What is wrong with the Cleveland Guardians right now & can it be fixed before it’s too late?

What is wrong with the Cleveland Guardians right now & can it be fixed before it’s too late?

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— Guardian? Yep, it is. They’re gonna finish 4th. Thank God for the White Sox. Um, they, I don’t know what’s going on, Jay. This is just total anecdotal. Haven’t talked to a person in the organization. Don’t intend to. Something’s going on, something’s wrong, something is wrong there in the clubhouse in the organization, something’s amiss because what I, I watched the highlights, the melt of the game, uh, I watched this morning, I watched yesterday’s melt and that was only homework. I’m not doing it. I, I mean, I already know the result. I just feel like I have to be up on what’s going on. Uh, 8th inning, 5-0. Tim Heen on, runners at 1 and 2nd. They had Little league leads. They had the, the guy at first was 25 ft off the base. He was the third of the way to second base. The guy at second was 20 ft off the bag. Double steal, no throw. OK, that’s white flagging to me. That’s, I don’t care. Next hitter, sacrifice fly to center. Lane Thomas makes a beautiful one hop throw to home plate, and, and the runners out. And it bounces over, I think it was hedges it was catching, right? Bounces over Hedge’s head for another air. Like total apathy amongst the players. How many innings in the last, I, I would love, I don’t know this, but I’m guessing it was 7 or 8. Single, no more than that, single digit pitch innings by the opposing team’s pitcher. It it was, uh, Saturday, or no, um, Friday, I think he had 80 some pitches, 89 pitches for Sonny Gray. How do you do that? And we talked about on the show for 9 pitches an inning. He had an ERA on the road over 6 coming in, and we made him look like Cy Young. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know. I have, I have a couple of guesses. If I’m Jose Ramirez, first of all, I’m like, what did I do? What have I done? You know he knew exactly what he was doing. I know he did, and that doesn’t mean he can’t reset, you know, rethink his decision. Um, he left 90 million by some reports on the table. For this, we had 8 guys in the lineup with averages under 2:30 Friday. Let that sink in. It’s, I would go more OPS than average because nobody cares about average. I know nobody cares about average, but to me what I look at, it’s still part of your resume. It’s who you are. And by the way, some of these guys that have 170 averages, their OPSs aren’t any good either. No, I’m saying the OPSs are just as bad. They’re, they’re horrible, so. I don’t know what it is, but they’ve collectively all given up. This was a team last year that overachieved, hustled all 27 outs of the game on both sides, offense and defense, played above middle of the pack defense. They’re one of the worst teams defensively in all of Major League Baseball right now. The love affair, the honeymoon with Stephen Vogt, over, over. I mean, you felt that last year there was there was chemistry and energy at training camp. It carried over to the regular season. I don’t know what happened. I’m not sure what it is. My guess is they’re all looking around. They know what’s going on. They see the other teams being active and trying to actively improve all through the year, not just offseason, but during the season. What have they done? What have they done to try to get better? And I, I think that it’s just this case with, and now they’ve got two guys that are swinging it in the minor leagues. What that’s all about, I know we’re gonna talk about that later in the show. I have no idea what that’s about. I don’t bring them up. Your season’s over. You’re not doing anything. You’re, you’re basically right now treading water. You’re below 500. Thankfully, the Twins and Royals have tanked. But they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna do anything. I don’t see how they turn this around. It’s, this is as bad as I can remember it being in num in a number of years, cause it’s July 1st, it’s not yet July 1st, and I think the season’s over. Yeah, I mean, uh, listen, I feel a lot worse about this team today than I did Friday. Certainly like this was a really, really bad weekend. So there are, there are points sometimes in a season and over 162 games. It’s hard to look at one series as the defining moment. Look at the last 4 weeks, but there, there comes a point where you’re like, OK, this is, this is who they are, and we’re pretty doggone close to that to that point, and it’s a month out to the trade deadline. I’m willing to give them 2 more weeks. Before we just say, OK, it’s it. I’m not quite as far down the line as you are, but I’m not that far behind. Look at that. Yeah, that’s, that’s horrendous. That’s the whole team should be in AAA with numbers like that. But for the, the season numbers aren’t even much worse or much better than that. How quickly is Stephen Kwan gonna wanna get out of here? Well, there’s a reason he hadn’t signed the extension. He isn’t going to, and I don’t blame him. And, and I mean we, I think we are so used to bad baseball right now and bad hitters. We’ve elevated Quanda more than what he is. — Quan
