Cleveland Indians receive no World Series love in SI MLB preview

The Cleveland Indians enter the 2018 as World Series contenders, but don’t receive much love to reach the Fall Classic in SI’s MLB preview.

The Cleveland Indians start the 2018 regular season tomorrow so naturally it is time to talk about the World Series.

SI’s MLB preview came out recently and featured eight writers giving their playoff predictions. All eight picked the Indians to win the American League Central, so no surprise there.

But a total of zero picked the Indians to reach the World Series, let alone win it all. And only three had the Indians advancing to the ALCS.

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The Houston Astros are the defending champions and the New York Yankees got even stronger this offseason, but I’m still surprised no one has the Indians at least making it to the World Series. I don’t even think it’s biased to think the team has a great shot to make it, before even getting into the likelihood of winning it all.

But it wouldn’t be Cleveland sports if we weren’t talking about some form of disrespect or being an underdog.

The Indians are fresh off a 102-win season that was marred by three losses to end the year. I’m not sure that one bad stretch of baseball is enough to say the dream is dead.

When thinking about playoff baseball in general, any team could go through a bad stretch and have their season end right away, no matter how much talent is there.

The mighty Yankees could see Giancarlo Stanton shut down in his first big series, while Aaron Judge may continue to strikeout at a historic rate. The same goes for the Astros, who may struggle to repeat after last year’s magical run.

Preseason predictions involve a lot of the favorites on paper, without taking into account all the unpredictability associated with the long haul of the season. Still, the Indians deserve some more love from the SI writers.

Next: Learning more about the 2018 Royals

Time to prove everyone wrong.