News and Notes for Tuesday, March 18th, 2025
Last night, the Guardians shut out the Reds 3-0. And, Austin Hedges hit a home run at 106.4 mph. His maximum exit velocity in 2024 was 103.2 mph and his average was 84 mph. 60 wRC+ season incoming, folks.
Carlos Santana and Will Brennan joined Hedges atop the exit velocity leaderboard for the game last night, Santana hitting a two-run double to score both Steven Kwan and Lane Thomas. There was excellent pitching from Tanner Bibee who allowed one hit and one walk in six scoreless innings, striking out four, and Joey Cantillo who went two scoreless with a walk and two K’s. Paul Sewald struck out two of the Reds’ bench players in a scoreless 9th, but I regret to report his fastball was only 89 mph which would be 2 mph down from his average fastball velo last season (the lowest of his career). He’s not a flamethrower, but I’m not sure if only 9 mph difference between his heater and his secondary stuff is playable in the regular season, so hopefully he’s just saving bullets.
My final note on the game is that I’m still just not sure what the Guardians are doing with the Gabriel Arias experiment. All he does is hit groundballs that he uses as an opportunity for a leisurely jog to first. Folks, Carlos Santana was busting up the line this whole game, and I’m just not sure how a 25 year-old trying to get a roster spot gets away with dogging it on the groundballs he hits over half the time he goes to the plate. Call me a grumpy old man, but it bugs the heck out of me. And, of course, Arias added a strikeout. I’m going to have to make it a resolution to not complain about this every day during the season but I watch Arias and I see the easy power he’s got and the strong arm… but I see no real attempts by him to overcome the various other glaring flaws he has a player. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
Shane Bieber and his wife Kara welcomed their first baby, a boy named Kav McClain. Congratulations to the happy couple!
The Guardians play a night game again tonight, at the Rangers at 9:05PM EST. Luis Ortiz will take another turn and see if he can avoid is bad first inning trend. The game will be carried on MLB Network. No word from the Guardians’ yet on cable partners, but I’d assume that will be released at the latest by early next week.
AROUND MLB:
Forgot to mention in yesterday’s notes that Royce Lewis for the Twins is going to be out with a hamstring strain for a while. Similar to DeLauter for the Guardians, he seems destined to be a talented player who struggles to stay on the field for the Twins.
The Dodgers won the opening game of the MLB season 4-1 over the Cubs. I discovered this morning that I’m going to have a fun secondary pastime this season of checking every day in addition to the Guardians’ outcome in hopes that the Dodgers lost. I just want the super team there to fail so badly, call me a hater, I don’t care.