News and Notes: Guardians Drop ALCS Opener

News and Notes for Tuesday October 14th, 2024

The Guardians dropped their first game against the Yankees, with a final score of 5-2.

Not the greatest of showings from the Guardians Monday. Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor continue to struggle. Joey Cantillo faced the jitters of throwing his first postseason game, and Bo Naylor made some key mistakes behind the dish that costed us some runs. The Guardians offense whiffed at more than a quarter of Carlos Rodon’s pitches. And once again, Austin Hedges was the final out of the game.

On the bright side, Brayan Rocchio is continuing his crazy hot streak in the postseason so far, as he went 2-4 with a solo bomb and a hit that put Andres Gimenez in scoring position (who scored off a Steven Kwan single).

Speaking of Kwan, he has now broken the franchise postseason record for the longest hit streak at 11 games, surpassing Kenny Lofton. He did that on the aforementioned Steven kwan RBI single.

As for today, Tanner Bibee will be toeing the mound while the Guards offense has the daunting task of facing Gerrit Cole. We’ve seen Gerrit many times in the playoffs, so we know what he’s like.

I’d hope that Josh Naylor washes off his performance from Monday and comes in against Cole with a fresh mind. Naylz has proven to best the Yanks’ ace in the postseason every time they’ve matched up, so how he does tonight will tell us where he’s truly at.

Of course, Jose needs to bring it in as well. Him and Josh are the heartbeat of this lineup, and we need those two to get it going if we want to score runs.

As for the pitching staff, there is another off-day tomorrow, so I’d expect us to empty the clip if Bibee was to falter early.

All in all, the Guardians should really look to get something going and compete. It can’t just be Rocchio, Lane and Kwan, it needs to be our cornerstones as well.