Doug Lesmerises notes that the Indians have a great chance of winning the World Series, even with the recent spate of injuries:

That’s 18 years, with the best regular-season record winning the World Series four times. The Indians were never going to have the best regular-season record, even before the injuries.

At the moment, they’re tied for fourth-best. In the last 18 years, a team with the fourth-best record or worse has won 10 World Series, or 56 percent of the time.

…

Here’s what this team wouldn’t want to do – lose Carrasco and Salazar in tandem for 162 games. For the 11 wins it would take to bring another championship to Cleveland?

You hope Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer toss a couple gems and win a couple games by themselves. You hope Mike Napoli‘s power wins one, as does Carlos Santana‘s. You hope Francisco Lindor darts and dives the Indians to another victory, and the Andrew Miller factor helps squeak out a couple close ones.

Then maybe a fan interferes with a play (this is a hypothetical, not a suggestion, people of Cleveland) or a fly ball hits a bird or a ground ball hits a pebble. A guy with one home run all year hits a second, and an opposing shortstop who never makes an error makes one.

That’s baseball.

Indeed.