Nine Games To Settle The Central.

In about a week we should have a pretty good idea about whether or not the Cleveland Guardians will win the American League Central Division and qualify for the post season.

Starting with tonight’s make up game with the White Sox, the Guards will play nine straight contests against Chicago and Minnesota, the two teams battling them for the division title.

The magic number going into the single game against the Pale Hose is 18, as Cleveland leads Chicago by three and the Twins by five. The Guardians and Twins have 21 games left, while the Sox have 19.

Also important is their no longer is a tie breaking game to qualify for the playoffs. If their is a tie in the standings, the season series is the determining factor and Terry Francona’s squad needs just one victory against each of these two teams to get that edge.

After a 10 game stretch against Seattle and Baltimore where the club went 2-8 and tallied just 16 runs, the Guardians have roared back by winning eight of nine, including a huge sweep of Minnesota at Target Field.

The starting pitching and the back end of the bullpen have been tremendous in this stretch, with the rotation providing 51-2/3 innings allowing just 13 earned runs, a 2.26 ERA, and that includes rookie Konnor Pilkington allowing four runs in five frames on Monday against the Angels.

Remember, Pilkington is filling in for injured starters Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale.

The bullpen, led by Emmanuel Clase (Death. Taxes. Clase), James Karinchak, and Trevor Stephan have simply dominated opponents in this stretch, and really we should also include southpaw Sam Hentges in this group as well.

Clase had a rare bad outing against KC in the last game there, walking three hitters (one intentionally) and Karinchak allowed a two run homer after his hair products were called into question by Twins’ skipper Rocco Baldelli in Minneapolis.

Stephan has allowed four earned runs since August 1st, and overall this year, has struck out 72 batters in 56-2/3 innings, and has given up just three home runs. Hentges has given up just one runs since the end of July and he’s allowed three dingers on the season as well.

Overall, Cleveland relievers have pitched 467-1/3 innings with a 3.14 ERA and 47 home runs allowed. We hate to pick on Bryan Shaw, but if you remove his numbers from these statistics, the ERA drops to 2.81 and the long ball total is 39.

If this trend can continue, the balance of the schedule would seem to be in good hands.

Offensively, it would be nice if Jose Ramirez got on one of his hot streaks, but until then, rookie Oscar Gonzalez has been doing the job.

Gonzalez has hit four homers in September, slugging .596 and even walking four times this month (he’s only walked 12 times since his call up). His three run homer in the first inning in Minnesota got Cleveland off to a good start, and another homer Tuesday vs. Los Angeles was the difference in the game.

Remember, since they have the division lead, going 4-5 or 5-4 in these nine games is perfectly fine, it just takes the nine games off the schedule.

Let’s hope the pitching continues as it has over the last week or so and the hitting provides just enough runs.

Guardians’ Pitching Gives Them A Chance Daily

To be honest, when the Cleveland Guardians embarked on this trip to Colorado, Los Angeles, and Minnesota, we would have taken a 4-5 record. Just tread water and get back to Progressive Field, where they haven’t played much this season.

Six games into the trek, the Guards have already picked up five wins, thus clinching a winning trip and now head into a span where they play the team ahead of them in the AL Central standings, the Twins, eight times in the next ten days.

Minnesota sits one game ahead of Terry Francona’s squad, but because the Guardians have had so many games postponed because of weather, Cleveland is actually two games ahead in the loss column.

And when the team returns hope from the Twin Cities on Friday night, they will likely have played 39 of their 65 games on the road, meaning of course they will play 55 of the last 97 contests on the schedule at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

While the contact oriented hitting approach has been widely discussed and praised, the efforts of the pitching staff should not be ignored.

In this three week span where the Guards have gone 15-4, they have allowed more than four runs in a game just five times. This means most nights, the starting pitcher has given his team a shot at winning.

In 13 of those 19 games, the opponents scored no more than three tallies. The offense doesn’t have to be hitting on all cylinders to win games when your pitching is that good.

