News and Notes: Another Day, Another Series Win
News and Notes for Friday, June 21st, 2024
Happy Will Brennansday to all who observe!
Will Brennan hit two home runs and Andres Gimenez hit a clutch two-run homer late as the Guardians beat the Mariners 6-3 to win a series against the AL Central leaders.
Logan Allen allowed a couple homers and walked four, but was generally more effective at inducing weak contact, going six innings. Allen has made some pitch mix adjustments that appear to be helping him find more effectiveness.
Wanted to come back to this after Allen’s start today.
— Brendan the Kahlil Watson Truther (@Cle_Brendan52) June 20, 2024
Matt brought up a very good point about Allen’s cutter usage.
Before Allen’s start on June 7th, he was throwing his cutter 17% of the time. But since then, he’s cut that usage to 8% and has posted 3 straight quality starts https://t.co/cMGCGbNL33
Tim Herrin had a bit of a rough outing, but Cade Smith and Emmanuel Clase were absolutely dominating, with the former inducing a key double-play and striking out two batters and the latter throwing just 11 pitches to slam the door yet again.
Steven Kwan reached base twice, yet again, but did strikeout once, meaning that the world is ending. It’s been a good run.
A couple mild criticisms include: someone please tell Brayan Rocchio that he is neither fast nor a preternatural baserunner as he got caught stealing yet again (five on the year so far). The coaching staff needs to take a firmer hand with baserunning instead of this perpetual green light the players have been given. Secondly, Jose Ramirez hates DHing. Will he get more adjusted to it given more reps? Possibly. But, in 452 career plate appearances at DH, Jose is only a 105 wRC+ hitter and it’s been much worse these last two seasons (71 in 2023, 53 in 2024). If the team feels, load management-wise, it’s important to get him a DH day once a week, Jose needs to make some adjustments in how he approaches his hit-only days.
What a great series to win! If the Guardians and Mariners should be competing for the second spot in the AL playoffs, this gives Cleveland an important tiebreaker.
MLB Pipeline released another mock draft as the draft combine concludes. They have Travis Bazzana going number one to Cleveland, which I continue to think should be our default assumption until proven otherwise.
Check out the latest episode of the Disgusting Baseball podcast where Nicole and I talk about what we have learned so far this baseball season.
Around MLB:
The Twins lost a wild one to the Rays.
The Royals edged the A’s.
Major League Baseball hit a home run with a game at Rickwood field last night.