Indians show approval as Lindor snaps slump

KANSAS CITY — The smile arrived shortly before Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor reached second base. When he slowed down and stood on the bag, Lindor could not contain himself any longer.

Her looked to the visitors’ dugout, where his teammates slapped the rail, clapped their hands and shouted in his direction. Lindor then raised both arms high in the air, allowing the relief that comes with the end of a long slump to sweep over him. In a 7-2 win over the Royals on Friday night at Kauffman Stadium, Lindor finally looked like himself again.

“To see Frankie have a little life in his bat,” manager Terry Francona said, “was really good to see.”

Lindor arrived to the ballpark wearing a shirt that had, “Slump Buster,” printed across his chest. Perhaps he should have considered donning the lucky threads earlier, because he reached base four times in the victory, roped a double and hit a home run that went down as the hardest-struck ball Lindor has ever hit in his Major League career.

It was the double that lifted the piano off his shoulders.

In the third inning, following a rally that pushed the Tribe to a 3-1 lead, Lindor pulled a pitch from Yordano Ventura off the right-field wall for a two-base hit. That breakthrough ended a drought of no hits in a span of 29 at-bats. The slump admittedly weighed on Lindor’s mind over the past week.

“To be honest, yeah, I thought about it,” Lindor said. “There were times I …

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