With a successful homestand in the books, the Mariners embark on their last long road trip of the season. This series against the Guardians represents one of the few series remaining on the schedule with some semblance of playoff implications. The next four series come against teams well outside the playoff picture before the M’s wrap up the season with three of four series coming against contenders.
It might be a stretch to call the Guardians playoff contenders. They’re currently five games back in the Wild Card race and they’re currently in the midst of a 3-9 stretch. They did enjoy a post-All Star break surge, but this recent slide undermined all that progress they had made in the standings. And considering the losses of Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz to non-disciplinary paid leave as part of a gambling investigation and the trade of Shane Bieber at the trade deadline, they don’t really look the part of a contender right now.
The Guardians have the worst offense in baseball by wOBA and the third worst by wRC+. It’s essentially just José RamÃrez carrying the majority of the load and a bunch of spare parts making up the bottom half of the lineup. And when RamÃrez isn’t hitting — he’s collected just five hits in his last 11 games — the whole offense doesn’t really work. Steven Kwan is the trusty sidekick to RamÃrez who could really produce at the top of the lineup, but he’s struggling too; he’s posted a 76 wRC+ since the All-Star break. There are a few signs of hope. Kyle Manzardo has a 131 wRC+ and six home runs in the second half and he should get plenty of time at first base now that Cleveland has released Carlos Santana from its roster. C.J. Kayfus is another top hitting prospect who made his debut recently, though he’s struggled a bit since making the jump to the big leagues.
Logan Allen used to throw one of the most unique changeups in baseball. Its outlandish lack of horizontal movement made it seem more like a screwball than a traditional offspeed pitch. He made a tweak to that pitch this year and it lost all of its outlier traits; it’s coming in a little harder, it now has plenty of arm-side horizontal movement, and it doesn’t dip as much as it used to. The individual results on that pitch have suffered, but Allen’s overall results have improved after a pretty miserable year last year. Without the unique changeup, the rest of his repertoire is pretty nondescript and he seems destined for a back-end role in Cleveland’s rotation until he hits arbitration and becomes too expensive for what he provides.
From a previous series preview:
Over the last decade or so, the Cleveland pitching development pipeline has done a very good job of churning out above average major league pitchers who feature fantastic secondary weapons but struggle with subpar fastballs. The thought is that the plus breaking balls and offspeed pitches will more than offset the lack of heat, and that’s been true for guys like Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and a host of others. Gavin Williams fits perfectly into that mold. He’s got a phenomenal sweeper, a good curveball, and cutter that produces a ton of weak contact. His fastball is … fine. He’s able to get more whiffs than average with it but opposing batters really crush it when they put it in play. He also struggles with poor command which has gotten him into trouble at times this year.
From a previous series preview:
You can chalk up another Cleveland no-fastball, all-secondary-stuff pitcher in Tanner Bibee. Maybe even more so than Williams. Bibee’s fastball grades out particularly poorly by Stuff+ and the results it generates are pretty lackluster. It’s all about the secondary pitches for him. His two best pitches are his cutter and changeup and his pretty good sweeper gives him three above average offerings to try and keep batters off his heater. This profile worked pretty well for him during his first two seasons in the big leagues, but he’s really struggled this year. He’s tried adding a sinker to his pitch mix, but even though the stuff models like that new pitch, it hasn’t been very effective at all.
It’s a good thing the Mariners took care of business against the Padres because the Astros, Yankees, Red Sox, and Royals all thrived in their easier matchups this week. Houston has a wrap-around, four-game series against the Angels this weekend, Boston hosts the Pirates, and New York started a four-gamer against the White Sox with a win yesterday. The Royals are the one team with a tough matchup this weekend as they host the Tigers in an intra-division battle.