Cleveland Indians: 3 takeaways from the 11-2 loss to the Astros

The Cleveland Indians bullpen continues to find every way possible to lose games.

The sad thing about the Cleveland Indians losing these close games is that these teams think they’re the “comeback kids.” They aren’t. The Indians are just that bad late in games.

The Cleveland Indians have the worst bullpen in baseball. Andrew Miller is not himself. To be fair he had to come out to the top of the Astros powerhouse lineup which is daunting for anybody. But it shouldn’t be for the legendary Andrew Miller. The Astros rallied to score two runs off of Miller in the eighth after he loaded the bases and never looked back.

The pitching for this team has become an absolute liability. Clutch hitting isn’t helping but because the bullpen is so bad, the opposition only has to get through seven innings of a starter before rocking the Indians to win games.

Here’s your takeaways from another heartbreaker turned embarrassment.

Corey Kluber pitched his heart out again

Corey Kluber didn’t win this game. He should have. He struck out seven over 6.1 innings without allowing a run. Kluber found a way to get out of trouble every time he faced it. His seven strikeouts moved him into third on the Indians all-time strikeout list.

Corey Kluber has shown himself to be one of the few remaining gleams of hope for the Indians right now. Along with Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez, they’ve given Indians fans something to cheer for. No one else on the team really has.

Corey Kluber can’t do it all. The Astros were able to drive him out of the game after he pitched over 100 pitches yet again. As the starters leave the games for the Indians, the bullpen proceeds to blow games.

Those guys who can’t hit, hit tonight (kind of)

Edwin Encarnacion, Jason Kipnis and Melky Cabrera all found ways to actually get on base tonight. Encarnacion had two hits along with Melky, while Kipnis was able to score a run via groundout.

Encarnacion and Kipnis are to have way more expected of them, but with how bad they’ve hit, these little things make for positives.

That being said this offense needs to raise their standards. The offense is settling for one-run innings when they have chances to get more runs

This bullpen will keep the Indians from winning the division

Truthfully, I haven’t watched the Twins much, but I don’t know how the hell they haven’t passed the Indians with how bad they’ve been. I have written about how abysmal the Tribe bullpen has been in almost every article in the last month.

I’m going to keep doing it until something changes. I don’t know what else I can say about it. Unless the Indians have a 10-run lead, they aren’t safe. Tonight the Astros scored three runs off Andrew Miller and another off of Cody Allen. Control was a problem yet again and they allowed two walks and three hits combined.

If Dan Otero comes in and saves the day for you, you know it was a bad game. The bullpen wouldn’t look as bad if the Indians would find ways to score runs late in games but they haven’t done that either as they’ve scored before the sixth inning in their last five games and nothing after that.

This is obviously a pretty sad recap but the Indians have been sad to watch right now. It’d be nice to give them the benefit of the doubt as they’re losing to the World Champion Astros, but they did this same thing against Detroit. And Toronto, and Seattle, and Texas.

Next: 3 catching prospects to know for the MLB Draft

They’ll once again look to change the narrative Saturday with Carrasco on the mound.