Guard of Hearing

 

This time last year, the Guardians had caught up to the Twins. Now the Guardians can't even catch up to the Twins while they're literally at .500. 

There's been a lot of talk about how bad the AL Central is this year, and already the easy indicators are things like the Tigers being a third place team even without Greene or Mize, the complete collapse of the Twins' lineup, and the torrid gameplay both in Chicago and Kansas City. But the biggest indicator of the drop in quality is that the Cleveland Guardians, whose contact-friendly mentality ruled the division last year, are only hitting .248 as a team. Last year they hit .254. Not a huge difference, but a palpable one. The contact hitting is down across the board, and only Jose Ramirez, Josh Naylor and Will Brennan have halfway decent average right now. 

Brennan, as well as he's hitting, is more valued for his defense. The team does have a lot of great defensive standouts, like Andres Gimenez and Steven Kwan, who just aren't hitting as well this year. And then you have Amed Rosario, who's taking a page from his Mets days and just refusing to do well at either. The upped defensive strategy doesn't do much from the fact that so many people, including the benchmarks of the contact squad from last year like Myles Straw and Gabriel Arias, just aren't hitting. Additionally, two of the people they signed to add power, Mike Zunino and Josh Bell, couldn't even do that. Zunino's already gone, which...good riddance, honestly, and Bell's once again having a very hard time acclimating to a new city. Next year he'll probably a ton better, but will the Guardians really wanna wait that long to find out?

Even some of the pitching pieces that felt so trusted last year, like Zach Plesac, Cal Quantrill and James Karinchak, have let this team down this year. Plesac, like Konnor Pilkington before him, made too many mistakes and wound up DFA'd. I will give the Guardians credit for at least using young players like Tanner Bibee and Logan Allen very well in this portion. Also, Aaron Civale's been awesome since coming off the IL, with a 3.18 ERA and 33 Ks through 7 starts. It's not just down to Bieber, as I thought it would be for a while. It's just not as ironclad as last year's, which is really the theme with this team.

There's been a theme going into the postseason where other divisions may bring multiple teams with the wild card series' in play, and the AL Central may just be limited to one, and we may be there again this year. It's close enough that there's no guarantee it'll be the Twins, but the Guardians will need to build up as much momentum as they did last September in order to ensure that anyone will be caring about them in October. Because as of right now, it's hard to see that happening.

Coming Tomorrow- A former Guardian on a team that's had no trouble emphasizing power.