Home Sweet Home: As July Fourth Approaches, Indians Look to Continue Historic Home Slate
IL Indianapolis Indians

Home Sweet Home: As July Fourth Approaches, Indians Look to Continue Historic Home Slate

July 3, 2025 - International League (IL)
Indianapolis Indians News Release


Sure, July 4 means fireworks at Victory Field, same as every summer. But hasn't the ballpark on Maryland Street already seen a lot of those this season?

As surely as oooh is followed by ahhh. To describe the first half of the 2025 schedule for the Indianapolis Indians - the best showing through 74 games in eight years -- we should begin with three words. Home. Sweet. Home.

This is the place where the Indians are 31-11 this season, best in Triple-A, third finest in all full-season minor league baseball and the highest percentage for the franchise going into July 4 in at least 20 years. They will enter July 4 on a 29-7 spree over their past 36 home games. In 2019, as a useful contrast, Indianapolis won 32 home games total. The Indians had 31 this season before July. Victory Field indeed.

This is the place where the Indians already have seven walk-off wins, six in extra innings, four in the first 16 games of the season. They needed four victories at home this year to not have it be a walk-off.

Whatever it took. On April 3, Indianapolis powered to a 6-0 lead over Iowa with three homers, lost it all, then won on a Malcom Nuñez fielder's choice grounder, the first pinch-hit walk-off at-bat in four years. A Shawn Ross single finished off Toledo in the 12th inning and a Matt Gorski double accomplished the same thing two nights later in the 11th. A Billy Cook infield single saved the day against Louisville, 9-8, after the Indians had blown an 8-2 lead.

The Indians celebrated just six walk-off wins in 2024. They reached six this season by June 10 when Tsung-Che Cheng raced home on a Ronny Simon ground ball to the mound in the 10th inning against St. Paul. The seventh came three nights later on an Alika Williams single in the 11th inning, completing a 7-6 victory over St. Paul in a game with four lead changes, 25 combined strikeouts, and Indianapolis out of pitchers, having used seven arms. Had the marathon stretched another inning, manager Shawn Bowman would have had to send a position player to the mound. It could well have been Williams, who grabbed a bat and made it a moot point.

Seven walk-offs, from seven different batters, in 66 games. They had nine in the previous two seasons combined.

"It's a testament to the group that we have," said Nick Solak, one of the seven. "We get along really well. It's a wide range of guys; guys that have been to the big leagues and are back in Triple-A and trying to get back, or guys that haven't been to the big leagues yet. It's a lot of guys that can block some of that out and just focus on the game here to be played that night. Sometimes it's hard but this group has done a good job of that, just going out and competing on any given night. I think that helps you in some of those close games, extra-inning games, games where you need to get a bunt down or a sac fly."

This is the place where the Indians have had 16 of their 22 comeback victories - most at home of any team in the International League -- where they have largely built a stunning 7-1 record in extra-inning games and 17-7 mark in one run decisions. Where they keep finding ways. Indianapolis goes into July 46-34 for the season despite being 18th in the International League in scoring and 19th in home runs. Where they did the heavy lifting to go 13 games over .500 - at 41-28 - for the first time in seven years. And while they might be two spots from the bottom in runs scored, they led the league in June with a .281 team batting average and 245 hits.

"There's no quit in this group," Bowman said. "What I've seen with this team since I've been here and taken over this role is when our pitching doesn't show up, our hitting does, when our hitting doesn't show up, our pitching does. When that happens, it tends to lead to wins. Even when we go down in ballgames you can feel it in the dugout, this sense of confidence that we're going to be able to get back into most ballgames. When you go down early in baseball games there's teams that just submit to defeat and we don't do that."

Bad days have routinely been answered with good. The longest losing streak so far this season stopped at three, something only two other league teams can say and the first time in nine years the Indians have made it to July 4 without ever dropping four in a row. Consider the last week in June. Omaha rallied from 5-0 down to win in 10 innings, and the next night put on a three-hour batting practice session against Indianapolis pitching, hitting six home runs in a 17-2 rout. The Indians lineup was shackled by 45-year-old starter Rich Hill, the oldest man to pitch a game in Victory Field in at least two decades, who threw some breaking balls that wouldn't have gotten a speeding ticket on Interstate 70.

