News and Notes: Guardians Offense Wakes Up Vs. Rangers Pen

News and Notes for Tuesday, May 14th, 2024

Tanner Bibee threw a strong five and a third innings, Nick Sandlin cleaned up a bases loaded mess, and Jose Ramirez, Brayan Rocchio, Tyler Freeman and Estevan Florial led a late inning surge for the Guardians in a 7-0 victory over the Rangers.

It was good to see Bibee commanding the baseball right up until the sixth inning when Vogt was happy to hand the ball to the player he calls "his pacifier" only to watch Sandlin strike out Adolis Garcia and get a weak groundout from Josh Smith to neutralize a bases loaded threat. Hunter Gaddis, Tim Herrin and Emmanuel Clase proceeded to lock down the rest of the game.

José Ramírez, Andres Giménez, and Brayan Rocchio each had 2 hits and Ramírez added two walks and four RBI to take the AL lead in RBI. Notably, Mandy Bell published an interview with Guardians hitting coach Chris Valaika talking about the team's offensive struggles and Valaika clearly identified José's issues as trying to do too much and said when he takes his walks everything will be fine. I was thrilled to see Valaika openly identify the issue that has kept José from his usual dominance and it's good to see him figuring it out, going from a 4% walk rate in April to 13% in May and correspondingly seeing his wRC+ in April at 101 rise to 131 so far in May. If José is a 130-140 wRC+ hitter, this is going to be a good season.

Freeman's hit and two walks from the leadoff spot were a welcome sight, and Rocchio came through to drive Florial home on an aggressive send from third base coach Rouglas Odor. Vogt had high praise for both Rocchio and Odor after the game, and I think we should prepare to see Rocchio at shortstop for most of the rest of the summer and hope he continues to find his way as a major leaguer. He's an easy player to root for as is a theme on this team.

Bo Naylor did not record a hit but his at-bats were improved and he hit three balls at 98 mph and over.

The Guardians offered some insights into the designs behind their City Connect uniforms as the merchandise dropped yesterday.

Baseball Savant released new bat tracking data.

@mlbfeeelit offered some good insights on Travis Bazzana's bat speed numbers from Driveline (read the whole thread):

Around MLB:

The Royals lost.

The Tigers won.