The Major League Baseball season ebbs and flows as the marathon progresses. The Cleveland Guardians were riding high after a trip to Detroit and Philadelphia where they won six or seven. They had a 4.5 game lead in the AL Central Division.
Since then, Steven Vogt’s club has dropped 10 of 15 and have fallen out of first place for the first time since the end of April. It’s still way early, but the larger the advantage, the better. Injuries have hurt the team and since the Guards depend so much on rookies, players in their premier season in the big leagues tend to be inconsistent.
Of course, one of the things we wanted the front office to do in the off-season was to build some depth, but they didn’t and some weaknesses are starting to show.
One area we would have liked to see an addition is in the starting rotation. The Guardians have only used five starters all season, the only team in the big to do so. But recently, Joey Cantillo has not pitched well. In his last three starts, he went two innings (throwing 69 pitches), four innings, and five frames, and in the latter, he only went that far was because Vogt was saving his bullpen.
In those 11 innings, he’s allowed 15 earned runs, walking nine hitters in that span. Not only does it make it very difficult to win games that way, it also puts a lot of stress on the bullpen.
However, the only alternative the Guardians have is lefty Logan Allen who had a 4.25 ERA last season but struggled to throw strikes at times. And Cantillo does not have any options remaining, so the best the organization can do is move him to the bullpen temporarily.
Speaking of the bullpen, the elbow injury to Erik Sabrowski is also an issue. Sabrowski has been excellent, striking out 39 hitters in 21 innings and pitching to a 1.71 ERA. His absence puts Tim Herrin in that role, and he has problems throwing strikes (15 walks in 24 innings).
Will Dion is the other southpaw in the bullpen, and he is used more often than not by the skipper in a mop up role.
Offensively, as we said rookies can tend to be streaky, particularly early in their careers. Chase DeLauter is hitting just .208 over the last 28 days and has just two extra base hits, with only two walks in the last two weeks. DeLauter doesn’t have a lot of games where he doesn’t contribute to the offense though and we expect him to get hot again soon.
Travis Bazzana is also in a funk, going 9 for 49 in the last two weeks and drawing just three walks. He has seven extra base hits during that time,so again, we think he will start hitting again soon.
Thank goodness for Kyle Manzardo and Brayan Rocchio who have got hot, and for all of the talk of Jose Ramirez struggling, he has an 874 OPS over the last month and 878 OPS over the last two weeks.
What no one had in the cards was Steven Kwan’s struggles. It has to be difficult for someone who has been a centerpiece of the Cleveland offense for several years to be struggling. He has walked more than he has fanned, but his pop has disappeared, He slugged .374 last season is a somewhat down year, but this season that figure is down to .262.
We realize he has been struggling for close to a calendar year, but we don’t think sending him down would work. But perhaps he shouldn’t be a given to be written in the lineup everyday.
Hopefully, these issues will work themselves out quickly. A good place to start is with division rival Detroit coming to town tomorrow night.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 