Kwan the Record

 

So as it stands right now, with a month or so left in the season, the Cleveland Guardians have the third AL Wild Card spot. The Yanks and Sox have an insane lead for those first two, the Guards have the third, and are a game ahead of the Rangers for it, while also being 2.5 games behind the White Sox for the division. It's not a bad place to be. The thing about this Guardians team is that the tide can shift at any moment because, as you'll recall, this team was poised to lead the division for the first few months, then May and June happened and they fell away from .500, and then late July and early August happened and they got even less of a foothold.

However, they have won their last seven games, which works out considering they were all against noncompetitive west coast teams, and now get to play the Royals after they're done with LA, so this time I believe there is an effort to make the Guardians a playoff team yet. Not sure if it's being led by the Guards themselves or the MLB, but there you go.

After a really dull first few months, Steven Kwan is now one of the most important players on this team. His defense is still league-tier, and his contact game is as helpful as always. There are so many years where the Guardians were about to trade Kwan, or could have but didn't, and so he's remained the backbone of the lineup, with some production guaranteed despite the lack of extra base hits this year. A team that has Steven Kwan, Jose Ramirez and Brayan Rocchio together doing the contact work is way ahead of the competition, and the hitting by those guys alone has been very impressive, not even mentioning the power guys like DeLauter, Lowe and Adell. By the way, Jo Adell is working pretty damn well as the right field option in Cleveland, he's got 4 homers and 18 RBIs already and the fans love him. Angel Genao's also coming into his own at short, meaning Bazzana and Genao could be a recurring thing going forward. Like usual, the Guardians are a swiss army knife of great young players who can all trade off being the hero, and now that Angel Martinez's better numbers are back the team's even more volatile.

In addition, Foster Griffin appears to be working as the fifth rotation guy. He hasn't been Nats-strong yet, but keep in mind that he took about a month to lock in with Washington, and he's still got a 4 ERA, and 3 wins. Bibee, Messick and Williams are perfectly fine handling most of the work though, and Williams is in the midst of a 200-K year, which should surprise no one. I blinked and Cade Smith has 35 saves, that's pretty awesome considering the job was all but Clase's a year and a half ago. Just the best bullpen in the AL probably, despite Craig Yoho's best efforts. 

The Guardians currently look better than the White Sox, and could reclaim the division and make October very interesting. They have a very nice chance of making the postseason, but unless they make a run at the division, their berth may be at the hands of whichever bandwagon wild card team wants to take off. Which won't be as fun.

Coming Tomorrow- A very sturdy catcher for one of the best hitting teams in baseball.