The one where everyone was aggressive.
The Cleveland Guardians took on the Texas Rangers in another evening game in Surprise, Arizona. It was pretty clear the plan of attack for this game: Be Aggressive.
From the first pitch of the game, Cleveland batters attacked the pitcher and swung early in the count. This lead to a lot of strike outs and weak contact, but also lead to a couple of homers.
Obviously, as everyone reasonably and logically predicted, Austin Hedges hit another home run, his third of the spring.
Before most people had a chance to fire off texts/social media posts of astonishments, Juan Brito decided to get in on the home run action.
Tyler Freeman felt left out and tacked on a home run of his own in the top of the sixth inning.
The bottom of the 4th inning saw a defense anomaly. Evan Carter hit a fly ball to left that looked like it was caught by Angel Martinez, but it wasn’t. Angel kind of sold that he caught it which contributed to the confusion on the basepath. Josh Jung, who was on first base at the start of Carter’s at bat, broke to second on contact. He also thought the ball was caught and hustled back to first base, but crossed Carter in the basepath in the process. Carter was then called out and originally Josh Jung was called out after Brito tagged second base. However, the umps conferred and Jung was placed back on first. It was quite the conundrum for at home scorers to keep track of, as Carter was awarded a hit in the process.
All of that for starting pitcher Luis Ortiz to balk and walk Jake Burger.
Ortiz has been having a difficult spring while he adjusts to the Carl Willis regimen for elite pitching and tonight was no different. Ortiz pitched 4.0 innings, allowing 2H, 4R, 6BB, and striking out two. Obviously six walks isn’t ideal, but there is hope this is Ortiz working through some of the changes and challenges placed on him by the pitching staff.
Jakob Junis had a rough outing as well, allowing four hits and three runs in 1.2 innings pitched. However, Andrew Walters had a promising outing. In the seventh inning Walters allowed two hits, but struck out two and got out of the inning without allowing a run. Vince Velasquez pitched the eighth, walking one and striking out one before getting out of the inning.
Guardians 3 – Rangers 7
Gavin Williams will take the mound for Cleveland as the Guardians face JP Sears of the Oakland Athletics of Sacramento. The game starts at 4:05PM and can be watched on CLEGtv.