In baseball, team chemistry is important. Perhaps not as big as actual talent or, according to some, ‘momentum’, but a close, united roster will have a better chance at accomplishing common goals.
Always creative and looking for fun ways to keep everyone involved, players often come up with inside jokes and celebrations after completing nice plays on the field. The Cleveland Guardians, of course, are no exception.
If you watch games, you will sometimes see players giving the dugout a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, depending on the play. Guardians All-Star Travis Bazzana explained the roots of the ‘celebration’.
“It’s funny. If you hit it over 95 mph, you’re kind of supposed to give a thumbs-up. If you hit it a little soft, like a dink hit or a ground ball, it’s a thumbs down. The joke in today’s game is that you want to hit the ball hard, you want to hit the ball in the air. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a bad hit if I hit it soft.’ It’s kind of a funny joke,” Bazzana said, per analyst Gabrielle Goudy.
The Cleveland Guardians have an exit velo celebration.
Travis Bazzana told me how it works:
hit it 95+ mph = 👍
under 95 mph = 👎Sorry in advance to the anti-analytics crowd! | @FanDuel | #guardsball pic.twitter.com/Yp2YsgvbdH
— gabb (@gabbgoudy) July 16, 2026
The Guardians’ analytics team knows, like the vast majority of MLB teams, that hitting the ball hard is a good indicator of success. If you do that often, fielders won’t have enough time to make plays, and that leads to runs scored.
Guardians’ hitters understand this, too, and they are young, have a good sense of humor, and are eager to have fun. So, they have developed this ‘system’.
For the sake of their 2026 chances, let’s all hope that we watch more thumbs-up than thumbs-down. Hitting the ball over 95 mph will often lead to desirable outcomes, especially if that contact comes in the air. The Guardians’ offense can be very inconsistent, and it could use all the thumbs-up it can get over the course of the second half.
If anything, these things might seem silly to some, but it’s a fun, harmless way to have fun while trying to reach a collective goal in an environment with so much pressure and expectations. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the hope is that more players become involved in this.
NEXT: Insider Warns Guardians About Potential Travis Bazzana Extension
