Starting pitching doesn’t seem to be the only thing plaguing the Guardians going into the second half of the season. The offense has struggled to get going, only scoring during two innings through their three-game series with the Padres, and ultimately falling 2-1 in the series finale at Progressive Field.
Cleveland’s bats were held to three hits over the last two games, going 3-for-55 at the plate, which is only the 5th time in club history where Cleveland collected three or fewer hits in a 2-game span.
After falling to the Padres in a 1-hit shut out in game two of their series, things were looking bleak during the series finale when Padres starter Michael King was hitless through six innings.
“Two days in a row. You got really good starting pitchers that were really good,” Stephen Vogt said following the game. “[Michael King] has the crisscross game with the sinker-slider, and his changeup was really good today. It was another good performance against us.”
The Guardians weren’t shut out in the loss as Angel Martinez scored on a fly-out from Josh Naylor after posting the first hit of the game with a lead-off single in the 7th, ruining King’s no-hitter. There were signs of life in the 8th inning when David Fry pulled a walk after coming in to pinch hit for Brayan Rocchio. Bo Naylor came up with Fry on and two outs, but wasn’t able to bring his All-Star teammate home.
“I think we’re going fine. It’s two games in a row where we faced two, really good starting pitchers. We scored seven runs a couple days ago and so for me it’s keep doing what we do,” Vogt said. “Take care of the little things – I think that’s more what it was today. We didn’t take care of some little things. I don’t think we’re in a funk. We had two very good pitchers shut us down the last two days and we’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”
The little things are going to be critical for the Guardians as they head into a home series with the Tigers, who took 3 of 4 from Cleveland in their last meeting. If the starting pitching from the Padres is the reason the Guardians’ bats struggled in this series, they need to figure something out and quick as they will be facing Tarik Skubal to open up their series with Detroit.
The bullpen remains a strong point for Cleveland. Ben Lively gave up 6 hits, 2 runs, and 2 walks through 5 1/3 innings of work in his start. The bullpen finished out the 3 2/3 innings, only allowing two hits and striking out five.
While Lively didn’t post his best outing, he remains positive in his abilities and is not concerned with the slow bats out of the All-Star break.
“You just gotta keep making pitches. You know the bats are going to come back. It’s just part of baseball. There are ups and downs and you just have to keep going,” he said.
So what is the answer for Cleveland’s offense moving forward? The Guardians have less than two weeks to make a trade before the July 30th deadline. And, perhaps, a call to Columbus for Kyle Manzardo might be in the near future.
