Napoli drives in 4 runs as Indians throttle Tigers 11-4

It bounced well behind him and cleared the 19-foot wall in left field for a two-run ground-rule double. With time running out for the Tigers to catch the Indians or ever grab a spot in the AL Wild Card, things are heating up. He homered in the second inning and hit a three-run homer in the sixth, cutting the Cleveland lead to 6-4 After Upton’s 24th home run, The Indians added to their lead in the sixth inning, against reliever Shane Greene on a sacrifice fly by Roberto Perez. Yes, he will chase them every so often, but he is having a good enough season that even slight mistakes are getting demolished. And with the blowout win, the Indians’ magic number shrunk into the single digits. It was the fourth time a team hit four consecutive homers and the first since May 2, 1964, when the Minnesota Twins accomplished the feat against Kansas City in the 11th inning.

These two are each the third-best starter in their team at this point, but Bauer has a larger sample of success this season than Norris, who’s only thrown 52 innings.

Napoli’s 34th homer gave the Indians a 6-1 lead.

I don’t understand why the Tigers are still challenging Mike Napoli with high fastballs. Kipnis and Lindor both scored on the play to give Cleveland a 2-0 lead.

“A fortunate break for us”, Napoli said. “They’ve scored runs and we’ve got to find a way to stop them from scoring runs”.

Cleveland has now won 46 straight games when it scores four or more runs in a Kluber start, and the right-hander made a little bit of history as well, moving into 11th place on the franchise’s all-time strikeout list. Kluber has 924 career strikeouts and is now behind Luis Tiant (1,041) for 10th place.

Bob Rhoads of the Indians pitched a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox for a 2-1 victory in Cleveland. Gomes suffered the injury when he was hit by a pitch Wednesday, in his last minor league rehab start with Double-A Akron. He was scratched from the lineup on Thursday. Indians OF Lonnie Chisenhall has missed the last four games due to an abdominal strain. Aybar came into the game 5-for-12 (.417) in his career vs. Indians RHP Corey Kluber, while Iglesias was 1-for-9 (.111) against Kluber. After years of Detroit dominance in this matchup, the Tribe has now outscored their rivals 26-2 in the first three innings of their 13 games to this point, and holds a 90-40 overall advantage.