Cleveland sports fans enjoyed an eventful week with the Cleveland Indians playing in a playoff game and the Browns winning their second straight game after the week three restructuring. The Indians got hot and won 10 straight games to finish the season. This streak was just enough to overcome the two teams that stood in the way of them and a playoff berth, the Texas Rangers and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Indians finished with a 92-70 record and narrowly avoided a three-way-tie between the Rangers and Rays who both finished with a 91-71 record. This forced a loser goes home game that was played on Monday night between the Rays and Rangers. The Rays beat the Rangers 5-2 on Monday night in the “163rd game of the season,” a long used one game playoff system used by baseball to break ties.
With the win, the Rays came to Cleveland on Wednesday night to compete in the Wild Card game. The Wild Card game was a new addition to the Major League Baseball playoffs just last year. The game is a one game series between the top two teams in each league to not win their divisions. The Indians, however, dropped the game, losing 4-0 to the Rays.
The Indians 10-0 run to finish the regular season was a huge achievement. This is the fifth longest streak to finish a season in history. Had the Indians lost just one of those last 10 games they would have had a three game tie for the American League Wild Card spot. If they had dropped two of those games and had gone 8-2, which is still a fantastic 10 game record, the Indians would have not had a playoff berth.
This was the first playoff berth for the Indians since 2007. It has been a long time waiting for Indians fans as the team has not won a World Series since 1948. While the Indians will have to watch a different team win it all this October, the strong finish is a great outlook looking toward next season. Indians fans will now start counting down the days to Spring Training when the team will start another run towards a World Series.
The Browns are just starting their season. After a surprising victory last week following some wild off-field events, many were skeptical that the win over the Vikings was just a fluke, and everyone outside of Cleveland had written off the Browns in week four. However the Browns greatly surpassed expectations last week. The offensive issues that were thought to plague the Browns in week three still presented questions, but the Browns proved with a second straight win that these were non-issues.
New quarterback Brian Hoyer won his first home game for the Browns as they advance to 2-2. Hoyer led the offense with 269 yards and two touchdowns and became the first Browns quarterback to win his first two starts since Mark Rypien in 1994. Hoyer has become a hometown hero to Browns fans and earned the starting spot in Thursday’s game versus the Buffalo Bills over healed started Brandon Wheedon.
Thursday’s game will occur after press time.