Sunday Finale and Future Outlook

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It's chic, it's timeless, and it's even the same color as my apartment because I'm kind of obsessed with it. And I love adding custom embroidery to make my scrubs as personal as my style. And since I work in telehealth, my embroidered figs even double as my ID badge. It's never too late to reinvent yourself or your scrub s. Get fifteen percent off your first order at wherefigs dot com with the code figsarx. That's where figs dot com code figsarx for fifteen percent off your first order Thanks for joining me on this Cleveland Baseball Morning, the final from Dakon Park in Houston. It's the Guardians losing a series. Again, I kind of think they should have won two games to one with the finale on Sunday, the Guardians losing two to one in a pretty weak offensive showing and I'd like to say there was I'm David Barris, lifelong clean baseball fan and I want to talk about the actual game on the field the thing I enjoy watching baseball being played. However, this is an on vacation episode so it's gonna be a little bit of shorter episode a little, quite as detailed episode, but I'm still here to talk baseball with you. As long as the kids are still sleep, I'm here to talk baseball with you. So let's get into it. I wish there was an overarching storyline in this series that I could talk about, that I could latch on to, but kind of have different problems or different situations in every game, right? In the game one, Friday night of this game, you have the bullpen imploding. Bye actually gives you a pretty good start, but then you have the bullpen imploding. We'll talk about Mapesta in a second . We'll do a little bit of a deep dive in what's going on with him . And then game two, you have the offensive explosion from Bazana, you have, you know, his game of the year, his maybe his statement for making the All Star team . And then on Sunday, again, Saconi pitches very well, but the offense goes ice cold and it's it's a terrible lineup. You know, you got Bazanaman and amZan's Aonr Rdochio at the top, but then you got Gabriel Arius Batton cleanup and then Schneimen Watson , poor Kaliel Watson. He's he's getting his first taste of the major leagues and he's he's really getting the taste of it. He is now in twelve bats. He's got eight strikeouts. And so you know, part of this is, you know, guys , it's to gain that experience that you go back to AAA and keep working on things and no and no , not just guess, not just assume , not just what other guys tell you, but you know what it's like to take that leap to the major league level . So it's okay if at first he doesn't succeed. Like the motto truly is from dumping from AAA to the major leagues is if at first you don't succeed try again. Like you have to learn from the experience. You would like to see him have at least get a hit, right? We got to we got to let Cleo Watson grind until he can at least get a hit under his belt at the major league level and there's a good offensive player in there. It's just it's making that leap. It's making that adjustment to that major league pitching and it's the best in the world for a reason. And so yeah, Cuel Watson is really struggling right now, but yeah, it's just a week, week lineup. Then when he does try to pinch hit on Sunday , it's a disaster like, you know, Friday goes over two with two strikeout pinsch hitt ing for Watson. So Fry was no improvement in that six hole in the lineup . Fairchild walks for Kwan, but then Hoskins strikes out for Bailey and so it's just whatever levers he tried to pawn Sunday, there was just nothing there offensive ly and that I mean in the in this window where Delauder and Martinez and Jose Ramirez are out and they're injured. It's it's going to be like this. Like we are going to struggle offensively, but I think the main overarching storyline is that the starting pitching has been pitching really good and you just wish that like this team could invest in what they've built in their starting pitching staff, right? Like coming up with a trade deadline here, if they could go out and add one bull pen arm and one sign ificant like impact power bat, somebody they could back clean up and not have to worry about it. Just leave them in there every day , whether that's at first base or in the corner outfield or even DHI . Like just a one consistent bat that could just be there and be power for you. I don't know where you're going to find it San Francisco, Boston. I don't know where you're gonna find it right now . But yeah, like please invest in what you've built in this starting pitching staff , right? You've put some real good pieces in the starting pitching staff, please invest in it . So just some quick thoughts from each game . Friday , the loss three to nine loss. You got a three to two lead . You have your moment in the in the third inning with Rocchio doubling driving in Bazana to score and then Reese Hoskins with the two run home run, you jump out to a three one lead and Bobby is pitching pretty good but he does get in trouble in the sixth inning so you go with first man out of the bullpen you want to he want to make some easy money on prop bets, just bet on who the first man out of the bullpen is going to be for Cleveland. It's going to be Mafesta . First pitch he gives up a home run to Altuve on a home run definitely misses on his location and Altuve makes him pay with a three run home run. They jump to five to three and then they just pound the bullpen. I mean, they they unload Espino , you know, gets his first taste of some real major league hitting hitting what I mean it's not his first appearance. What I mean by that is a team that could actually light him up. So Espino gives up three hits, two runs. He gives up a home run . Still has two strikeouts, but you know, okay, that's kind of I real like the first appearance was his like I finally made it moment and this is his welcome to