Baseball: Faith In Pitchers Keeps Indians Confident Of Beating Cubs

CLEVELAND, Nov 2 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 02nd Nov, 2016 ) : With ace pitcher Corey Kluber on the mound and three rested top relievers in waiting, Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona is confident his team can defeat the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday to win the World Series.

The Cubs, trying to win their first title since 1908 to end America's longest sports title drought, ripped host Cleveland 9-3 Tuesday to level the best-of-seven Major League Baseball final at 3-3 and force a winner-take-all showdown Wednesday.

"Was a tough night," Francona said. "You can get philosophical or whatever. What it comes down to is, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a really important game and we'll be really excited to play." Kluber, a right-hander, went 18-9 this season and is 4-1 in the playoffs.

He won games one and four of the World Series, the latter on short rest, and will pitch on short rest again in the finale with the Indians seeking their first crown since 1948. "That's a good feeling," Francona said of having Kluber on the mound.

"It's game seven. It will be exciting. It will be an honor to even be a part of it and we're going to give it everything we have. "I can't imagine a better group of guys to go through something like this with.

I'm looking forward to it already." One reason why is because he also has fully rested relief pitchers Bryan Shaw, Cody Allen and Andrew Miller, the lone left-hander in the group. Francona was pleased he could hold back all three top relievers and force the Cubs to use Cuban ace closer Aroldis Chapman for the second game in a row.

"You always want to win the game but the next best thing, and we talked about this before we even started, was try and make them use pitching even in a loss," Francona said. "So we hung around long enough, at least Chapman had to pitch.

You never know. Maybe that helps us." Fielding is normally an Indians strength but an outfield blunder allowed a double and two runs to score in the first inning as Tyler Naquin and Lonnie Chisenhall let a fly ball drop between them.

"Lonnie went after it hard, as he should, but it was Naquin's ball," Francona said. "As Lonnie was pulling off, Naquin was yelling, 'It's yours. You got it.' We told Nake that's his ball, just take charge and take it. "That was an unfortunate play because we thought we were out of the inning with one (run) and instead it's three."