Hot News: Indians-Cubs World Series: Francona pulls right strings in Game 4 as bats come alive

CHICAGO -- The Cleveland Indians rolled to a 7-2 win Saturday night ^[1] at Wrigley Field, taking a commanding 3-1 World Series lead by outpitching, outhitting, and outmanaging the Chicago Cubs on their home field.

The Tribe figured to have a pitching advantage coming into Game 4, with staff ace Corey Kluber going up against Chicago's No. 4 starter John Lackey . In the end, both starters made numerous mistakes. Lackey just made more of them, and the Indians did a better job of capitalizing on his miscues than the Cubs did against Kluber.

The damage started in the second inning. After the Cubs grabbed a quick 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first, cleanup hitter Carlos Santana strode to the plate to start the top of the second. With the count 3-2, catcher Willson Contreras set up inside, hoping to bust a fastball in on Santana's hands. As the payoff pitch comes in, you can see Contreras' glove slide way out to the outside edge of the plate, where Santana jerked the thigh-high offering into the right-field bleachers ^[2].

Sloppy infield play would allow the Indians to cash another run, with MVP front-runner Kris Bryant making two throwing errors in the inning (even though the second one should have been charged to Anthony Rizzo , who tried in vain to keep his foot on first base as Bryant's throw came sailing in, allowing Lonnie Chisenhall to come around and score after the ball trickled away from Rizzo).

Cleveland's offense jumped on Lackey again in the third. Jason Kipnis led off the inning by lashing a double to right. That brought the dangerous Francisco Lindor to the plate. The book on Lackey is that he sometimes drops his arm angle to get a little more horizontal movement on his sinkers. That, in turn, makes his delivery more obvious when he throws his slider from a more upright arm slot. With a 2-2 count on Lindor, Lackey dropped down, hoping to paint his sinker on the inside corner. He missed the corner by an inch or two, triggering an exaggerated eye-roll from one of the league's most demonstrative pitchers. When Lackey tried to sneak a 3-2 slider by Lindor, the Indians shortstop was ready, lining a single to right ^[3] to push the lead to 3-1. The pitch being a hanging spinner that floated to the middle of the plate, combined with the change in arm angl e, gave Lindor a meatball that he gobbled up.

Kluber made his own share of mistakes. In the first inning, the Cubs made hard contact on two pitches, with Rizzo ripping a line drive just foul down the right-field line, and Zobrist smacking a drive to the warning track in center. Neither of those blows hurt the Indians, and Kluber ceded just one run on two softly-hit balls by Dexter Fowler and Rizzo, limiting the damage to one run. After throwing just 17 cutters in his Game 1 start, Kluber tossed five of them in that first inning; none of the five were particularly good, and he (mostly) got away with it anyway.

There were other mistakes here and there. He threw a fastball off target to Jason Heyward in the second, resulting in a sharp single. He briefly lost his command in the third, walking Bryant and hitting Rizzo to put two runners on with two outs. And in the fifth, Kluber hung his slider/curve/whatchamacallit in the middle of the plate to Fowler, but escaped with nothing more than a harmless flyout to right ^[4].

Still, going on guile, some ineffective Cubs swings, and a few well-placed pitches when he needed them, Kluber got the results he wanted. Knowing Javier Baez is one of the wildest swingers in the league on breaking pitches low and away, Kluber buried one ^[5] in the dirt and a mile off the plate against him on an 0-2 count in the fourth, ending the inning and stranding Heyward at first. In the sixth, Rizzo led off with a double but got no further, as Kluber set down the next three hitters in order on just eight pitches, seven of those breaking balls.

Over six innings and 81 pitches, Kluber allowed just one earned run, five hits and a walk. He struck outs six batters and walked only one.

Coming into Game 4, one of the untold stories of the postseason was Cleveland's inability to hit. Going 9-2 against three excellent teams in Boston, Toronto, and Chicago, it was n atural for people not to notice. But with an aggregate batting line of .216/.279/.370 heading into Saturday night's game, you could be forgiven for wondering if the Indians' bats would ever wake up, and how many times their pitching staff could pull off 1-0 nail-biters.

Then, the explosion. Cleveland's 10 hits tied their high-water mark for this postseason, while seven runs scored established a new high. Lindor continued his torrid playoff pace, reaching base three times and hiking his World Series line to a blistering .467/.529/.533. Batting in the cleanup spot for the first time this series, Santana banged out three hits, including that game-tying home run. The biggest hitting star was Kipnis, who went 3 for 5 with a three-run shot in the seventh that salted the game away.

Combined, Cleveland's 2-3-4 hitters went 8 for 13, scoring four runs, driving in five, and launching two into the seats. Even with Mike Napoli and Lonnie Chisenhall struggling in this series and rookie Tyler Naquin having gone ice cold for a solid two months, Saturday's three offensive stars could be enough to close out the series by themselves, especially if the bullpen keeps putting up zeroes.

Terry Francona deserves some credit for guiding the Indians a 3-1 series lead. USATSI

And while Indians pitchers' dominance of the Cubs' bats is the big story in this series, it's hard not to notice Terry Francona hitting all the right marks in his managing, with Joe Maddon failing to make a dent with his own moves. In every postgame press conference this postseason, Francona has emphasized his approach, which simply amounts to "win today, and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow." That's been most obvious in his usage of lefty relief ace, who's been deployed as early as the fifth inning in October, and been used aggressively ^[6] every time Cleveland gets a lead.

But Cleveland's skipper struck gold on less obvious moves too: With Napoli fighting it at the plate and Lackey a much tougher pitcher for righties than lefties to handle, Francona benched a player he called "the heart and soul of the team" in his postgame comments. The switch-hitting Santana moved into Napoli's No. 4 spot, then put on a hitting clinic. Pair moves like those with Indians scouts and coaches drilling their pitchers to attack the Cubs' free-swinging young hitters with sliders away all day, and you get game plans that have been executed to near-perfection.

On the flip side, there's Maddon. It's tough to point to any one tactical error that you'd describe as egregious, whether by process or results. But it was puzzling to see a crucial Game 4 unfold without the Cubs' big bench bat Kyle Schwarber making even a single at-bat. It was hard to understand why Maddon didn't pinch-hit for Lackey to start the bottom of the third, given the Cubs' two-run deficit, the top of the order due up after Lackey, and the threat of Cleveland's bullpen shutting the game down if Kluber could get through five or six innings in decent shape. Maybe Maddon figured the game was already out of hand when Kipnis came up with two men on and the Indians leading 4-1 in the seventh; using erratic lefty Travis Wood instead of Aroldis Chapman in that spot spoke to a manager who was saving his best talent for eventualities that may or may not materialize, rather than going all out to try to win right now.

The Cubs aren't done by any stretch. Jon Lester taking the mound against anyone the Tribe throws out there (the erratic Trevor Bauer on short rest, long-injured right-hander Danny Salazar , or possible one-hit wonder Ryan Merritt ) in Game 5 would give the Cubs a big advantage on paper. At some point, you have to figure that the National League's best offense ^[7] might start to hit.

But time and time again this October, the Indians have found a way to win, when circumstances ^[8]< /small> suggested they wouldn't. They've exploited little advantages, reaped big contributions from unlikely sources ^[9], and come through at exactly the right time. One more win, and you can officially call Cleveland the City of Champions.

Thanks to Nick Pollack of PitcherList.com ^[10] for contributing research help for this article.