We don’t think fans realize how special that is. Even this past weekend, the pitching held the mighty Dodgers (yes, they were without Mookie Betts) to three runs or less in two of the three games, both of which resulted in Cleveland victories.

Ace Shane Bieber has made 13 starts in 2022 and has allowed more than three runs just once, an 8-3 loss to Toronto on May 7th. Since that start, he’s pitched 45-1/3 innings, allowing just 11 earned runs, a 2.18 ERA.

Triston McKenzie has started 11 times this year, allowing more than three runs in a game just twice. He’s allowed just 46 hits in 70 frames for the season.

Cal Quantrill has a dozen starts under his belt this season and has allowed more than three runs just twice, the second coming this past weekend in Dodger Stadium. He’s gone at least five innings in all but one start this year.

Zach Plesac can’t match the consistency shown by the trio already mentioned, but he’s allowed either one or two runs in three of his last four outings. No doubt that’s a trend Francona and pitching coach Carl Willis would like to see continued.

Rookie Konnor Pilkington has made four starts since Aaron Civale went on the injured list, and he didn’t allow more than four runs in those appearances.

Give your team a chance.

That’s the mantra the Guardians’ starting staff uses and it works. Give the offense a chance to scratch out some runs and who knows? It’s worked pretty well so far. As long as the rotation can do its job, the Guards will be in the mix.

It’s a simple formula really.

Schedule Or Not, Guards’ Pitching Has Improved

A few weeks ago, we talked about what figured to be the Cleveland Guardians’ strength coming into the season, the pitching staff, wasn’t pulling its own weight, ranking near the bottom of the American League in ERA.

Things have taken a decided turn for the good for the Cleveland hurlers, as they have seen that ranking moved to 6th in the AL. Surprisingly, they are not doing it with the strikeout, as Guards’ pitchers are just ninth in the Junior Circuit in strikeouts per nine innings.

They are third from the bottom in total whiffs, but that has more to do with Terry Francona’s club playing at least three games less than every other team in the league.

They’ve allowed the third fewest hits per nine, behind only the Yankees and Astros, so there could be concern about how sustainable that is considering the lack of strikeouts.

New York is near the top of the league in whiffs per nine, while Houston averages the same as Cleveland.

In terms of issuing free passes, Carl Willis’ staff is right around league average, so nothing unusual there.

However, in the last 15 games, Cleveland pitchers have allowed more than four runs just twice, most recently, Saturday’s loss to Baltimore, and to take it back further, in the last 23 games, opponents have hit the five-run mark against the Guardians just four times.

The two most disappointing members of the rotation earlier this season were Zach Plesac and Aaron Civale. Plesac has two runs or less in three of his last four starts, and Civale has started only one game since May 13th, and it was a 6-1/3 inning, one run allowed (unearned) effort against Detroit.

Rookie left-hander Konnor Pilkington has subbed in with three starts and hasn’t allowed more than three runs in either of them.

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the only above league average offense Cleveland faced in the last 15 games is Houston. The Tigers are the league’s worst offense, while the Orioles and Royals both rank in the bottom five in the AL in scoring.

There do seem to be changes afoot in the bullpen. Trevor Stephan has been struggling in his last few outings and Nick Sandlin has had issues throwing strikes all season, walking 15 batters in 15 innings.

So Francona has leaned more on Eli Morgan, a starter last season, and he has been more than impressive. Morgan started the year on the roster to be able to give the team innings because starters were still stretching out from the shortened spring training.

The 26-year-old righty has pitched 25 innings, allowing just 10 hits with only four walks against 32 strikeouts. He’s getting more and more opportunities in the seventh and eighth innings.

The same is true with southpaw Sam Hentges, who has thrown 16-1/3 frames, giving up just eight hits and four walks against 19 strikeouts. He has supplanted Anthony Gose as the late inning lefty.

Enyel De Los Santos has also worked his way into more high leverage situations as well.

If the club can get both Stephan and Sandlin straightened out, this has the makings of a very good bullpen.

If the pitching can keep this going, the Guardians can stay in the post-season race. Hopefully, the last group of games is more indicative of how good the staff can be.