News and Notes: Orioles Get to the Underbelly of the Guardians’ Pen

News and Notes for Sunday, August 4th, 2024

The Guardians dropped a game for the first time in a while, losing to the Orioles 7-4.

Joey Cantillo had the most swings and misses in the game at 10 and didn’t walk any batters. But, he gave up six hits and three runs in four innings. Again, not a bad start for a rookie against a very good lineup. Cantillo’s changeup and breaking balls are looking good, but his average 93 mph fastball still gets hit hard at times. There’s certainly enough here to dream of Cantillo becoming a mid-rotation starter if he can figure out how to better leverage his heater against his secondary stuff.

Meanwhile, Angel Martinez went down and got a Zach Eflin curveball for one of his patented pulled-fly ball homers:

And, in the eighth inning, the king of the pulled-fly-ball homer, Jose Ramirez, took a 98.7 mph Seranthony Dominguez fastball out:

Unfortunately, that was all the Guardians could score and the Orioles added four runs off of Xzavion Curry in the top of the eighth. I noticed the armchair managers questioning the deicision to have Curry go multiple innings. It made perfect sense to me after Vogt deployed David Fry and Jhonkensy Noel in the bottom of the 7th against a lefty to try to tie the game and failed. When being 3-2, going to Curry for another inning was really the only choice given how much the bullpen has been used in this series and the arrival of an afternoon game tomorrow.

We did get an excellent double-pl

Alex Cobb looked good in Columbus, so, with his arrival, I would like to see Carlos Carrasco to the pen and then Matthew Boyd can replace Cantillo when he is ready. But, with Sam Hentges now throwing in Columbus and Andrew Walters continuing to dominate, I don’t think we need to see more Xzavion Curry, even though he is a warrior and I love him.

We will see if Gavin Williams and a rested pen can win the Guardians a series today! In any case, it has been a great series for Cleveland against a very, very good team.

Also, you’ll read about this in the minor league recap, but Triston McKenzie had an EXCELLENT start for Columbus. I am very excited about this and looking forward to seeing if he can build on it in his next start because his issues have appeared to me to be entirely mental/mechanical. So, if he’s fixed, he may be truly fixed and that would be an extremely big development for the rest of the season.

Around MLB:

The White Sox are pointless and lost to the Twins AGAIN. The Twins play their final (thank heaven) game against the hapless South Siders today. I’m sure that’ll be 21 losses in a row for the White Sox.

The Tigers managed to pull it together enough to eke out a win agains the Royals, so salute to them for that.

Forgot to note, Blake Snell threw a no-hitter. He couldn’t do it for the Guardians because paying him potentially $30 million if they traded him would have forced Paul Dolan to sell a yacht.