A storm warning for hard times ahead? Nah, turn the page. The next night, five Indianapolis relievers put together a three-hit shutout for a 2-0 win. The Indians had five shutouts the entire 2024 season. This was the sixth of 2025, and it was only June 27. They haven't had six so early since 2018. The night after that, the batters went on a 15-hit spree in a 12-1 romp, and the day after that, Indy won 3-2 with six innings of one-hit, seven-strikeout pitching from Hunter Barco and a three-run seventh from the offense.

Such resilience has carried all the way to Pittsburgh. The Pirates' brass are most interested in seeing players develop their skills for the next level, but Michael Chernow, director of coaching and player development, sat in the Victory Field dugout last week and mentioned how "Guys are getting better. I'm glad that's translating into wins because we also want to win, but the biggest thing is you see guys that are taking steps in their development."

All those close games, comebacks and walk-offs? "A really good sign," Chernow said, "and something we take a lot of pride in."

Want a big whiff of what Victory Field has been like in 2025? Rewind the first half of May, when the Indians started the month faster than the Indy cars up the road at the Speedway.

First came a pitching clinic against Columbus. Indianapolis scored only 16 runs against the Clippers in six games but went 4-2 because the guys on the mound allowed only 11. In two starts, Mike Burrows gave up just one run and six hits in 9.2 innings, striking out 18. It was a week of baseball on the brink; the six games in the series were decided by a total of nine runs.

That was followed by a six-game throttling of Louisville, starting with a 3-1 win in a game where only one Indianapolis batter struck out, the fewest in a nine-inning contest in six years. Then came a 6-4, 8-2, doubleheader sweep where the Indians were ahead at the end of every inning but one. The final was a 4-3 victory when the deciding run came home because of a Louisville throwing error. It was only the third series sweep for Indianapolis since the scheduling format went to six-game series in 2021. By the end of the two-week homestand, which had turned into one long clanging of the Victory Bell with 10 wins in 12 games, the Indians were leading all Triple-A for the month of May in earned run average (3.00) and opponent's batting average (.222). Home field advantage had become very special.

And it stayed that way. This is where the Indians beat Nashville 8-4 in a game with six stolen bases, and 18 strikeouts by the pitchers, the most in six years. Seven of those came from Barco in three innings of relief, the first time in at least 20 seasons an Indianapolis pitcher had that many punchouts in only three innings of work.

This is the place where Indianapolis pitchers had no-hitters against St. Paul with two outs in the sixth inning on back-to-back nights, something not seen in at least two decades. And where the Indians took six of seven in the series, holding the Saints to a .179 batting average. That included Thomas Harrington and Sean Sullivan combining on a five-hitter with 15 strikeouts, with Sullivan putting up the team's first three-inning save in 13 years that had no hits, runs or walks.

This is the place that has seen a steady breeze even on the hot days from all the swings and misses. Indianapolis pitchers have struck out 451 batters at home, 18 more than any other staff in the International League, and a big reason why they have rung up at least 10 Ks in 38 of the 80 games so far.

This is where Jack Suwinski, who wasn't even in the lineup until April 25, continues to help win games with his team-leading 10 home runs and 44 RBI. And Solak put together a dream first half that began in full roar and has never really stopped. He sent the third pitch he saw in an Indianapolis uniform over the wall in right-center field. A good omen, certainly? Well, he homered in his first game as a Texas Ranger in 2019 and hoped that was a sign of great things to come but spent the season going up and down. "So, you try not to read too much into that," he said.

But three days later, his 10th-inning single accounted for one of the walk-offs, and he hit safely in his first 14 games as an Indian. At last check, Solak led all full-season minor league hitters with at least 200 plate appearances in batting average at .370, the highest by an Indians hitter through this point in the season since at least 2005. He is 30 years old and has been around a lot of blocks in baseball - he signed as an Indians free agent after being outrighted by the Pirates -- and has come to understand the high points and low of his difficult profession. This season's relentless roll he attributes partly to "coming to a group and a team that wants to work every day and wants to win every day."

So does he. "It doesn't matter what level it's at, or how old you are or how many years you've had at a certain level, just being able to show up wherever you are and keep getting better and keep going out and play, that's how I've always thought about it."