— is not a star, but look, I mean, at least he’s contributes. That’s, that’s a contributor. That’s not, that’s not an all-star. — It’s not a 295
— average on this team. That’s average on this team. He’s our second best hitter. That’s an. Average Major League baseball, not even, no, it’s not even average. The 6 home runs like, OK, so you’re angling to hit maybe 13 or 14 home runs. — Average
— OPS is right around, I think 10. — It is
— just around 70. — So he’s above he’s
— tied for the 6th best OPS in baseball. Yeah, OK, but we’ve made him out to be an All-Star because there’s nothing else out there. — I know
— we’ve made, we’ve made the Guardians. I, I always say it, man, the Guardians look. There’s really no expectation levels on the Guardian, so if the Guardians overachieved like they did last year, we say, oh look at the great job they did with what little they had. But that’s not, that’s not what the game is about. It’s not about doing little with the doing the most with the least. It’s about, are you gonna bolster your squad and you’re gonna be a real deal uh contender, you know, I, I, I don’t know. If they, if the organization takes hitting seriously, like when you get beat 7-0, they’re 1 in 5 in their last during this homestay, 1 in 5, you get to a point where you got all these guys batting under, you got guys at 113, 120 stuff that you never see. So my, my question is, why is it That there’s this reluctance and there’s this, this mansplaining about these younger prospects that you got in the minors and you’re giving us these 35 page letters that my my, here’s how you know something is wrong, right? I don’t know what it is. But, but when the last time you see the front office show up in the middle of the season and say something, actually they do that a lot for the just so because I know Mike put that in the rundown, — but about
— specifically specific players, I want, you’re right, they will do that. But I did feel like this one was we gotta say something. Well, but, but I, I just, I don’t want to make it. I don’t want to make that out to be. More is because Chris Antonetti came out and talked. They have a habit of doing that on the weekends to give vote the day off from talking to the media, so they do that fairly regularly now and also I think the Guardians do a really good job of when things aren’t going well, they stand up there and take the questions because they’re the ones that put the team on the field. So I don’t think that. I hear what you’re saying and I know Mike had something on there about it is that uh it’s really not out of the ordinary for Anti to talk, — but
— I felt like I felt like he went into detail about specific players — and specific things that people are asking for
— more so than — than usual
— because, uh, I think, I think the piece that he laid out about Delauder. How far do we want do you want me to go real quick. Yeah, we’ll come back to it because I think we could dive into some more this — is
— part of — the
— Chris said part of the thing with Delauder was he’s really sore after the games, more sore than intended, and that’s part of the reason why he hasn’t been. I do think he’ll he’ll be here sooner than later. Uh, Bo and I have both, we spent Friday’s show saying it’s time, it’s beyond time. If he needs rest days he can rest here just as well as he can rest in Columbus. They don’t play anyone every day anyway. They, they’re constantly sitting guys and platoon and, and everything else, so I, I do think he’ll get here at a certain point, and I think Chris did probably go into a little bit more detail over the weekend on explaining some things just because there has been so much noise around Delauter and Cais, uh, but it really wasn’t out of the ordinary for them to come out and talk. And they have a really good habit of when things aren’t going well, they’re gonna come out there and they’re gonna, they’re gonna take the bullets for it. Do, do you think, do you think Stephen Volt is starting to see a little bit of frustration the same way that Tito saw a little bit of frustration at the end? Oh, he has to be feeling that, Jay. Um, just a little, just, just from a standpoint of being in the American League in the playoffs last year. It’s interesting because I mean Tito was here 11 years and he was. He’s been in baseball his entire life. Steven’s so early into this whole thing, only year two. I mean he I’m, I’m sure he is frustrated at times, but you kind of know the deal when you sign up for it. Now I know it’s easy to say that when you take the job and it’s your first managerial job and, and there’s not that many of these, so you’re gonna take the ones that are available to you and then when you get into it, it probably is a little bit more frustrating, but I think he knows the score and he knows the deal and he’s, he’s played in small markets his entire career. He was in Oakland, he’s in Tampa, so he knows how this, he knows how this goes. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t take away the lack of frustration or, uh, or how poorly they’ve been playing, uh, you know, I mean, yeah, by the time you get through the end of the Astros series. It’s over. It might be it. It’s it might be it. — It’s that’s a tough one
