowed three runs in both starts while Cleveland dropped both games. Civale will face Kenta Maeda for Minnesota who was 3-0 against the Tribe in 2020 and gave up just one run over his 18 innings pitched.

In the series finale on Wednesday, the Cleveland Indians’ lineup will get a look at J.A. Happ in a Twins uniform for the first time. Despite playing the last three seasons in the American League East, this will be Happ’s first time pitching against Cleveland since July 23, 2017 back when he was still with the Blue Jays. In that outing, the Tribe put up seven runs on Happ in what would be an 8-1 win.

The three-game set against the Twins will mark the end of the current homestand and the Tribe will hope to close it out better than they started it. With one game being rained, or rather snowed, out the Cleveland Indians will need a sweep to break even over the stretch before heading back on the road. From there it will be off to Chicago to face the White Sox and then on to Kansas City for what will be a seven-game road trip.

While the team will of course be hoping for a sweep over the Twins, there’s a lot more that could come of the series. At 9-11, a sweep would get them back above .500 while also being crucial wins in the division. The recent skid as dropped the Tribe to third in the AL Central and four games back of Kansas City. But if Minnesota would sweep Cleveland, then the Tribe could drop down to fourth at 9-14 with Minnesota improving to what would be 10-13.

All-in-all, the Tribe just need to take this series one game at a time. Winning back-to-back games would be huge and a sweep would be incredible, but right now they need to focus on just scoring runs consistently. Seven run outbursts are great, but doing that once every five games isn’t going to cut it this season in the long haul.