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The Kansas City Royals' historic turnaround and the Detroit Tigers' unforgettable playoff push definitely deserve significant recognition, but those drought-ending heroics overshadow the brilliance of what manager Stephen Vogt and the Cleveland Guardians accomplished in 2024. Like those scrappy clubs, they were also not supposed to be playing baseball in October.
Though, because of Cleveland's well-established reputation of maximizing its bottom-third payroll and grinding out wins, it is unfortunately all too easy to overlook the firm grasp the franchise had on the American League Central from nearly start to finish. It weathered a second-half slump, clinched the division with more than a week to spare and claimed the No. 2 seed in the MLB playoffs. Not bad for a transitional season, huh?
The Guardians have long been one of the biggest and most consistent causes for Cleveland sports heartbreak, having not won a World Series since 1948. To put the championship dry spell into perspective, that landmark victory came a month before Harry Truman famously held up a newspaper that displayed the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Unlike the city's other teams, however, they have not lumbered through extended stretches of ineptitude in the last decade.
New Cincinnati Reds skipper Terry Francona helped install a sturdy foundation, and Vogt is adding to it in his first year in charge. With strong leadership, two-way star Jose Ramirez and dominant closer Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland has the potential to deliver its fans a postseason to remember. Will Ontario Street finally get to celebrate a championship in the 21st Century?
Unfortunately, the club is rife with red flags that belie its grand ambitions. One supercharged October advantage does not cancel out the Guardians' weaknesses. A superb regular season could be followed by a bitter MLB playoffs experience.
Guardians have an unproven starting pitching rotation
Tanner Bibee has morphed into the unquestioned ace of the staff, sporting a 3.47 ERA in 173 2/3 innings pitched this season. He has impressively shouldered the workload and responsibilities that Cleveland has assigned him while also displaying poise beyond his years. I believe the young right-hander can continue to reward the team's faith in the postseason, but there is a lack of 0ther appealing rotation options.
Matthew Boyd and Ben Lively are both journeymen having career years. They have a 1/3 of an inning in playoff experience between them. Alex Cobb has a stellar 2013 postseason on his résumé (1-0, 1.54 ERA with 10 strikeouts in two starts), but he has not pitched for nearly the entire month because of a blister. October is not an opportune time to shake off rust.
The Guardians boast an all-time great bullpen that features an incomprehensible four hurlers with a sub-2.00 ERA and at least 73 appearances each (Clase, Cade Smith, Hunter Gaddis and Tim Herrin), but those arms will burn out if they are asked to frequently bail out the starters in a highly stressful environment.
Players come of age in the playoffs, and the unexplainable does happen on occasion, but predicting if and when magic will strike is a futile exercise. While the extra rest will help Cleveland get its rotation in order, particularly against the Tigers' own thin rotation, the club might still need another week or two to sort everything out. The timing is just not right. It rarely is, though.
But even if the Guardians' elite pen does manage to put together a spellbinding run under the bright lights, there is another issue that could be the club's downfall.
Cleveland's offense is too dependent on its All-Stars
Jose Ramirez is going to finish in the top 10 in MVP voting for the seventh time of his career. Josh Naylor is one of 12 players to record 30 home runs and 100 RBIs in 2024 (Ramirez resides in this club as well). Steven Kwan ranks just outside the top 1o in the MLB in batting average. Feel-good story David Fry has the second-highest OPS on the roster. That All-Star quartet is why the Guardians are not a bottom-tier offense.
Now, obviously four players can make a massive difference in a nine-man lineup, but the gap between the game-changers and the rest of the batters is also quite massive. Andres Gimenez has underwhelmed at the dish for a second year in a row and there are multiple automatic outs towards the bottom of the order.
The X-factor of this offense and possibly the Guardians' 2024 postseason is Will Brennan. He is red-hot and has a bat-to-ball skill set that often translates nicely to this time of year. But can the outfielder get on base enough to make a worthwhile impact? (.309 on-base percentage and only four stolen bases)
Although the Guardians' position player group as a whole contains favorable postseason traits (fifth-most stolen bags and fourth-fewest strikeouts in the MLB), I worry about the bats going cold. That even includes Ramirez, who owns a .242/.291/.347/.638 slash line in a 34-game playoff sample size. Good pitching can quiet a significant portion of the offense, which could prevent Cleveland from implementing the type of small-ball tactics that helped it climb towards the top of the AL.
This club could struggle to adjust to the MLB playoffs
Simply put, I do not see the strengths of this ballclub shining through in October. Playoff baseball is a different beast, and an extremely questionable starting rotation and uneven lineup could result in the Guardians being consumed by it.
They should not be castigated, though. This team continues to play the inauspicious hand that ownership deals it as well as possible, but overcoming a dearth of resources in the postseason is generally not feasible. Yes, the Florida Marlins won the 2003 World Series with a bottom-10 payroll and the Tampa Bay Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks have penny-pinched their way to the Fall Classic in recent years, but money typically buys rings.
While the Cleveland model is worthy of praise, it is not one that fits the mold of the ultimate victor. The question is, can the plethora of small-market franchises that are duking it out for AL supremacy in 2024 give rise to a phenomenon? There is a decent chance that it actually does, but the Guardians do not look like the candidate to achieve a statistical improbability.
Their moment should eventually come, and the ostensibly interminable wait for a title should end. That day might not come this October, though. Regardless of what happens versus the Tigers and potentially going forward, fans should cherish this season. Unforeseen success that lasts for an extended period of time should never be taken for granted.
