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CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Indians roll into tonight's American League wild-card game on a 10-game winning streak, ready to provide another example of it's not who you are but how hot you are when October arrives.
The Indians are home thanks to that streak. And they're playing the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that's making a winning tradition out of defying odds - economic ones, at least.
Something special obviously is brewing, and one of these teams will take it to Boston for a division series against the Red Sox beginning this weekend. Or so it would seem.
"Honestly, no," Indians infielder Mike Aviles said Tuesday. "All 10-0 means is we get to play here tomorrow. Everything we did for 162 games and everything the Rays did for 163 games means nothing."
But something's afoot here. It has to be.
Only once in the past 11 years has there been a postseason without a wild-card team winning at least one playoff round. Four wild cards have won the World Series in that span and four more have lost the Series.
The Indians finished on a 15-2 run. The only team in recent history that reached the playoffs hotter was the 2007 Colorado Rockies, who won 14 of their final 15 - including a tiebreaker to win the wild card - and then their first seven playoff games.
"When stuff like that happens, everything's flowing well, no one's thinking about it, no one's talking about it," says Seth Smith, an outfielder on that Rockies team and now with another payroll-challenged playoff team in the Oakland Athletics. "Things just sort of start happening and you end up with a W every day. You can't explain it, you can't quantify it, but it just happens."
There's the point. Keeping that underdog feeling - or at least ignoring expectations you should win - is a key component.
"You get immune to whatever that pressure is and just go play," says Rays manager Joe Maddon, whose team won seven in a row before losing two of their final three in Toronto against the Blue Jays. That forced them to win a one-game playoff with the Texas Rangers, who had won their previous seven games.
"You don't have time enough to be nervous," Maddon says. "You just get ready and go play. For our guys, I kind of like that mode right now."
But no streak is infinite. Those Rockies were swept in the World Series. And whose expectations are higher tonight?
"We went through a struggle (a 3-11 skid into early September), and I was happy about that in a weird way," says Alex Cobb, the Rays' starter tonight. "This is such a streaky game and we were at such a high point, then we got down to a low point with enough chances to get back. I knew if we got into the playoffs while hot, we would be dangerous the way the pitching's been going."
Money is losing its cache in clubhouses, at least as far as being the source of success. The Rays' $58 million opening-day payroll ranked 28th; the Indians, at $78 million, were 21st.
"I don't care how much a team spends," Indians first baseman and former New York Yankee Nick Swisher says. "I don't care if you have a $500 million payroll or a $10 payroll. I've played in the biggest market and I've played in this market. If you're winning, you're winning."
Maddon agrees, citing drug testing as one equalizer in recent years.
"I know people make a lot of this money deal, and I understand that, but for us it doesn't matter," he said.
What matters now isn't money or streaks. Maybe playing at home does, as Aviles says, even for an Indians team next-to-last in AL attendance - ahead of only the Rays. It will be full house tonight, packed with fans who remember the franchise's 455 consecutive sellouts in the late 1990s and early 2000s and finally sense something special again.
"That's huge for us," Indians reliever Joe Smith says.
Only if they make it 11 in a row.
Paul White, USA TODAY Sports
Gannett/USA Today
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