Somehow, some way, the Cleveland Guardians exceeded everyone\u2019s expectations for their first three series of the season. After seeing the team perform in person this weekend, I could not be more excited for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
When the Guardians\u2019 schedule was first released, I\u2019ll admit I was scared. They were slated to play one of the most successful American League teams, the reigning World Series champions, and the NL Central\u2019s favorite heading into 2026. After taking two of three from the Seattle Mariners, my expectations were raised a bit. However, I still kept them quite low heading into the series versus the Los Angeles Dodgers. Thankfully, those gritty Guards blew my expectations out of the water by winning the three game series against the reigning champs. While Sunday\u2019s first game of a doubleheader versus the Chicago Cubs was a very sad offensive showing (no runs on just one hit), the team still managed to take two of three including a come back win in the day\u2019s second game.<\/p>\n
If you take a look at the American League Batting Leaderboard over at Baseball Reference, you\u2019ll see an unexpected name at the top of the Home Runs leaderboard. Rookie Chase Delauter – who has played in nine games this year – tops the stat with five home runs (tied with the Athletics\u2019 Shea Langeliers). After hitting two home runs in his first regular season game, he has continued to hit with power and has helped keep the Guards in the win column. He\u2019s hitting .313\/.343\/.781 and can be counted on to produce in almost every at bat.<\/p>\n
Surprising Names Making Moves<\/p>\n
Heading into this weekend\u2019s series versus the Chicago Cubs, there were many question marks surrounding Gabriel Arias and CJ Kayfus. They\u2019ve both had plenty of up-and-down moments this season, with the \u201cdowns\u201d making plenty of headlines on social media. However, it\u2019s still early in the season and they still have time to contribute in meaningful ways. They did just that in Sunday\u2019s doubleheader with both Arias and Kayfus contributing an RBI single each and Kayfus giving the Guards the lead in the bottom of the eighth with a home run. While they still have plenty of defensive miscues to make up for, they\u2019re certainly making headway on that.<\/p>\n
Experiencing the home crowd sing along to Chase DeLauter\u2019s walkup song – Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver – was a great moment at Progressive Field on Sunday. Mason Horodyski of News 5 Cleveland captured the moment in Friday\u2019s home opener before DeLauter earned a base hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Somehow, some way, the Cleveland Guardians exceeded everyone\u2019s expectations for their first three series of the season. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2589,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-666495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-guardians","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians-analysis","12":"tag-clevelandguardians","13":"tag-guardians","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116358308882606675","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}