Guardians News and Notes: Guardians take first series of the season

April is here, and Guards ball is back!

Baseball is back, and even through the blackout issues and MLB app failure over the course of the first series, one thing that certainly didn’t fail was the Guardians’ offense as Cleveland’s bats scored 16 runs in three games in Kansas City.

Food poisoning may have kept Tanner Bibee from starting the season opener on Thursday, but it didn’t stop Guardians bats from getting to Royals ace Cole Ragans in the middle innings. Trailing 3-0 heading into the fourth inning, Cleveland scored four runs over the next three frames, three of which were tagged to Ragans, and it was Kyle Manzardo’s big blow off of lefty reliever Angel Zerpa that gave the Guards the lead.

Manzardo had a big opening series, clobbering a pair of home runs, and this hit proved to be much needed, as Kansas City wouldn’t go down without a fight. Ben Lively gave Cleveland a solid outing on little notice that he’d even be pitching the opener due to Bibee’s illness, but the bullpen was certainly shaky behind him. Hunter Gaddis was erratic from the jump, and between a walk and an Gaddis-enforced error, he found himself with runners on the corners and nobody out. That’s when the fun started.

Kansas City helped Gaddis out in a major way, running themselves out of two runners in scoring position, and once Gaddis took a needed deep breath, he composed himself just in time to strike out Bobby Witt Jr. and end the frame spotless.

However, the bullpen woes would continue, and this time, we wouldn’t be quite as lucky. Emmanuel Clase entered with a one run lead, and on his second pitch, a cutter nearly on Vinnie Pasquantino’s kneecaps was drilled down the right field line for a lead-off double. Salvador Perez followed this up with a single to center field on a cutter placed seemingly perfectly down and away. Simply a good piece of hitting, but now there were runners on the corners with nobody out, and a Michael Massey sacrifice fly would tie the game up, 4-4. Clase would retire Hunter Renfroe and then Mark Canha, but the damage was done as the game headed to extras.

In extra innings, Steven Kwan took a Sam Long fastball and roped it into the right-center gap, bringing in the extra innings runner from second. 5-4 good guys. After an intentional walk to Carlos Santana, Kyle Manzardo made the Royals pay again, and again off of a lefty, driving a Sam Long slider down the right field line for a 2-run double, extending Cleveland’s lead to the final score of 7-4.

Despite a solid outing from Gavin Williams, the Guardians would drop game two of the series behind more shakiness from the bullpen, this time from Cade Smith and Paul Sewald. Sewald surrendered a pair of runs, proving to be the ultimate blow in a 4-3 loss. However, Cleveland’s bats woke back up for game three, as they made Michael Wacha work very hard all day long.

Despite scoring six runs, the Guardians could have had way more, finishing the day 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position.

For the final time in the opening series, Kyle Manzardo went deep, tattooing another Sam Long offering deep into the right-center seats. Cleveland would go onto win 6-2, but the talk surrounding this series spilled into the clubhouses after the game.

With Cleveland up 6-2, Stephen Vogt went to Emmanuel Clase in a non-save situation, likely getting his superstar closer some early work to shake out of a funk he’d been in really since October. After a first pitch strike on a high slider, Clase threw a cutter that got away from him, running up and in on India, barely missing the Royals hitter. Clase would go back to that same cutter the very next pitch, but it got away from him again, and this time, it did catch India directly in the jaw. A look was shared by India towards Clase as he was helped off the field, and Vinnie Pasquantino was none too pleased about the HBP after the game.

No, this was by no means intentionally done by Clase, but these two teams do play again in a weekend series in Cleveland, starting on April 11. Expect there to be some bad blood spilled over that weekend.

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Around the League

The New York Yankees made waves in their three game demolition of the Milwaukee Brewers, tallying 36 runs in a three game sweep in the Bronx, and as you’d expect all the talk coming out of this series was about…bats? Yes, bats, specifically torpedo bats.

Now, the science behind this is extremely beyond my expertise, so with the help of Twitter user @sunshinevvn, one of the best analytical follows you’ll find on that site, we’ll break down briefly why the Yankees implemented such data and alterations to their bats:

Although the overall alteration is not something that “breaks” the game of baseball, an advantage that can allow you to gain a chance at boosting exit velocity and a theoretical +.162 increase in wOBA is a massive shift in maximizing contact with the ball.

So, how well did it work? Well, Jazz Chisholm hit three home runs and drove in 12 runs in that three game shellacking of Milwaukee.

The Yankees aren’t the only team doing this either. Ryan Jeffers of the Twins rocked a torpedo bat, as did Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm. Elly De La Cruz crushed a pair of home runs trying the bat for the first time in-game on Monday night. Expect to see these torpedo bats and other bat alterations league-wide A-S-A-P.

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Who’s Next?

Getting back to the Guardians now, Cleveland dropped their first of a three game set in San Diego, 7-2. To say it was a rough outing from Luis Ortiz would be an understatement. Like much of the Spring, Ortiz couldn’t find the strike zone with any consistency, and the Padres locked in on the heaters in the zone and teed off. A Gavin Sheets double wiped off the Guardians’ 1-0 lead off of José Ramírez’s first home run of the season. Sheets would drive in four in part of his 3-for-3 night. San Diego scored in just two innings on the night, but crooked numbers of 4 and 3 will certainly do the trick.

Toeing the rubber for Cleveland for the remainder of this series will be Logan Allen and Ben Lively, and they will square off against the top of the Padres’ rotation in Michael King and Dylan Cease respectively. Suffice to say, it won’t be easy.