The game was always going to come down to the long ball.
While the Guardians made their identity being the small-ball team that can always find a way to win - aka Guards Ball - every single one of their post season games were decided by home runs.
In a valiant Game 5 effort with an electric crowd at Progressive Field, the Guardians’ World Series hopes were ended when they fell to the Yankees 5-2 in 10 innings.
The deciders? A game tying 2-run home run from Giancarlo Stanton in the 6th, and a Juan Soto go-ahead 3-run bomb in the 10th.
The Guardians got on the board with small ball. The Yankees, with the long one.
Bo Naylor drove in the first run of the game with an RBI double in the second, bringing Josh home and becoming the fourth player in post season history to drive in their brother. Steven Kwan drove in the second run a few innings later in the 5th with an RBI single, extending his post season franchise record on-base streak to 16 games.
Unfortunately, those two runs were negated by Stanton’s 2-run home run in the 6th bringing up one of the big questions of the post season, which is why you wouldn’t walk New York’s slugger. But Stephen Vogt said he never considered it.
“Tanner was dialed,” the manager said after the game. “Tanner had struck him out twice. He had him on the ropes. I trust Tanner on him. The way he was throwing the ball, I would not -- you give me 100 more times, I'm not putting him on right there.”
On the flip side, the Yankees had no issue intentionally walking Jose Ramirez time after time in clutch moments, and in hindsight, that’s the difference experience makes.
A man with the experience – Austin Hedges – who has won a World Series before, knows how valuable it is and said this team learned a lost during the post season.
“When you make it to an ALCS like we did this year, every single guy that hasn’t been there before now has that experience in their back pocket for the rest of their life,” the catcher said after the loss. “Now we know exactly the road map. We know exactly next year what it takes. Now we have a group of guys that knows what it feels like to have been there, to have succeeded and failed. And as much as those successes that we’ve had are amazing, the failures that we’ve experienced in the last week are going to help us grow immensely.”
It’s easy to point out all of the turning points in the series – all of the moments where the momentum could have shifted in Cleveland’s favor, and all of the little mistakes that exposed where the team fell short. But there are so many positives to take away from this game, this series, and this entire season.
The Guardians did everything they needed to in order to win this game. They showed incredible discipline at the plate and found a way to manufacture runs – albeit only two, but they were runs nonetheless, which is a far cry from their earlier games in the series where they were almost too aggressive at the plate, and striking out, or grounding out, or popping out, etc. Tanner Bibee managed to stretch his start to 5.2 innings while only giving up 2 runs on 6 hits to help give the bullpen some relief. And the defense was lights out, not allowing any runs on balls that were hit in the park, and turned three double plays, which is the most for a Cleveland team since turning three in game 7 of the 2007 ALCS in Boston. And, more importantly, how well Emmanuel Clase responded when Vogt called on him in the 9th. The one thing that was missing in this game was the long ball.
You can say a lot about the 2024 Cleveland Guardians – but one thing you cannot say is that they never stopped trying, and they never gave up all the way to the very last out.
After losing their future Hall of Fame manager and then the top two pieces of their rotation, no one expected the Guardians to do what they did in 2024. They sent five guys to the All-Star game. They held the best record in baseball for chunks of the season. They won the AL Central. They took down the “Team of Destiny” in the Detroit Tigers in the ALDS.
All with a young team of young, scrappy players and a first-year manager who wasn’t that far removed from playing himself.
The team knew they were David fighting Goliath all season, and they were out to prove something.
“I feel like we proved a lot of people wrong,” Hedges said after the game when asked if he felt the team underachieved. “You can look at our over/under going into the year – all the people that wrote about us were just blatantly wrong. So, hopefully going into next year they project us to win more than 74 games.”
So is it disappointing that they fell to the Yankees in a gentleman’s sweep in the ALCS? Of course, it’s always disappointing when your team gets eliminated. But they accomplished so much this year, and they have the blueprint to get over the hump and win a championship.
Two years ago the Guardians looked like they were out of their league when they faced the Yankees in the ALDS. This year, they not only won a game but they held their own and made the Yankees work for their wins, and that’s huge growth that can’t be ignored.
Guardians fans should be proud of what the team accomplished this year, and they should be excited for the future because it is most certainly a bright one.
When asked what his message was to the team following the loss, Vogt expressed a sentiment that everyone should feel about this team.
“How proud I am. Remember this feeling you have right now because there's more left on the table for this group. We know we can accomplish more, but be proud of what we accomplished overall and use this to fuel your offseason.”