— at the cup Detroit and at Houston, it’s over rough but can get really ugly. But with this team August and September, every time we kill them and we kill them, come back and we write them off, they come back and take 2 or 3 and sweep the team and, and they just hang around the edge. I, I think they’re 2.5 out of the last wild card spot now, so it, you know, if you fall any farther than that, but the thing is like, OK, what are you gonna sell? What do you have to sell? Santana, you can sell Carlos, you know, and the, the whole classt conversation is entirely different. Like I don’t know if that’s a, uh, they’ve been listening on him for years, so you think the return is not as good as what we think this is gonna be? It wasn’t as good as it was last year. — I’ll tell you
— that. No, it’s, I, I don’t think it’s, I, I think they’ve set a really high bar and they waited for someone to come meet it and no one has met the price just like all those prospects that they held on to and turned to dust. It’s like I, I tell you, I, I’ve given a lot of credit to that front office, but I’ve got, I’m side eyeing them right now. Well, the, the prospect thing and the classic thing are different conversations, but. Yes, I mean, I’ve, I’ve, we’ve said it 100 times on the show. They’ve held on to all these guys — because they couldn’t identify who to keep
— and Clement, Ernie Clement is a guy. He’s not killing it, but he’s, you know, — he’s still a pretty good year in
— Toronto. He’s hitting over 300. It’s a guy that was one of the guys that we said, yeah, he’s not one of the good ones. We’ll get rid of him. He was a schneeman. He was a schneeman. And, and like, do you know how much I’d love to have Ernie Clement in our lineup right now for the versatility and for the hustle and for the and everything, you know, I saw Loriano’s stats too. This is a guy that they brought in and gave up on rightly so, he wasn’t doing anything here, but he’s had a career rebirth this year. He’s having a nice year in Baltimore. So if some of this is talent evaluation, I, I, at some point, I think they need to. Really take an honest look at how they’re teaching hitting and do a complete overhaul 100% they have to what they’ve done with pitching, they have mastered it. They have to look at how they are training hitters and how they’re teaching hitting and they’ve they’ve got they’ve tried different hitting coaches and as a. Solved anything so it goes even deeper than just the hitting. It’s philosophical, right? Everyone, whatever their approach is, — who is the
— guy here before Vileika? They hated him. I forget his name now. Oh yeah, I do too. Uh, everybody hated him before. So then they brought Vileika in and it wasn’t much better and now Vileika’s gone. And it it nothing changes, so it, — it goes beyond just there’s something about
— it’s almost like Jay like you can change teachers, but the curriculum stays the same. You’re gonna get the same result. Yeah, there’s something just about the organizational philosophy or structure. I don’t know what it is. I can’t really put a finger on it, but I know if you have 3 different hitting coaches over a 10 year period and you still can’t hit. It ain’t the hitting coach, what are you using the, you’re using the textbook. One of the years they just straight up embrace playing small ball. They’re like, yo we gonna run the bases, we we we’re gonna put the ball in play. We don’t like strikeouts. And it worked to a certain degree. And then, — but
— it’s only gonna work to a certain degree. Then you get in the playoffs and you lose to the Yankees who have 3 hits, but 2 of them are 2 runs. — You know how we
— say all the time you can’t win a championship in the NBA when a little guards your best player. You can’t win a championship in baseball, play a little ball. You play small ball, — the way the
— game is. with bullpens and everything else you just can’t string together 4 and 5 hits Mike’s article in yesterday’s scuse me, — how’s identity
— on gritty, relentless hustle, aggressive base running high IQ fundamentals, terrific defense. And through the halfway point of this season, slightly more, it’s not there and you can’t pretend you have an identity for when 80+ games now. It’s not there. You can get back to it later, but you have to accept the reality and accept the fact that this team does not have that quote unquote guards ball DNA that allowed them to reach the ALCS last year. That was the iconic style in 2022 when they had that little bit of a playoff run and each team’s different. And you can count on stuff to repeat year after year, but in baseball, more than any other sport, there is not necessarily that translation from you did something in 22, you’ll do it in 23, 23 means you’ll do it in 24, 24 to 25. Bull always says it’s the one sport where you can go from being an MVP caliber player like Cody Bellinger to a guy that’s barely an MLB caliber hitter. Yeah, but you can also like, I mean, Josey is the model of consistency. There, there, there are exceptions to that, of course, — but he’s just like
