News and Notes: Guardians Split The Double Header

News and Notes for Sunday, April 27th

Game 1 was a fun one that featured a lot of offense from the Guardians. Steven Kwan continues to be one of the best players in Baseball, going 2-4 with a double and raising his season slash line to .350/.402/.505. José Ramírez went 2-4, Gabriel Arias went 1-4 with a huge RBI single in the first inning. Angel Martinez also continues to produce with another 2 hit game.

On the pitching side of things it wasn’t a great performance from Ben Lively. He gave up a ton of hard contact but was able to limit the damage to just 4 runs in 5 innings. After that, the bullpen came in and they were absolutely flawless. 4 innings of scoreless relief innings from Herrin, Gaddis, Clase, and Smith combined. It was very interesting to see Clase come out in the 8th and Smith in the 9th, could that be the new normal moving forward? It’s hard to imagine a Guardians team with a closer other than Clase, but Cade Smith has earned the right to be in that role, in my opinion.

Game 2 was not quite as fun, as the Guardians lost 7-3. Doug Nikhazy’s MLB debut didn’t go quite as we all wanted it to, as he walked 6 batters and gave up 6 runs in 3 innings pitched. Steven Kwan went 2-4. Jhonkensy Noel finally hit his first Home Run of the season, and Gabriel Arias went 1-3 with a double before being replaced by Will Wilson after appearing to be limping. Let’s hope that is nothing serious, Arias has been one of our best players this season and we can’t afford to lose him for an extended period of time.

Around the AL Central:

Royals beat the Astros 2-0

Tigers split their double header with the Orioles

Twins beat the Angels 5-1

White Sox beat the Athletics 10-3