the major league's rookie moment Sabrowski back from injury I told you Will Deon needed to go back down and Sabrowsk i coming off the IL made that possible so browski back I don't know we'll call it Rust. I don't know what we'll call it but it wasn't a good appearance. He gives up two runs and a third of an inning . So yeah, three guys come out of the bull pen and three guys give up runs By's ERA looks a little worse because those inherited runners that fest a let score you know so Bye's final line is five and a third innings pitched four hits four runs three earned two walks seven strikeouts. Does give up a home run himself pretty strong, pretty strong from Bybie. I'm going to be bouncing back and forth on my phone between the box score between MOB and the and baseball savant here, but Bibi wasn't quite back to the Biby slash. He was pounding the outside with sinkers . He was really trying to attack that outside edge with his sinker pretty consistently sinker and cutter pretty consistently and as far as like CSW numbers go he had a good called strikes, especially on that sinker, eleven called strikes on that sinker, but it's only eleven whiffs on forty three swings. It's a twenty six percent whiff rate. It's a twenty seven percent CSW total for By on the day. Meanwhile on the other side , Emi was very good for the for the Astros . He really had a struggling on his slider fourteen whiffs on twenty five swings. It's a fifty six percent wiff rate on the slider . Also four out of five whiffs on the change up, an eighty percent wiff rate on the change up. So it's a forty four percent wiff rate total on the day . thirty six percent CSW for MI who goes off for a I think it was eleven strikeouts. Double check that and it was like one of the highest strikeout totals in recent Astros history. I think the highest this season. So you get the best pitching performance from an Astro this season and your bullpen emplodes not really a recipe for success. And a lot of these strikeouts, a lot of these swing and miss on the change up in the slider, it wasn't guys extending the zone horizontally. It was pitches below the stri ke zone. They were going down and chasing and whiffing pitches below the strike zone. A ton of them . So really strong start for Emi , yeah, and that'll be your two hit game for Bazana, h twoit R goame forkio. You do have the two run home run from Reese Hoskins. Somebody joked on Blue Sky, well I guess we won't hear from him for a week now . Yeah, Hoskins seems to basically just bring you walks. That's really what Hoskins is bringing this season. Maybe some, you know, some leadership in the clubhouse. But he's mostly just bringing walks this season . All right , so moving on from that game, we will move on to the fun one , the one where the guardians go off for all the runs and it's a big eight one win on Saturday night on national TV. So hey, you got not only got bananas coming out party offensively, but you got it on national TV too . So that, you know, can't hurt your all star game candidacy. So Bizana ends up going for four with three runs score, two home runs, five RBIs , four hard balls yeah, just a beautiful offensive game. You also have Manzardo behind him not too shabby, two for four with a home run himself and three RBIs driven in . So huge from the top of the line was the bot ittom turning it over to the top . Nobody in the middle of the lineup did anything offensively . Rochio and Hoskins and Schneimen and Cleo Watson were all quiet . Quan was all quiet while Quanto score run . Patrick Bailey actually gives you a three for four day in the eighth spot and scores twice . So Bailey check that out . San Francisco Giant fans are probably a little annoyed because Bailey hasn't been a complete zero offensively here in Cleveland . Let me go over to the back of the MLB app for this . So when he was when he left San Francisco , so for the beginning of the season in San Francisco, in eighty two at bats, he was batting one hundred forty six with a two hundred thirteen on base and a one hundred and eighty three slugging like that's a three hundred ninety six OPS About as bad as you can get offensively . Here in Cleveland, it's been a two hundred and twenty six batting average. It's been a two hundred and sixty nine on base, not great. Three fifty five slugging , not too shabby for a light hitting catcher. It's been a six hundred twenty four OPS like it',s been if you're an all star defensively that is serviceable as a catcher. He was not serviceable in San Francisco. So I'm sure San Francisco Giants fans are like, What the heck wait, you get to Cleveland and then you fin ally can give them a little bit of offense and not be a complete zero there . So yeah, so huge, huge offensive game for Bazana. Did they call him Bazana earlier? Ah, man, I'm trying to work on it. Bazana yeah, the two home runs it was like very similar pitches very similar pitches. They both were I could go to the illustrator to make sure, but they were both pitches that look ed like they were supposed to be outside and they were both pitches that came in . Let's just look at just the home runs here and they were both pitches that came into the middle of the plate and one was a sweeper, one was a fastball. Let's see if we could figure out which one was which the mezoom in here the first pitch of the game was the fastball. It was a fastball that looked like it was supposed to be away and just we're talking dead center of the plate a little bit elevated and Mazana launches at one hundred four point seven miles per hour twenty three degreeun relch anagle. I'll get you the full numbers in a second. The next one was a sweeper on a one two pitch . So Arigetti actually had to count in his favor and again, I think this pitch was supposed to be a way to Basana, but again it comes, right back into the middle of the plate and the lefty unloads on it. This one was at one hundred point eight miles per hour, twenty nine degree