Watch Live: Blue Jays and Indians meet in Free Game of the Day
With ten days left in August, we’ve officially reached the point where checking the baseball standings has become a daily routine. Even if your team has no shot — which right now is a relatively small number of teams — it’s still worthwhile just to see where things stand.
With that in mind, it’s also not a bad time to start checking the stats to get a better feel for which players should be in contention for the notable individual awards. Some candidates are always obvious just based on the hype and the highlights you see every day. That’s particularly true in the respective MVP races. However, the Cy Young races in both leagues seem to be pretty wide open right now, which means the hottest contending pitcher from this point forward may have the inside track.
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As we stand now, that pitcher in the American League might be Cleveland Indians ace Corey Kluber. The 30-year-old right-hander won the award in 2014, and he’s surging toward another thanks to a strong 10-start stretch that he hopes to continue Sunday afternoon against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Good news: You’ll have a chance to see how he fares. That game will be featured as the MLB Free Game of the Day on Yahoo Sports. You can stream the game at Yahoo’s Sports Home, MLB index and video home beginning at 1:10 p.m. ET.
Dating back to June 21, Kluber has gone 7-1 with a 2.08 ERA and 69 strikeouts over 69 1/3 innings. Despite a slow start, that’s moved him into the top ten in several pitching categories. Most notably, he’s first in the AL in FIP (3.02). He also led in that category in 2014. He’s also second in WHIP (1.02), and still climbing in strikeouts and WAR.
If he continues on the roll he’s riding now, he’ll strengthen that resume considerably by season’s end. Assuming the Indians remain firm atop the AL Central standings, that will help his cause too. His biggest hurdle though will definitely come on Sunday when he locks up with the irresistible force known as the Blue Jays offense. In fact, during Kluber’s aforementioned 10-start string, the only rough outing came on July 3 in Toronto. On that day, he allowed five runs in 3 1/3 innings, while requiring 95 pitches.
That’s an exhaustive outing that highlights Toronto’s tenacity. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see how Kluber approaches them and what adjustments are made as those two powerhouses meet in a possible postseason preview.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
