Astros 4, Guardians 2: Frustration Builds in Cleveland

Some things need to change

This won’t be a fun game to recap or read about.

The Guardians got a bad scouting report on Astros’ left-fielder Maurice Dubon, apparently, as both Angel Martinez and Jose Ramirez smoked singles to him and were thrown out trying to make them doubles in the first inning. Looked to me like they both ignored stop signs from Sandy Alomar at first.

These aren’t mistakes the team can afford to make against teams like the Astros, especially with Logan Allen who is bad. 6 innings 7 hits, two walks and four runs. Every time I watch him, I am amazed things don’t get worse than they do. But, he has managed to avoid home runs (gave up just one today); I don’t see that as likely to continue. Unfortunately, with Shane Bieber delayed by elbow soreness (for how long, who knows?), I probably simply have to hope his witchcraft-infused home run prevention continues.

Anyway, the Astros made many amazing defensive plays when they had to, especially on an Angel Martinez opposite field fly ball that really should have resulted in a tie-game at 3-3. Instead this ridiculous thing happened:

Jose Ramirez had an incredible web gem of his own:

And David Fry smoked a home run.

Stephen Vogt enraged me by lifting Nolan Jones for Jhonkensy Noel late in this game, but I know Vogt is who he is because he “believes in his guys.” The front office needs to remove Noel from the roster because he simply cannot hit major league pitching and his manager will not stop putting him in situations where that reality kills his team.

The B-side of the bullpen tight-roped their way through three innings from Matt Festa, Tim Herrin and Nic Enright. That’s about all I’ve got for us to be proud about tonight for this team, folks. Let’s try this again tomorrow when we will hope that Kyle Manzardo, Gabriel Arias (who had a nice two-hit game tonight) and Bo Naylor remember how to hit.

Oh. Also. Guardians, please claim Austin Wynns. If Austin Hedges is hurt (get well soon, Hedgey) and we can’t have his vibes/pitching staff whispering, I need a better backup option than Dom Nunez.