— there are more cases where guys are up and down year to year. And with this particular teams as well as, if not better than in this market and in the entire country, frankly, if he’s willing to look at that and say this is what you thought your team was, the reality is this is not what they are. I, I think it’s time for Cleveland to To what you guys said, take a hard look at the internal makeup of the organization and say, does this work? And if it doesn’t, maybe you hit the. Well, I think, I think when you talk about guardians ball and all this stuff they do like hustle and play defense and, and they have a way of mindset they go about looking about things. It’s I kinda compare it to football like if you got a bunch of penalties and turnovers, man. Like that’s demoralizing when you’re playing and you getting shut out, your pitching staff thinks I gotta be perfect up here. I can’t give up, no, I can’t give up no runs. Now you get into trouble because you’re nibbling or you’re throwing the ball over the plate cause you wanna get strikes. When you don’t have the opportunity and when you don’t feel like the people in your lineup can give you any support, now hitters start to press. Guys get at the top of the line. I’m like I gotta hit a home run. I gotta do something because when, when we get past 5, we’re in trouble. We have nothing at the bottom of the order. So I, I just think it’s hard to uh to establish identity and play a certain way. When it’s demoralizing, you know, at least if a pitcher gives up a 3 run homer and you got a lineup behind you and it’s the 2nd or 3rd inning, you say, I’ll get that back and your guys will pick you up, right? The first time they put up a crooked number, you really get the sense like, well, that’s it. — That’s right not
— today work. Teams have been coming and poaching. Guardians thinkers for years on the pitching side. The Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake was a big part of how the Guardians built their staff. Then the Indians built their philosophy of pitching. Ruben Niebla is now with the Padres. Same thing, — a guy who was poached from here because he was sort of
— the Rays too, right? I mean, they, they to a certain extent do it the same way, yeah, but like there are specific guys who have been plucked out of this organization because of the way that they teach pitching and the way that they think about pitching. It’s time for this team to go. I don’t, I, I don’t know if it’s the Astros. I don’t know if it’s, I mean, the athletics have put together a monster lineup. They just have horrible defense and they can’t get anybody out. In a couple of years they took Brent Rooker off the scrap heap from Minnesota and they’ve turned him into an absolute beast. Obviously they took, uh, Nick Kurtz with the 3rd overall pick, and he’s hit the ground running. Jack Wilson’s one of the best young shortstops in the game. He’s hitting 350, 1 of their high draft picks. So some of these teams are able to teach. Hitting appropriately. Maybe it’s the Rays. The Rays just hit the ball in the air and hit it down the line all the time, and that’s all they do. And it’s no small ball approach. They’re just trying to hit the ball out of the park every time up. Hit the ball in the air and pull it down the line, and it sounds ridiculous, but Isa Paredes, he’s turned his career around because all he does is hit the ball in the air and pull it down the line. Well, Yan Diaz is another guy who just was, he was maybe one of the classic underachievers in this organization. He looked like he was lost. He couldn’t couldn’t get the ball over the fence, and this guy was massive. He had arms this big. I know when I would watch him. I’m saying, what wire isn’t touching where it’s supposed to touch because that guy should be a star and then he goes to another organization and blossoms. — They could come to the star that we thought he
— should be here. You could go, you could go out and ask another team, say, hey, can we talk? Sure, hey, if it’s a promotion, if it’s a promotion, because the, the guardians and, and they keep rolling, and I don’t think Carl Willis gets enough credit for his role in all this, but they’ve had, they’ve lost a lot of people and a lot of minds over the years to other organizations because of their reputation for pitching. So now go to one of those other organizations that can hit it well and pluck one of their guys and sort of revamp the way that you’re doing this, you’re teaching this because. What you’re doing ain’t working and it hasn’t worked for years and it worked in the regular season like we’ve, there’s been times where it works during the regular season, but there is a ton of history that shows you you are not going to win the postseason if you don’t hit the ball out of the ballpark. The the other thing too about this that we haven’t really mentioned yet, your statue is going to be as good as your ball of clay. Like what, what do you sculpt your clay into? And if you’re a team like the Dodgers, the Yankees, and I, they’ll never be that, but you’re buying the best possible clay that’s available. So it’s easy to sculpt a Picasso because your, your starting point is here when you’re the guardians and you’re using Carolina Mud. It’s gonna fall apart when you start to chisel it, and it’s hard to make a beautiful statue out of bad clay and, and, and that’s the ownership’s fault like, but then explain the Rays because they’re, — they’re bursting
— with prospects and the — Rays stole Junior Caminaro from
