The Cleveland Guardians should be entering a crucial stretch as five of their next eight games are against the Minnesota Twins, who currrently lead the AL Central Division by six games over Cleveland.
We say should because we aren’t sure the management of the team are interested, or should we say fully invested in catching the Twins.
We are sure the players are trying to win every night, but it seems like Terry Francona, Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff are ambivalent.
In Sunday’s game, the Guards had a 4-3 lead in the sixth inning and Noah Syndergaard had thrown over 80 pitches. He allowed a runner to reach, but no one was warming in the bullpen meaning the starter was out there to complete the inning.
He gave up a two-run homer to allow Toronto to capture the league and was removed after six frames. He was also designated for assignment after the contest.
With Cal Quantrill likely to be activated on Friday, he will take Syndergaard’s place in the rotation, but to replace him, the Guardians called up retread Daniel Norris to take his place.
Norris replaced Xzhavion Curry last night and promptly gave up four runs turning a 6-5 contest into a 10-6 Twins’ lead.
Last year, the organization was very aggressive bringing up young players like Will Brennan, Gabriel Arias, Tyler Freeman, and Cody Morris, even if they weren’t on the 40-man roster to help down the stretch.
Why not bring up Franco Aleman, who has made 13 scoreless appearances at Akron, striking out 29 and walking just 3 in 19.1 innings at AA. To be fair, he didn’t have great numbers at Lake County (5.52 ERA) but did whiff 46 batters in 31 innings.
Norris is a 30-year-old journeyman who made six appearances at the big league level this year and walked 11 batters in 10.2 innings coming into last night. Heck, if they didn’t want to go with Aleman, Hunter Gaddis, who opened the season in the starting rotation would have been a better choice.
Francona could’ve turned to Eli Morgan in the 3rd and maybe went with Morris later, but no, it was Norris, just like a game in June against a team not ahead of them in the standings.
We understand the Blue Jays threw two southpaws at the Guardians over the weekend, but instead of playing Bo Naylor, the best catcher on the roster, in one of the games vs. a lefty, both Cam Gallagher and Eric Haase, who at best are replacement level major leaguers both got starts.
We have seen fans angry that Naylor only played in one game in essentially his hometown. That shouldn’t be the argument. He’s clearly the best hitter of the three, and isn’t a terrible defensive catcher. He should be in there most nights.
This shouldn’t be news. The organization told the fan base they weren’t interested in contending on August 1st. And it wasn’t trading Amed Rosario, Josh Bell, and Aaron Civale that was the main crime, it was not trading for someone to help a bad offense and a struggling bullpen.
A sweep could have cut the Minnesota lead to three games, heck, they could still walk out of the Twin Cities down five. But we don’t think that was a major consideration.
Fans can’t want something more that the organization does.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 