The Cleveland Indians find themselves in a much tighter race for the American League Central than they likely envisioned at the beginning of season. They sit just 2.0 games ahead of the second-place Kansas City Royals, and they have one of most difficult upcoming schedules through the remainder of the season.
They face the Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Rays, Boston Red Sox (twice), Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals (twice), and the New York Yankees (for the second time) throughout the rest of August. In the final month of the season, they’ll get to beat up on some weak AL Central opponents, but they also face the Royals again as well as the Baltimore Orioles and Los Angeles Angels.
Even before the season that looked like a bit of a climb. The Yankees were not expected to be the borderline powerhosue they have become this season, and of course the Royals are better than we thought, but it was always going to be a tough end to the 2017 campaign.
Now, four months into the season, we can see just how difficult August and September will be for the Indians.
MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, the man responsible for translating Statcast data into an easy read for everyday fans, ran some of them there doodad numbers and used it to see who has the easiest adjusted schedule coming up.
Adjusted strength of schedule is nothing new to sports analysis, but it doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough. It’s a way to see a more accurate picture of what an opponent looks like at any given time. As Petriello’s own example states, the Royals are a completely different team now than they were when they had an abysmal offense in April. The fact that such a thing even has to exist, the fact that it points out the flaw in overall records indicating the quality of at any one given point is one of the main reasons you will never see me clamoring for a totally balanced schedule for all 30 baseball teams. A lot of the time, the team you’re playing in April is not the same team in September, so it’s all moot to have everyone play the same teams.
Sorry, that’s another topic in itself. Back to the AL Central.
Unsurprisingly, the Indians have one of toughest adjusted schedules remaining at .497 — seventh among remaining AL contenders, but a mere .008 behind the difficult schedule of the Angels. After the Indians there is a steep drop the Minnesota Twins at .482 and even more of a drop to the Kansas City Royals at .477.
Outside of facing the Indians, the Royals have a laughably easy schedule down the stretch. They face the St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland Athletics, Rockies, Rays, Toronto Blue Jays, Arizona Diamondbacks, everyone in the AL Central, and they have a makeup game against the Yankees. That’s a ridiculous amount of good fortune from the baseball schedule-generating gods on behalf of the Ned Yostites of the world.
That wouldn’t be a problem if either a) the Indians had already left the Royals in the dust like they should have a long time ago or b) the Indians looked like they were on the verge of finding any kind of consistency. Neither of those are true, unfortunately. The Royals are hanging around like an annoying, single-slapping barnacle, and the Indians offense seems to die at least twice a week like clockwork. Both teams entered August on lengthy win streaks, which only made the August/September schedules more of a factor. If the Indians didn’t have their win streak, the Royals would now have a sizeable lead in the AL Central and an easy path to the playoffs. If the Royals didn’t have their winning streak, the Indians would have a big lead and plenty of time to figure out how to hit well for more than two games at a time.
Even with the occasional winning streak, the Indians have not had long stretches of looking like a World Series contending team. It seems weird that the season is only a month-and-a-half away from ending, because by now we usually know what kind of team the Indians are. But I still have no idea.
Some idiot blogger might have negged the Royals into buying at the deadline to foolishly compete for the division. Surely said blogger isn’t re-enacting that sweating scene from Key and Peele every time the Royals win and the Indians drop a game. Surely I don’t know who that blogger is. Surely.
So far the two teams have been consistently even, but for that to continue down the stretch, the Indians will have to be the better team, there’s no way around it. Being even isn’t going to cut it anymore.