Wild Card Rivals: Mariners vs. Guardians Series Preview
The Mariners limp home for a three-game series against the Guardians.
It’s 8:45 on a Friday night and you’re desperate for some ice cream. Your freezer currently holds smoothie ingredients, frozen on-sale meat and what could be the abominable snowman’s left toe, thoroughly encrusted in freezer burn in the back. You curse your past self for desiring to be anything beyond the hobgoblin you are. The grocery store around the corner has your favorite flavor of Jeni’s and is open until 10… with no further thoughts, you head out the door.
A block from the store, your slippered foot hits something slick that you’d rather not dwell on, and you pinwheel your arms backward to narrowly avoid falling. You glance around to make sure nobody saw and lock eyes with your ex across the narrow street. They look happy, mid-conversation with an upsettingly attractive date at their side. A sickeningly warm self-awareness seeps through you as you realize your current state. Hair matted, sweat pants speckled with god knows what, shirt a sweat-stained ombré. Your body betrays you, lifting a hand in a bashful wave you’ve never directed towards anyone before. Your ex’s lips curl in, their eyebrows pinching together. It’s not disgust, unfortunately. It’s pity.
Mind buzzing blankly with a self-preserving static, you make it to the store and beeline to the ice cream. Pint in hand, you shuffle to self checkout to spare yourself any further indignities. You scan the ice cream and tap your card, but the machine beeps in fury. You tap again, and it caterwauls irately. Now the light atop your station is has gotten in on the action, flashing red as an employee walks towards you.
No. No, no, no, no, no. It’s your former hookup. The best you’ve ever had, if you’re being honest. They look at you, and their gaze drops to the softening pint in your hands. They grin.
Anyway, Carlos Santana is back in Seattle. He brought some underperforming friends. Let’s rock ‘n roll babyyyy.
Fresh off a victory that spared them a sweep in the vaunted Ohio Cup, the Guardians march westward with a record narrowly better than Seattle’s and similar disappointments. Cleveland is currently third in the AL Central, trailing the league-leading Detroit Tigers (!?) and the much less fearsome Minnesota Twins. They’re still in play for the Wild Card (half a game back), but have been offensively slumping for the better part of 2-3 weeks. Stop me if that sounds familiar.
This last game against the Reds, where they won 11-2, marked the second time that Cleveland had scored more than four runs since May 28. Four of those runs came from Santana, who hit a grand slam on the anniversary of his major league debut. The former Mariner has been a perfectly serviceable elderly first baseman, with a tasteful 113 wRC+. You’d hate to have that, am I right? José Ramírez has been José Ramírez, Steven Kwan has been pretty solid and Bo Naylor has done the unspectacularly fine job that he’s done since 2023. Unfortunately, a number of the role players who helped power the Guardians into the postseason last year have struggled, with Johnkensy Noel earning a demotion, Lane Thomas striking out in a way that would have really spoken to the 2024 Mariners and Austin Hedges… well, okay he’s basically the same as usual. One of baseball’s great mysteries. Distinctly bad at hitting but beloved inside baseball for his framing and his… personality?
Probable Pitchers
Over the last decade or so, the Cleveland pitching development pipeline has done a very good job of churning out above average major league pitchers who feature fantastic secondary weapons but struggle with subpar fastballs. The thought is that the plus breaking balls and offspeed pitches will more than offset the lack of heat, and that’s been true for guys like Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and a host of others. Gavin Williams fits perfectly into that mold. He’s got a phenomenal sweeper, a good curveball, and cutter that produces a ton of weak contact. His fastball is … fine. He’s able to get more whiffs than average with it but opposing batters really crush it when they put it in play. He also struggles with poor command which has gotten him into trouble at times this year.
You can chalk up another Cleveland no-fastball, all-secondary-stuff pitcher in Tanner Bibee. Maybe even more so than Williams. Bibee’s fastball grades out particularly poorly by Stuff+ and the results it generates are pretty lackluster. It’s all about the secondary pitches for him. His two best pitches are his cutter and changeup and his pretty good sweeper gives him three above average offerings to try and keep batters off his heater. This profile worked pretty well for him during his first two seasons in the big leagues, but he’s really struggled this year. He’s tried adding a sinker to his pitch mix, but even though the stuff model likes that new pitch, it hasn’t been very effective at all.
Finally, a Cleveland pitcher that breaks their mold! Perhaps it’s because Luis L. Ortiz was mostly developed in the Pirates’ organization and only joined the Guardians in an offseason trade. The hard-throwing right-hander struggled with his command during his first two seasons in the big leagues but made some solid strides forward in that area last year. The walk rate has crept back up this year but he’s offset it with the highest strikeout rate of his young career. His four-seamer and slider are both producing much higher whiff rates than ever before and he’s made significant progress in developing his changeup to give him a viable weapon against left-handed batters.
The Big Picture:
I feel like we’ve talked about this enough. If you’re reading this, you know the deal. Let’s not dwell. It’s the weekend, and you deserve it.