The Cleveland Guardians have come roaring out of the All-Star break. winning 14 of their 20 games, and they’ve won 9 of their last 10, including a three-game sweep of the Mets on the road.
Steven Vogt continues to say his team is resilient and that’s an understatement. After a 10-game losing streak at the end of June, most people thought this team was done, but Cleveland has put together a 21-7 record since then.
Yes, the schedule got easier, but don’t forget, in addition to the sweep in New York, the Guardians also took all three games against the division leading Astros too.
Vogt has this team believing in themselves. It’s too bad the front office, and we mean ownership here, didn’t share that feeling.
The Guardians made two moves at the trade deadline, and both were basically done to shed salary. dealing the balance of the $10 million owed to Shane Bieber and the rest of the $6 million owed to oft-injured reliever Paul Sewald.
To be fair, neither pitcher had helped the Guardians to date, and the front office did net a solid prospect for the former Cy Young Award winner, and much like last off-season, highly paid players were moved and very little salary was picked up in their place.
Cleveland did sign reliever Carlos Hernandez, who was DFA’d by the Tigers. FYI, he’s making $1.16 million this year.
The point is this team, which as of today, sits just a half game out of a playoff spot, and has closed the gap behind the division leading Tigers to six games, didn’t get any help at the deadline, and they still need some added offense and the bullpen could’ve used another arm, especially with the suspension of Emmanuel Clase.
We have seen a lot of statistics talking about the Guardians’ offense since the losing skein and how it ranks among the best in baseball since then. However, it is still the third worst in the AL, ahead of just Chicago and Kansas City.
In that span, they’ve also faced three of the worst pitching staffs in the game, the A’s, Orioles, and Rockies. They also have only three batters with OPS+ over 100 in Jose Ramirez, Steven Kwan, and Kyle Manzardo, although Daniel Schneemann is very close at 99.
They finally called up C.J. Kayfus from AAA and he has helped so far, but he had only 23 at bats.
And let’s not forget the team still has Nolan Jones on the roster, and his playing time seems to be shrinking.
Not doing anything to help the relief corps after the Clase suspension might wind up being a bigger problem. Even with Hunter Gaddis not pitching like he did a year ago, you had to feel good if Cleveland had a lead after six innings with Gaddis, Cade Smith, and Clase ready to go.
To their credit, Erik Sabrowski (1.15 ERA, 23 K in 15.2 innings) and Nic Enright (1.96 ERA in 23 innings) have done well, but again, it still wouldn’t have hurt to get some relief help.
We would like to imagine that Vogt has a poster of Paul Dolan in the clubhouse and instead of tearing a piece of Rachel Phelps’ clothing off, they do something to it after every win to show the owner he should have had faith in the team.
That isn’t true, but it shows again that profits mean more than wins to Dolan. Oh, and by the way, 1948.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 