Cleveland Indians: Are the Indians Actually the Cursed Team This World Series?
The Cleveland Indians have dominated their way through the postseason. However, does recent history possibly tell us that that could be a bad thing?!
The Cleveland Indians have been riding the coattails of their dominant bullpen and some very timely hitting to completely dominate the postseason thus far, really not even getting much of a challenge from teams that were supposed to be more “dominant” teams in the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays.
They’re even doing all of this without two of their three best starting pitchers, Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, both lost to injury. There is a distant possibility that Salazar could possibly pitch in Game 4 of the World Series, but he’s still not there to this point.
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Plus there’s the whole goat thing, and Bartman, and, well, lots of reasons that the Cubs have a curse narrative. So why would the Indians be the team to be cursed?
Recent history dictates the Indians are doomed…
In the last 10 years (2006-present), one team has won the World Series with more rest days than its opponent, and that was the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies, who due to some inclement weather had almost a whole week’s extra rest time.
That has been the opposite of the first 11 World Series of the Wild Card era (1995-2005) when only in 2000 and 2001 did the winning team have fewer days of rest than the losing team in the Series.
However, when you look back at that first decade, you’ll see that only the 1995 Atlanta Braves, 1996 New York Yankees and 2005 Chicago White Sox had more than two days of extra rest than their opponent. That situation has occurred eight of the 21 years in the Wild Card era, with the team with the longer rest having a 4-4 record in the World Series.
So, does this mean the Indians are definitely cursed? Well, not exactly, but there is some recent history (1-4 record for teams with three or more days rest in the last 10 years) that says that the Indians could possibly be a touch worried!