No harm in getting the first sweep out of the way, I guess
Well — not every game is deserving a full-blown recap, is it?
The Guardians struggled throughout an 8-1 thumping by the Giants. Scattering six hits and three walks prevented Cleveland from picking up the necessary momentum to mount a rally. I’m not sure it would have mattered. Owen Miller made an error and a couple more incomplete plays in the field that sapped the energy from the stadium.
Errors — they’re only going to get more and more critical as teams re-engage the running game. It never quite died, but the cost of errors is going up and forcing defenders to make extra plays is how you create them. This is why, say, Joc Pederson stole a base while Eli Morgan struggled with his grip in the cold.
And so the positional versatility that I teased in the game thread betrayed the Guardians today. It is fine — April is the month for young guys to boot a couple. May is not. They will either figure it out or they won’t, as a number of talented players are laced up and waiting in the minors.
If anyone deserves a shoutout today at the plate it is Austin Hedges. The starting catcher now has a batting average and even one whole RBI.
In slightly less cynical analysis, Myles Straw drew a walk and smacked a single. He was the only Guardian to reach base twice today.
Aaron Civale worked effectively today and this is a game that he will want back. Not only did Thairo Estrada punish one of the few major mistakes he made, but his defense could not back him up. Again — keep it to the cruelest month and we’re good. While he wears three earned runs for the day I feel he only deserves the two allowed in the second. If you don’t want to take my word for it, take Tom Hamilton. He has definitely seen more baseball than I have and sang Civale’s praises today despite the outcome of his efforts.
I’d generally like to sing the team’s praises as well, but to get started properly we’re just gonna have to accept that this series sucked. It really sucked. Wow, we got creamed, you guys. Anyway, these dudes won 107 games last season and now there’s a lot to work on.
Go get it. The team on the field is talented enough but the application of seasoning will take, shockingly, about a season. Until then even the losses have been pretty fun to watch, and so rooting for a young team is the same as it ever was.
One final aside, Brandon Belt is just going to keep being Brandon Belt forever, I guess. Had he managed to play a full year a bit more often I wonder if we would talk about him as a future Hall of Famer. Grady Sizemore is one of his top stat comps on Baseball-Reference, it turns out.
I wouldn’t have put those two together but now it’s sticking to stuff in my dumb baseball brain and rather than going another 400 words, we’re just going to close the laptop.
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