— Cleveland. Well, clearly they’re better at developing hitters than the guards are, but it’s my ultimate guess and theory. That the Rays are gonna do what the, what the Guardians did last year. They’re gonna win, they’re gonna win in the regular season. They’re gonna have some moments in the playoffs, but ultimately, they’re gonna get foot stomped by the big boys, by the Yankees, by the teams that are buying the better clay and are sculpting better looking. You got to have 3 or 4 of them dudes. You gotta have 3 or 4 in the lineup, and we know what the dudes are. We don’t gotta name them. You know who the dudes are. The guys that, yeah, you get up and play and you’re like every time I see this dude, the ball is in the air and you and you have a lump of clay in your throat because you’re like. Like, is that gonna get out of here? The ball just keeps carrying and then you look up, you play better than him the whole entire game. You out hit him, you out scrapped him, you did what you needed to do and you was up 3 to 0.1 inning you down 4 to 3. — It happens
— a lot, nasty work. Jay did, um, I didn’t look at the whole thing. Did Antonetti, I’m sure he didn’t or would have made news. I want to know more and, and you know what, these days of this like man behind the curtain. In Dolan, he’s like this man behind the curtain. We don’t get access to him, you know, what, what is he doing? What’s going on? Like, we’re shareholders. We pay for the TV packages. We pay for tickets to come to the games. We’re the shareholders in a, in a, in a Fortune 500 company, the CEO 4 times a year answers to the shareholders. They have a day set aside where they report earnings and they give a prospect report for what the business looks like down the road. And then as an investor, I can decide do I want to continue to give my money to IBM. I don’t like the direction they’re going, and there’s a million other places I could put my money. So in the real world, those CEOs come to the public and they disclose what, what’s what. I don’t know what’s going on with the Guardians. What percent does Dolan own? When does Blitzer finally take over? Does Blitzer have any say in the day to day? Is he providing money to, to purchase players? I don’t know, we don’t know that. And you know what? I’m sick of that. We’re the shareholders. We’re the fans. We should not be kept in the dark, and we are. And I, I wanna know when does Blitzer take when can we get rid of this era? When can I start carrying again? I, I wanna know. And in the meantime, I’m freezing my assets. And if I was a financial house, you know what I would say? Every financial house gives a, a buy, sell, or hold on every stock. If things are going well and you’re the A’s, maybe you’re a buy because you’re buying really low and the future looks bright. If you’re the Yankees, well, it’s an expensive purchase, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get an ROI on that because they gotta win it all for me to get an ROI, a return on investment. So I don’t know that I want to buy the Yankees, but right now if I had to give a buy, sell or hold on the Guardians, it’s a sell. I can’t, I can’t hold this because it’s a low value stock and it’s underperforming stock and that those two things are death. I mean we found that, you know, they always sell you when you’re in sales, man, when you wanna sell something, go find the pain. You go talk to her. Find the pain, is that what they say? Yeah, you gotta find, listen, the pain, the pain and the gains. If you want to sell something to somebody, find the pain and then help them to fix it. — They’re
— a hole to me. They’re not a sell. They’re always I would never sell because just when you’re think you’re out, they come right back and whether it’s this year or next year, uh, they’re gonna swing back the other way. — That’s just if
— I knew when the Blitzer group was coming, I’d hold, but I don’t know. I have no idea. Is it 2027? It’s 2029. Is it 2031. You know, I’m not waiting 6 years. — You know
— Jason Lord, he got a long playbook. It’s 2027. It’s the dome. Yeah, 2027 is our year, right? 2029 we should be good. It used to be. In Cleveland, the maro is maybe next year. Now it’s next decade, — next
— decade the dome 2028 29. We got a long way to go bro, I turned 60 Monday or Friday, OK? Running out of time, boys. Run out of time.

The St. Louis Cardinals swept the Cleveland Guardians (40-42) over the weekend and went 1-5 during their recent homestand. The Guardians were shut out on Sunday, 7-0, and it was the second shutout in their last three games. The Guardians’ offense was horrific in June. As a team, the Guardian’s batting average is just .210 – the OPS is .606, and the slugging percentage is around .333 – not to mention the rollercoaster ride of the starting pitching. Are the Cleveland Guardians officially done for 2025?

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The Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show is your daily source of the best conversation about the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Guardians, Cleveland Cavaliers and Ohio State Buckeyes, as well as sports throughout Northeast Ohio. Produced by Mike Lucas, Anthony Antonelli, and Earl Mauldin. Hosted by Jay Crawford, Adam the Bull, G Bush, Jason Lloyd, and Tyvis Powell.