Indians end season with win over Royals

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Travis Hafner drove in two of the four runs to reach 100 RBIs for the fourth consecutive year.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Travis Hafner is going to the playoffs for the first time, and he tuned up for the postseason with another big day at the plate.

Hafner drove in two runs to reach 100 RBIs for the fourth straight year and the Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Royals 4-2 Sunday in the final game of the regular season.

The Indians, who won the AL Central, will start C.C. Sabathia in Game 1 of their division series against the New York Yankees Thursday. The Yankees, who were 6-0 against the Indians this year, will counter with Chien-Ming Wang.

"Obviously, they've got a lot of playoff experience, more than we've seen," Hafner said. "But it's a five-game series and we feel good about our team. We've played pretty well the last month. It's as good as we've played this year. We're excited, we're ready to go."

Not worried about Yankees

Hafner, who hit only .228 in May and .218 in June, is batting .373 in his last 17 games with three homers and 13 RBIs.

"He's been hitting the baseball ... the way you expect Travis Hafner to do," Cleveland manager Eric Wedge said. "And it couldn't happen at a better time for us."

Aaron Laffey (4-2), who is not included in the Indians' four-man playoff rotation, went five innings to get the win, giving up four hits and one run.

Joe Borowski, who pitched the ninth for his AL-leading 45th save in 53 chances, said he isn't worried about the Indians' winless record against New York.

"It's the playoffs now," he said. "You can throw all that stuff out. We just want to go in and win three straight. It doesn't matter what we've done. It doesn't matter what they've done."

Hafner put Cleveland in front 2-0 with a two-run double in the third off Luke Hochevar (0-1), the top overall pick in the 2006 draft who was making his first major league start. The Indians took a 3-0 lead in the fourth on Chris Gomez's run-scoring groundout.

Hochevar, who had three relief appearances this month, gave up two runs and three hits in three innings.

Joey Gathright and Tony Pena Jr. each drove in a run for Kansas City.

Monday, October 1, 2007