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Tribe’s ride bittersweet for Brantley, Carrasco
- Updated: October 31, 2016
CLEVELAND — It’s hard to watch, if you want to know the truth.
They have smiled through the champagne celebrations while standing off to the side of the room. They have been supportive, proactive teammates, quick to offer a word of advice or a reason to laugh in a moment of high anxiety. They have admirably made the most of the frustrating fact that this Indians team has put itself a win away from a World Series title without them.
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But for Michael Brantley and Carlos Carrasco, no matter what they say publicly (and Brantley, true to form, says very little), this postseason run has mixed the bitter with the sweet, and the agony of injury eats away at them.
Game Date Time (air time/game time) Matchup TV Gm 1 Oct. 25 CLE 6, CHC 0 Gm 2 Oct. 26 CHC 5, CLE 1 Gm 3 Oct. 28 CLE 1, CHC 0 Gm 4 Oct. 29 CLE 7, CHC 2 Gm 5 Oct. 30 CHC 3, CLE 2 Gm 6 Nov. 1 7:30 p.m./8 p.m. CHC @ CLE FOX *Gm 7 Nov. 2 7:30 p.m./8 p.m. CHC @ CLE FOX * If necessary | All times listed ET • World Series coverageShop for postseason gear: Cubs | Indians
“Inside of me, I feel destroyed,” Carrasco said. “But outside, I need to continue to be the same guy I was in Spring Training and during the season, before my injury.”
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Carrasco was hit on the hand by an Ian Kinsler comebacker on Sept. 17, breaking the fifth metacarpal and shelving him for the season.
Brantley had offseason right shoulder surgery in early November, rehabbed, played 11 games, went back on the disabled list and, because of a follow-up procedure in August, never made it back.
“I just embrace what I can right now,” Brantley said. “I’ve dealt with [the setbacks], and it’s in the past.”
His teammates wonder what might have been.
“He doesn’t like to miss one game, let alone 150,” fellow outfielder Lonnie Chisenhall said. “We would love to have him. We might have been scary good.”
It’s amazing — not just in the small-picture subplot of this postseason, but also in the big-picture outlook of this organization — that the Indians have done what they’ve done this year with only the briefest of Brantley contributions and with a Carrasco season that twice was unhinged by injury (he also missed more than a month with a left hamstring strain).
Less than a decade ago, the Indians knew their only path back to the postseason had to involve the hard-to-stomach swaps of established …
