For the second straight season, one of the prior year's American League Championship Series participants returns for a second year, meaning the Cleveland Indians play the 2016 role of the newcomer. Which is somewhat of an odd hat for them to wear because of all the teams left fighting for the 2016 World Series trophy, the Indians, yes the Indians!, are the team that most recently won a pennant.
However, if the American League pennant is going to be flown in an AL Central stadium for the fourth time in the past five years, the Indians are going to have to become the de facto champions of the AL East. Having vanquished division winner Boston in the ALDS, they are now faced with the task of eliminating another high-powered offense from the same division.
Keeping with historic pace, one wild-card team has advanced to the LCS, making Toronto the fifth team to do so since MLB installed the current postseason format in 2012. If Toronto is to become the third team in the current wild-card era to make the World Series, they'll need to beat a team that beat them in the season series, 4-3. On the other side of the coin, if Cleveland is to return to the World Series for the first time since 1997, it'll need to beat a team that outscored it by 14 runs the seven times they faced each other this season.
For the second series in a row, despite having the better regular-season record and home-field advantage for the series, Cleveland has been cast in the role of underdog. Of course injuries to their regular-season rotation weigh on that calculation, and it's one of many factors our team of baseball handicappers consider below.
Like the Blue Jays and the Indians, Joe Peta has stormed through the American League playoffs without a loss and he leads off our preview, followed by Dave Tuley and Andrew Lange.