News and Notes for Saturday, June 28th, 2025
The Guardians weren’t themselves offensively yesterday and lost a tough one 5-0 to the Cardinals.
What they saw from Sonny Gray yesterday was a pitcher who changed speeds and eye-levels effectively. This is a good offense, they just need to find a way to get things to click. Gray needed only 89 pitches to throw a complete game shutout, allowing one baserunner. But that baserunner was a Nolan Jones hit – look how he is coming around. Also, it was very hot yesterday.
If the Guardians were to call up Chase DeLauter they would be unable to get a FULL evaluation on Nolan Jones. They also would miss the chance to extract the most value from Lane Thomas before they inevitably trade him in July. And Johnathan Rodríguez, he is a player who exists, also.
So, even though Cleveland’s wRC+ is a league 25th at 90, it would be a bad move to call up Chase DeLauter. He needs to play four days in a row, first, to prepare to be sat against left-handed pitching in the bigs. He probably also needs to work on his performance against split knuckle-curves. Or something.
Everything is fine. Jose Ramirez will be back today. He told Paul Hoynes that he wanted to charge the mound after getting hit by a pitch from Kevin Gausman, whom I hope has his check engine light perpetually on, but his arm hurt too badly. Luckily, Jose’s manager and teammates had his back by sitting in the dugout, looking at their i-Pads, then briefly saying to “please hit Jose in the hip next time.”
Everything is fine. The Tigers lost to the Twins, so, they didn’t even lose ground in the division.
Kevin Gausman assured everyone he did not mean to hit Jose, the first left-handed batter he has hit since 2016. I hope he has a wedgie whenever he throws a pitch from now until eternity.
CJ Kayfus hit his 10th homer and his wOBA against breaking pitches is now .342. But, he still hasn’t hit 96 mph fastballs and above yet so he can’t get promoted. He will see a lot of 96+ mph fastballs to learn to hit in Triple-A, I am sure.
When the baseball team is 15-22 in their past 37 games, the last thing you want to do is change something. So, don’t promote Chase DeLauter today.