CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In the stretch drive of the season, the Indians will meet the enemy and hope, as the comic strip possum Pogo said, "He is us."

The Tribe plays Kansas City seven times in its last 20 games, which is noteworthy because the Royals are both the American League champions and the Indians' playoff inspiration.

At the All-Star break in 2014, the Royals were 48-46, 61/2 games out and losers of three of their last four games. KC then lost the first four after the break. The Royals were eight games back.

They wound up playing baseball until the seventh game of the World Series.

On Friday, going into the last weekend of what is customarily called the first half of the season, the Indians are 41-44, 10 games behind the Royals and 41/2 out of the wild card.

The 2014 Royals could not hit much, which certainly resonates with exasperated Tribe fans, who recently celebrated the (Albert) Belle-ringing, walk-off-homering 1995 Indians, the ones who showed that the fabled "Sleeping Giant" of Northeast Ohio baseball interest not only was awake, but was stomping around and shouting, "Fee-fi-fo-fum."

Sports Illustrated picked the 2015 Indians picked to win the World Series, a feat that eluded the 1995 team as well as every Cleveland team since 1948, in what the magazine branded as "Anyone's Year." It was based primarily on their starting pitching.

The connection to the defending league champions from Missouri, however, is that the Indians can show me (and them and anybody who steps into the batter's box) a bullpen that emulates Kansas City's.

As the Royals hit their stride, they only asked their starters to go six innings, then turned it over to that bullpen. Failed starters no longer need three pitches to go seven innings, but only two or even one, if it is fast enough, to relieve for one inning. After giving up four walk-off losses before the 2014 All-Star break, the Kansas City relief corps gave up none afterward.

The Royals now have five All-Stars named to the AL team, and the Indians have Jason Kipnis. At the same time, the Indians show definite signs that the performance arrow (sorry about the pun) is trending upward.

As of Friday they had won eight of 11 and three in a row. Their starters were going deep into games regularly.

Off a very small (four-game) sample, the new fifth starter, rookie Cody Anderson, is debuting at such a historic level that post-game commentators giddily wondered on Thursday how Anderson would have fared in a pitching duel against Babe Ruth back in the Bambino's first year of 1914.

The Indians headed into the last series of the first half against Oakland off a series win over the Sultans of Sabermetrics, the Houston Astros, who scored two or fewer runs against them in six of the seven games the teams have played. Their bright young shortstop, Francisco Lindor, has been in the thick of the rallies.

Moreover, in the Central Division, the Tigers have coped most of the season without Justin Verlander and have lost Miguel Cabrera, the best hitter on the planet, for six weeks. The Royals lost Alex Gordon for at least eight weeks just this week.

The Indians also have an advantage Kansas City did not. Ned Yost was such a punch line for much of last season that a term "Yost-ed, as in "toasted," arose for the effect of his head-scratching decisions. The Indians have Terry Francona, one of the game's best, the Curse of the Bambino killer in Boston, and they play hard for him.

Nobody thought Kansas City was anything special at the break last season. Ditto for these Indians. The big money the team spent for Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn and David Murphy hasn't paid off. "Indians Fever -- drop it" seems to be the fan motto.

The current scuffling offense hardly dims memories of the last hurrah of the 1990s teams, the 1999 edition that scored over 1,000 runs. People remember the long ball and forget that that team lost in the first round of the playoffs.

But this team can -- and it says here will -- reach the playoffs too. Psst. Somebody wake the Sleeping Giant up.