The Cleveland Guardians had a magical September in 2025. They went 20-7 to erase a 10-1/2 game deficit in the American League Central Division and overtake the Detroit Tigers to win the division.
They also scored 124 runs in those games, which did make up 1/6th of the season, an average of 4.6 runs per contest, compared to the average for the entire year, which was 3.97/game.
During the off-season, the front office talked about giving their young hitters a runway to success, giving that as a reason not to go out and get an experienced bat, save for the Rhys Hoskins signing at the beginning of spring training.
GM Mike Chernoff said over the weekend that one of the reasons for the great September by Steven Vogt’s club was the team got younger, apparently referring to moving on from Carlos Santana and not having Lane Thomas available to the team, creating opportunities for rookies like George Valera and C.J. Kayfus.
We understand Chernoff’s thinking, but he is overlooking a couple of things. First, like the movie Moneyball the pitching was overlooked. The Guardians’ staff allowed four runs per game over the entire season. In last season’s final month, they gave up just 75 runs in the 27 games, an average of just 2.8 per contest.
If you do that, you will win a lot of games, no matter what your offense does. For example, during the Guardians 22 game winning streak in 2017, they allowed just 37 runs in that span.
Secondly, Cleveland didn’t exactly play a bunch of juggernauts down the stretch. Yes, they have the six great games against the Tigers during the last two weeks of play, winning five of six, but they also played 14 games (a little over half) against teams playing out the string.
Now, as usual, it would have been disappointing to lose to those teams, but we are just saying they weren’t dominating the best teams in the AL.
There is an old saying in baseball that you should ignore what happens in April and September because teams are either trying to figure things out (April) or playing out the string (September). Teams out of contention are looking ahead to the following season and looking at some younger players.
Putting all of your proverbial eggs in the basket of what happened in September doesn’t seem like a great strategy when trying to win. And the front office can say what they said about the young hitters, but right now, it looks like the only young hitter who will break camp is Chase DeLauter.
He and Hoskins are the only additions and remember, last year, the Guardians ranked at the bottom of the league in runs scored, even with their September resurgence. We repeat, part of the reason for the great last month was the pitching staff, and that was fueled by two young hurlers with less than 100 big league innings under their belt in Joey Cantillo and Parker Messick.
They also didn’t add to the rotation either, so there is very little big league ready depth to start the year in Columbus.
There’s a reason people don’t predict future events on small sample sizes. We guess the Guardians’ front office will see how it works out for them.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 