PREVIEW: Indians looking to snap 3-game Skid and to lower their Magic Number from 12

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Indians and the Kansas City Royals will play game two of a three-game series. The Indians will be looking bounce back from their recent three-game skid.

On Monday night, the Cleveland Indians couldn't get going offensively until the ninth inning when Francisco Lindor hit his 30th homer of the season. Meanwhile, for the Royals, they came away with 4 homers and managed to put 5 runs on the board and were able to finish off their AL Central foes in their Labor Day matchup. The Royals have only managed to win 45 games heading into Monday's matchup and improved to 46-91. The Indians fell to 77-60 on the season after the loss.

Here’s a look at the breakdown for today’s series finale with the Twins.

Date: Tuesday, September 4

Time: 7:10 p.m. ET

Location: Progressive Field — Cleveland, Ohio

Starting Pitchers: Kansas City – Danny Duffy (8-11, 4.72) vs CLE – Mike Clevinger (10-7, 3.17)

TV Channel: SportsTime Ohio

Online Stream: MLB.TV

Radio: ALT 99.1, AM WTAM 1100 and WMMS 100.7

Click the next pages for a preview of tonight’s matchup in Cleveland.

1.) Offense Get Rolling Early

Whenever you only get 4 hits in a game, very rarely will you come away on the winning end. Tonight the lineup has to get going early on, whether that is the top, middle, or bottom of the lineup, base hits are a great way to get some momentum to start off the game.

Francisco Lindor managed to get 2 of the Indians 4 hits on Monday and as mentioned previously was the only means of a run for Cleveland.

The Indians will be looking to have a better result offensively following their dismal performance yesterday.

2.) Jose Needs to Homer

Since August 17, Jose Ramirez has been without a homer. Since then Ramirez has also struck out 9 times, has drawn 12 walks, only hit 2 doubles, and hasn't tripled since then. Jose has also had his batting average go down from .303 to .287 currently, dropping .16 points.

On August 30, Jordan Bastian tweeted out the shift the Twins used while Ramirez was batting. Teams might be picking up on Jose's tendencies but the key is always to beat the opposition and be one step ahead.

The Indians third baseman is long overdue for a long ball especially since he has hit 37 homers this season. I think today would be a perfect time to get out of this funk and get back to normal. 3.) Beat Up On The Royals The Royals are having a terrible season and traded third basemen Mike Moustakas around the trade deadline. It is safe to say with a record of 46-91, Kansas City is in rebuild mode. The Indians lead the series 8-5 but should not be losing to a team that trails them by 31 games. On Monday night, Lindor mentioned that the Indians have to go back to playing the Tribe way and not take every pitch for granted and they will be fine. Lindor admits that it is the time of year that the team is dragging their feet a bit, including himself.

Frankie admits that the @Indians' energy is down right now, but he insists they'll be fine.#RallyTogether pic.twitter.com/47Q6xlgeB4
— Bally Sports Cleveland (@BallySportsCLE) September 3, 2018

The Indians magic number currently sits at 12 games, and they will be looking to bounce back from their loss Monday.