It is very difficult to come from way behind in sports. How many times have you seen a team come from say, 20 points down in the second half of a game, trimming the lead to say, three or four points, only to fall back and wind up losing by double digits.
The same can be true chasing a team in the standings. In the past week, we have kind of seen just that with the Cleveland Guardians and Kansas City Royals.
On June 25th, the Guardians were in first place in the AL Central with a 51-26 record, leading Minnesota by nine games and the Royals by 10, as KC sat with a 43-38 mark.
You can see by the records that the teams had played about half of their season’s schedule.
But last week, the Royals finally tracked the Guardians down, winning the first three games of a four-game series in Cleveland. The two teams were tied in the standings, but because Kansas City won the season series, it meant technically, KC was in first place.
In the fourth game of the set, the Guards looked like a weary squad and trailed after six innings, 5-2. It seemed to be the equivalent of the 1978 Boston Massacre, when the Red Sox, who had a double digit lead earlier in the season, were famously swept at home by the Yankees.
Eventually, the two teams had to play a 163rd game to decide the American League East.
But we digress. In the bottom of the 7th, Cleveland rallied for four runs to take a 6-5 lead, added another run in the 8th, and when Emmanuel Clase closed out the Guardians’ victory, the series ended with a one game lead for Steven Vogt’s group.
Since then, Kansas City has lost an additional six consecutive contests, while Cleveland has won five out of six and taken a 4.5 game advantage over the Twins and 5.5 over the Royals.
Yes, the Royals lost Vinnie Pasquantino, their second or third best hitter, having driven in 97 runs in 2024, and that has really hurt their offense. They haven’t scored more than three runs since he went down.
That seventh inning at Progressive Field seems to have shifted the momentum for now in the division title race. Cleveland didn’t let Kansas City pass them, and the Royals seem to have expended a lot of energy in tracking the Guardians down.
Meanwhile, the Guardians seem to have their starting rotation pitching as well as it has all season long, although we all know that could change at the drop of a hat. Although we were skeptical of the acquisitions of Matthew Boyd and Alex Cobb by the front office, they seem to have stabilized the starting staff.
Boyd has a 2.38 ERA over five starts, while Cobb, who had a perfect game through six innings on Sunday, has a 2.76 ERA.
Overall, the rotation is giving Vogt at six innings in four straight starts, allowing the highly taxed bullpen to get some valuable rest.
Last week, when the Guards were struggling, we said we hoped for a big event, a big home run, a walk-off win, to get this team going in the right direction again.
That seventh inning in the last game of the Royals series in Cleveland may have been that shot in the arm.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 