A lot of things might change in the second half, but there is a message in that .370 average as July arrives. Indianapolis last produced a league batting champion in 1989. That's 36 years.

This is where the Bubba Chandler enigma must work itself out. He had such a terrific start with a 2.03 earned run average through May, holding opponents scoreless in five of 11 starts. Then came a June swoon when he gave up 11 earned runs in 9.1 innings and four starts. That sort of thing gets noticed when a pitcher is the top prospect in the organization, and it called for some thoughts from the high command.

Bowman: "Bubba's trying to figure out how to not only get through a Triple-A lineup but to prepare himself to get through a major league lineup. He's working through just completely overpowering people with stuff and learning how to pitch. He's working through that when things don't go his way, how to reset and get back and work through a lineup.

"But every day he shows up and he's ready to tackle whatever the problems are."

Chernow: "It's so easy to forget that he's 22 years old. I think for him he's learning a lot about who he is during this time. Which makes me feel pretty good. You trust that he's going to be able to figure it out and you trust the support pitching group is there to help troubleshoot with him and it's going to make him even better on the other side of it."

Perhaps Chandler's most recent start this past Saturday was light at the end of the June tunnel. He needed 35 pitches to get through a wobbly first inning but finished giving up only one run in 3.1 innings and striking out six.

This is where Bowman suddenly ended up in the manager's office, which was not part of the script for 2025. Until it was. The Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton in early May, and a flurry of personnel moves followed, including Indians manager Chris Truby moving up to coach in Pittsburgh. There had been discussion that Bowman - a field coordinator for the Pirates in recent years - might be the replacement but nothing was settled. He was on his way to Indianapolis for an earlier-scheduled meeting and when the plane landed at the airport the word came via his cellphone. He should plan on staying a while. He was the new Indians manager. He's a baseball lifer from the hockey hotbed of British Columbia, and this sudden turn in his road turned out to be a blessing.

"As a field coordinator you've got everything and nothing to focus on, it seems like. This has allowed me personally and selfishly to be involved more day-to-day with a group," he said. "This is the reason why I'm in baseball, because you get to be with a group of people and bring them along that path. When you're a coordinator you're helping other people bring them along the path. Being embedded in this has been amazing. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it."

He supervisors the dream-chasing of his players in the clubhouse, as they wait for the call from Pittsburgh, but at the same time has watched his team turn into a stubborn bunch who won't take no for an answer many nights and has developed the knack for winning the close ones and protecting the home turf.

The Indians don't talk a lot about all those shiny records. "But we do talk a lot about competing," he said. "We do talk a lot about playing the game hard despite the score. It's really just playing the game within your skill set and maximizing your abilities at the end of the day. That's the name of the game. Whatever you're supposed to do in this game you won't achieve that unless you try and you show up every day."

That glittering Victory Field record? "What we're trying to do now (is answer), why is it not like that on the road?" Bowman said. So, they tinker with this, fiddle with that. For this week's series at Louisville, the Indians left the night before, even though it is a short drive down I-65. Maybe that would help.

But Victory Field is where they still want to thrive, and the second half comes with much intrigue. Can the close-game magic stay powerful enough for a pennant chase? Who will be gone to the Pirates, and who might be back? Will Chandler find his footing, will Solak cool off?

Chernow mentioned players he would be watching if he were a Victory Field customer the rest of the summer.

Nick Yorke, who went from hitting .214 in April to .322 in May. "He's such a talented hitter. The things he can do from an offensive standpoint, when it's going it's really going."

Cam Sanders, who between Altoona and Indianapolis has given up only seven earned runs in 31 innings and struck out 34. "We know how volatile baseball can be from a bullpen standpoint. He checks the boxes with his stuff and if it's in the zone, it's electric and guys don't have a chance."

Cook, who endured an awful start - a .182 average in April-- but had multiple hits in 10 games in June and batted .385 for the month. "He's starting to get back to the guy we saw at the end of last year, plays the game extremely hard, plays the right way.

"If I was sitting in the park they would stand out to me because they all play the game the right way in their own way and they're all really talented guys."

So, Victory Field is the place where more fireworks could be coming. There will be Friday night, anyway.

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