All in all, the Cleveland Guardians have fared pretty decently this season.
They’re 33-27 and only trail the division-leading Detroit Tigers by 6.5 games.
However, even though they’ve usually found ways to come out on top and get wins out of the mud, they have a worrisome tendency to get off to slow starts, especially against high-end starters.
That’s why Joe Noga of Cleveland.com is worried about this team in a potential postseason setting, as he believes they’re not good enough against the best pitchers in the game:
“They’ve had a hard time beating really good opposing starters,” Joe Noga pointed out on the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. “You go Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, now Carlos Rodon. They’ve just had a really tough time getting to the starter of the opposing team. They’ve been great at scoring runs late against bullpens and scoring in bunches in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings, but sometimes the game’s already out of hand.”
Granted, that’s literally an ace’s job, and they wouldn’t be the first team to struggle against the above-mentioned hurlers.
But still, the Guardians should find a way to do better here.
Even so, it might all be a part of the team’s identity and strengths.
Everybody knew this team wasn’t going to wow anybody with power or a high-octane offense.
If anything, Stephen Vogt also deserves his flowers for finding that much success with this group of players and usually finding ways to get seemingly unlikely wins.
At the end of the day, there’s not just one way to dominate in baseball.
While Noga is right and sometimes the Guardians wait a little too long before waking up in a game, those teams that rise to the occasion down the stretch usually fare better than those who get off to hot starts and then crumble once the bullpen takes the mound.
Hopefully, the Guardians will find a way to turn things around and put their struggles against the cream of the crop behind them, but they should be just fine nonetheless.
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