Tribe Watch '13 (Week 21)

Record: 71 - 59

Standing: 2nd in AL Central (6 games behind Detroit); 1.5 games out of the second Wild Card spot

The Tribe did what they needed to do this week, which was beat up on lesser teams. They pulled off a sweep of the Angels in Anaheim and then took two out of three at home from the Minnesota Twins. Most of the wins were not overly flashy or impressive, but all that matters is putting another notch in the W column. We have now already surpassed the team's win total from last year and we still have over a month of baseball to go. It is so nice to be continuing this column this far into the season and have the team being playing meaningful games at this point. Speaking of meaningful games, the Indians have an important 9-game stretch coming up starting on Tuesday. It begins with going on to the road for series against the Braves in Atlanta and our final series of the regular season against the Tigers in Detroit. Both of those teams are almost certainly going to the playoffs this year, so it would be nice to be competitive against them. At this point, we do not want to risk falling too far out of playoff contention, so every win matters. The good news is that a lot of our guys are starting to heat up offensively. If we can get each of them hot at the same time, this can be a very dangerous team. Even as the temptation to shift your focus to football emerges, let's continue to root on this team and have them actually play baseball all the way into October! Go Tribe!