CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The Cleveland Guardians placed starter Aaron Civale on the 15-day injured list Monday due to a left oblique strain.
While it’s unclear when Civale suffered the strain, the right-hander felt the injury Saturday according to Guardians manager Terry Francona.
“We thought after the game [Friday] it was a cramp,” Francona said. “It gets cold and I think we've all kind of felt that when you're [sore], but we knew that we needed to keep an eye on him. And then Saturday he was going out to play long to long toss and we really didn't get to that because he felt it, so then we knew we needed to get him scanned but yesterday was Easter, so that's why that happened [Monday] morning.”
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Civale threw seven scoreless innings April 1 at Seattle but allowed four earned runs on nine hits with a walk and five strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings on Friday.
Taking Civale’s place on the active roster is right hander Peyton Battenfield, who will start in the bullpen Monday night and be available if needed. The hope is to not have to use him so Battenfield can start the series finale against the Yankees Wednesday afternoon.
McKenzie to 60-day IL – Starter Triston McKenzie was moved to the 60-day injured list Monday but the move is not an indication of a setback after he was looked at over the weekend.
“Actually he's doing really well,” Francona said. “We sat and talked to him also about timeline and things like that because we wanted to include him in the decision, but he's doing really well. That's the important part. I we'd love to have him back last week, but he's doing well.”
McKenzie wasn’t expected to return from his right shoulder strain until late May so following Sunday’s examination it made sense to move him over to the 60-day IL.
“If we thought he was coming back earlier, we wouldn't have done that,” Francona said. “But when we walked through it, there was the very best case they came up with was like the 26th or 27th. If that's the very best, there's pretty good chance over the course of the next six weeks that you're going to lose a day or two somewhere, so it was kind of an easy one, but we wanted to walk him through it too just to see if there was any discrepancy in his thinking.”
Sweet slide – Jose Ramirez is pretty much a baseball unicorn. He can do it all and Sunday afternoon he saved the season series with Seattle with his hustle and a great slide at home.
Ramirez raced home from third on an infield dribbler off the bat of Josh Bell in the bottom of the 12th that saw him slide just ahead of and away from the catcher’s tag. It’s not something many other players in the game can pull off, but that slide looked familiar to Francona.
“I remember watching Mookie Betts in the World Series, remember he scored on a ball to first and I didn't think that the announcers made a big enough deal about it,” Francona said. “I think Josey [is] probably the only guy other than Mookie that scores on that ball because your instincts, it's not pure speed, but it's instincts getting a jump sliding. That was incredible.”
Ramirez has also hit safely in all 10 Guardians games this season and 15 in a row dating back to last season.
Fear the Judge – As locked in as Ramirez may be for the Guardians, so is Aaron Judge for the Yankees.
Judge has reached base in 42 straight dating back to 2022 where he is hitting .380 with nine doubles, 17 homers, 42 walks and 29 RBI. The Yankees slugger is coming off hitting a pair of solo homers in a 5-3 win at Baltimore Sunday to secure the weekend series.
“[He’s] just a pretty incredible player,” Francona said. “I hope we don't see it. I know it's good for baseball. I kind of hope we don't see it for three days, but pretty impressive. And I guess the best part of it is he seems like a wonderful kid, so that makes it even better.”