It’s Opening Day in Cleveland and that’s a certain sign of spring, despite today’s weather forecast. However, the Guardians aren’t coming home with momentum like they did last season in manager Steven Vogt’s first season.
Because of the renovations to Progressive Field, the Guards spent the first nine contests on the road in 2024 and starting hot, arriving in town with a 7-2 record, in route to a 19-10 mark at the end of April.
This season hasn’t been the same. Cleveland won the season opening series at Kansas City, taking two of three, but the west coast was not kind to the team, as they dropped five out of six in San Diego and Los Angeles against the Angels.
Until Luis Ortiz went six innings in the last game of the trip, no starting pitcher completed that many innings on the sojourn. All in all, Cleveland pitching has the second worst ERA in the American League at 5.09 and is tied for second in allowing the most home runs, giving up 14 gopher balls.
The defense has also been a concern, leading the AL in errors to date. Jose Ramirez has made four errors, mostly not coming up with ground balls. Cleveland pitchers have already allowed eight unearned runs, so the mistakes have been costly.
The baserunning hasn’t been crisp either. The Guardians picked up their first stolen bases of the season on Sunday, their ninth game. They’ve been caught four times. And we’ve seen Gabriel Arias thrown out at third in San Diego with men on first and second and no one out, and Brayan Rocchio allowing himself to get tagged out on a double steal attempt with Steven Kwan at the plate.
The latter also should be filed in the curious managing file.
These kinds of mistakes make us wonder if training camp was a little less focused this season coming off winning the AL Central last year.
Offensively, the Guardians are ninth in runs scored, but averaging only 3.78 per game. To be fair, the league average of 4.37 is bloated by the Yankees and Red Sox’ figures, but outside of Kyle Manzardo, no relatively young player has stepped up.
Against the Royals, Guardians’ hitters fanned 18 times and drew 16 walks. In the last six games, Cleveland hitters have struck out 59 times with the same number of bases on balls in twice the amount of games.
Rightfield continues to be a problem as Nolan Jones and Jhonkensy Noel have combined to go 4 for 38 with 13 punchouts and just three walks and only two RBI, both coming on outs.
Lane Thomas has also struggled at the dish, getting off to a 5 for 29 start that includes just one extra base hit. The bench group of Daniel Schneemann, Johnathan Rodriguez, and Austin Hedges have combined to go 2 for 22 in the young season.
Having young players in part-time roles in tough on them, as it is hard to produce with sporadic at bats. That’s an excuse for Rodriguez. It is more than likely that Schneemann will be a utility guy for his career, so he needs to hit when he’s in the lineup.
Look, it is still early. In fact, it is very early. Our concern is we aren’t seeing the crisp baseball we saw a year ago. And we haven’t even talked about how the bullpen has struggled so far.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 