News and Notes: Guardians Win in a Playoff Atmosphere in Baltimore

Jose Ramirez hit a go-ahead home run, Tanner Bibee struck out seven in six strong innings, and the Guardians’ bullpen was nails, again, as Cleveland beat Baltimore 3-2 in the opening of a three-game series.

This was a fun game to watch from start to finish. It always helps when the Guardians score an early run, as they did when Jose Ramirez singled Steven Kwan home in the first. It was a bad game for Josh Naylor who did not see Orioles’ starter Cade Povich well at all, and David Fry still seems to be working out of his slump, so that was all they scored.

...Until the second when Gabriel Arias doubled (off a lefty again!) and Bo Naylor doubled to drive him in. Tanner Bibee also allowed a first inning run, but snuffed out Baltimore’s attempt to do more. A Josh Naylor error at first base in the third opened the door for the Orioles to tie the game, but Bibee, again, kept it under control from that point on. Bibee has looked like an ace for a month now and his ability to keep a tough Orioles lineup in check was tremendous.

Then, in the sixth, Jose taught the rookie Povich a lesson about throwing him a first pitch cutter down the middle:

From that point on, Tim Herrin (pumping 97-98 consistently), Hunter Gaddis and Scott Barlow had things covered. Gaddis won an incredible 13-pitch at-bat with Heston Kjerstad in the eighth that should do a lot for his confidence in similar stressful situations in the future. Interestingly, Anthony Santandar did Gaddis repeated favors by consistently taking his time going back to first after every foul ball, allowing the big right-hander to catch his breath.

Barlow had his best breaking stuff working, and, when that happens, it’s easy why the Guardians liked the idea of him helping in the back end of the pen on a night like last night when Emmanuel Clase and Cade Smith were unable to pitch:

FanGraphs has the Guardians projected for 91 wins and the fifth best record in baseball. They’d actually have to have a .496 winning percentage the rest of the season to do that. I feel like it’s hard to tell the computers that this team is just finding new ways to win, over and over. It doesn’t hurt to have three extremely dangerous hitters in Ramirez, Steven Kwan and Josh Naylor, as well as many other good hitters in the lineup, and a pen that is extremely dominant. We will see if the team can find the starting pitching to back them up, such as what Tanner Bibee provided on Monday night.

Overall, what an absolutely amazing game from two impressive baseball teams. Let’s hope for two more like this!

Justin Lada and Willie Hood have posted a Guardians of the Future podcast previewing the MLB draft.

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The Royals won and the Tigers lost. The Tigers are definitely going to sell, folks.