ANAHEIM, Calif. — It’s hard to believe right now, but there was a time this season that the Guardians offense was performing at an elite level relative to the rest of the American League. Even more stunning is that the time was about a week ago.
After losing seven straight, including back-to-back sweeps at the hands of the Yankees and Angels, the numbers tell the tale of a dramatic drop-off in run creation for the team with baseball’s youngest active roster.
One week ago, Cleveland’s offense led the AL in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, triples, RBI and runs scored. Its +25 run differential topped the league and ranked third in all of baseball.
Through 12 games, the club had scored 68 runs, the most through the first dozen games of a season for Cleveland since 2012.
| Guardians offense | On 4/21 | AL rank | On 4/28 | AL Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Batting average | .280 | 1st | .253 | 2nd |
| On-base | .346 | 1st | .313 | 5th |
| Slugging | .442 | 1st | .405 | 4th |
| OPS | .788 | 1st | .717 | 5th |
| Triples | 6 | 1st | 7 | 1st |
| RBI | 67 | 1st | 80 | 3rd |
| Runs | 68 | 1st | 81 | 3rd |
Then the Guardians headed out on the road for a 10-game trip that started on manager Terry Francona’s 63rd birthday in New York and continued to Los Angeles on Monday.
Through April 21, Cleveland was 34% better than the league average at creating runs as indicated by a 134 wRC+ per Fangraphs.com. Guardians hitters produced a 3.5 fWAR and an offensive runs above average of 16.1, nearly five points better than second-place Seattle at the time.
But in the space of just seven days, Cleveland hitters managed to produce a meager 0.3 fWAR and tumbled to 20% below league average run creation with an 80 wRC+ against the Yankees and Angels. The club’s -5.5 offensive runs above replacement was fourth-worst in the AL during that stretch.
If a club struggles to score runs like that, it doesn’t matter how good its young pitching staff is. Winning games becomes impossible.
Two factors contributed to Cleveland’s dramatic drop over the last seven days: the leadoff and No. 2 hitters fell off their record-setting pace of getting on base in front of Jose Ramirez, and cleanup hitter Franmil Reyes steered headlong into his month-long tailspin at the plate.
The combination of those two factors allowed New York to effectively pitch around Ramirez, while Los Angeles simply let Ramirez get what he could, knowing the players around him in the lineup were not much of a threat.
Ramirez went 1-for-11 with a walk in New York while Myles Straw and Steven Kwan combined for three hits in 22 at-bats with no walks. That trend improved slightly against LA with Straw reaching base six times in 14 plate appearances, but Amed Rosario, who moved into the second spot for an injured Kwan, reached base just twice in 17 plate appearances.
Reyes homered in the opening game of the Yankees series, but failed to reach base outside of that. Once he got to LA, Reyes was already in the throes of a slump that stands at 0-for-15 with 11 strikeouts in his last four games.
Francona admitted that the club’s current offensive funk is something his young players are going to have to work themselves out of, because clubs like Los Angeles are going to keep applying pressure up and down the lineup.
“They certainly held us down,” Francona said. “Sometimes we hit some balls hard, at people. We’re going to have to continue doing that and not fall into feeling sorry for ourselves and keep battling, because that’s the only way that it’ll get better.”
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The Link LonkApril 29, 2022 at 09:04AM
https://www.cleveland.com/guardians/2022/04/its-hard-to-find-comfort-in-the-numbers-after-cleveland-guardians-lost-week-in-la.html
It’s hard to find comfort in the numbers after Cleveland Guardians’ lost week in LA - cleveland.com
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