One stat that will make Indians fans freak out

It's hard to put into words what, exactly, is happening to the Cleveland Indians.

There are such huge threads of luck that weave their way through baseball, as my colleague Ted Berg writes, that randomness is usually the best explanation. Baseball is not like basketball, or football, or really any other sport. Giving something away implies you actually had it first, and when the best players in the sport only make contact with the ball 30 percent of the time, you rarely find yourself watching such scenarios. In truth, it's a minor statistical miracle any time that you do.

But whatever the reason, be it luck or coincidence or squandery, the Indians' 3-1 series lead is gone. If they don't win its make-or-break game on Wednesday, they'll find themselves marked down in history for very much the wrong reasons.

Let's put this in context, as Ted did earlier in the series: Of the 34 teams to have racked-up 3-1 leads in the World Series, only five since 1925 - the 1925 Senators, the 1958 Braves, the 1968 Cardinals, the 1979 Orioles, and the 1985 Cardinals - have gone on not to win the World Series. If the Indians don't get it done this time, they'll be consigned to that list and become one of baseball history's few, undesirable outliers.

First, the good news you Indians fans probably need to hear right now:

Those five teams are very much outliers. Outliers are rare, which is why they're called outliers. The series may technically be 50-50 at the moment, but really the deck is still stacked in the Indians' favor. Winning three-straight baseball games when you need to most is incredibly hard, because with every win, each subsequent win become increasingly unlikely. That's not a theory, that's basic math.

29 of the last 34 teams since 1925 - including the last 10 - have turned 3-1 leads into World Series wins. Not only that; of those 34 teams that boasted a 3-1 lead since 1925, MLB.com notes that 16 - 47 percent - were forced to a Game 6. Late comebacks at 3-1 in the World Series are nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, at this point, they should almost be expected.

But now, the bad news, because there's one, big, fat caveat to all this.

That same article notes that nine of the 16 3-1 teams forced to a Game 6 used it to close out the series out the series - a little nerve-wracking - but it gets worse.

A team trailing 3-1 has tied-up the series seven different times (the Cubs would make it eight). In those winner-take-all Game 7 showdowns, the surging team - which, in this case, would be the Cubs - capped its victory with a World Series title five of seven times. In other words, 71 percent of a time a trailing team forces a Game 7 from 3-1 down, they go on to win the World Series.

So if history is any indicator, things are starting to look pretty dicey for Cleveland fans. There's still hope, of course, so Indians fans should back away, take a deep breath, and ask themselves a very simple question:

How much do I believe in momentum?