Jump up and get down! It’s the Cleveland Indians third quarter review
Another chunk of the 162-game marathon is in the rearview mirror. Before we leave it entirely behind us, let’s take a moment to discuss the 3rd quarter.
The Cleveland Indians are three-quarters of the way through the 2016 baseball season. With only 40 games left to play, the Tribe sit at 71-51 with a seven-game lead in the American League central. It feels like yesterday that I bought a brand new raincoat to watch the Indians take on the Chicago White Sox at the beginning of the season only to learn that the game had been postponed at the last possible moment. April 10th: more than four months ago.
If you’d like to catch up on this feature, check out the first-quarter review and the midseason review.
Francisco Lindor snagged the award the first two times around, with Danny Salazar lurking close behind. Lindor isn’t doing badly, but his slugging is a little but down from the first half. Also, Salazar struggled and eventually sat out a few starts with a sore elbow. We now instead look to Lindor’s friends on the infield: Jason Kipnis and Jose Ramirez.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you’ll know that Jose Ramirez has become Death, the destroyer of leads. Meanwhile, Jason Kipnis is having similar success, but in a much quieter fashion. No one in the national media has mentioned him at all this season, and even punks like me haven’t given him his due up to this point. All Kipnis has managed to do this season is very casually rack up 4.3 WAR, 15th among all hitters and 3rd among 2nd baseman. He’s channeling Tim Duncan: no flash, just solid
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