launch angle. It's almost the same location on pitches and it's almost the same location on where it ends up as a home run. So really fun, really fun from Bazana . Let's go over to the scoreboard and I'll give you the full numbers on the home run. So that first one was one hundred and four point seven twenty three degreelaunching up three hundred and eighty two feet would have been home run in fifteen out of thirty ballparks . The next one well he singled in the third and then it's Manzardo with the home run. Manzardo goes one hundred miles per hour twenty six relaunch channel three hundred and eighty eight feet would have been home running twenty six out of thirty ballparks. It's two left field, but it's not the Crawford Boxes. It's not a cheapo at the Crawford Boxes there in Houston. He actually hits it to the get to the part to the right of that wall where it actually sinks back and it's a high wall that you got to get over. So it's a it's a true home run there for Manzardo and then it would be in the fifth inning bazana. We'd actually set up nicely Kwani get hit by the pitch, Patrick Bailey with a signal at one hundred one off the bat . Pete Halpin in the nine spots sack bunds those guys over, sets them off a bazana because how could you expect Bazanna to come up with another home run? But he does one hundred point eight twenty nine degree launch channel four hundred six feet. This one would have been home run twenty nine out of thirty ballparks. So a little bit deeper, but basically the same spot in right center field. Pretty identical home runs. So Bazana was locked in . It's the Cleveland accent. I'm telling you, I'm really, I'm really gonna work on it. Basana, Basana, Bazana . Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park , you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog, HBAC on its last leg, if you wait until something break s, you're already behind. Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering, and twenty four seven support. Call one eight hundred granger, click Granger dot com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done all right , so they would rally again in the seventh inning again, Patrick Bailey kicking things off with a single Petey Halpin this time gets in on the fun with a single at one hundred and five point nine and then Baz ana singles drives in Bailey at one hundred one point eight Manzardo with a light single at seventy point two x of velocity and that drives in Pete help in the score. So they rally for more. They really put their foot to the pedal and really ran up the score nicely in this one. Like with the starting pitching we're getting and canzilo was very good on this one. My God dropping curveballs and change ups like crazy in this one with the starting pitching we're getting if you can even get half of this offense, right ? Just give me three to four runs with the starting pitching we're getting and forty five forty five runs with a starting pitch and we're getting and this team really will run away with the division . So can we help this offense out a little bit? He barely cantilo barely uses his fastballs . He's sixteen percent for seam or ten percent cutter. He's forty six percent curveball and he had thirteen whiffs on twenty seven swings, a forty eight percent wiff rate on that pitch and an eight called strikes on the curveball. It's a forty seven percent CSW on the curveball. Total on the day, it's a forty percent wiff rate and a forty one percent CSW. He got I don't think we've seen many forty percent CSWs this season. I this might be the first one that I can think of. Do you remember me calling out any other forty percent CSWs this season ? So my God, what a day from Joey Cantilo. Nine sty le. The final line eightys pitched four hits one and, run , one walk, nine strikeouts on ninety eight pitches he's hard hit five times. And who comes into the game in relief from that Festa? Mostly because Festa needed a bounce back, I think at that moment, right? You could have gone to someone else, but Festa really needed a bounce back performance . Yeah, can'tilla, wow, I didn't even realize it was that elite . All right, while we're talking about Festa, what's going on with Festa? I dug into his fan graphs page here and basically it's home runs. That's his problem this year . Let me jump back up to the top of the page here . So his k for nine are pretty are actually a little bit higher than they were last year nine point two to nine point eight four now. His walks are about the same, two point four seven last year, two point five three walks per nine. So basically the same season. And then the home runs last year zero point six six home runs per nine. He kept the ball in the ballpark last year for us and this year it's up to a one point six nine home runs per nine. So they are getting to him. He's not getting the ground balls like he used to. He was at a forty point seven ground ball raid, which was the highest of his career, but something clicked to him here in Cleveland. He was getting ground balls. Now it's only at twenty nine point seven. They're putting the ball in the air and they're getting it out of the ballpark on him. So it's not reflected in the ERA as much. He was at a four hundred twelve ERA last year. It's at a four hundred twenty two ERA this year, but it is related in the FIF because Fip Remember fielding independent pitching is strikeouts, walks and home runs. It's the three true outcomes. Last year was a three point seven one , one of the best of his career. Now it's up to a four point one five . So they're getting to him . Oh, sorry, that was the expected fit . The true f ip is last year was a three point one four the actual best of his career. This year it's at a four point four eight the true fip . So yeah, that's it's what the struggle is and one of the struggles has been a slider. Let me go down to his pitch value here . Last year the slider was a plus five point seven weighted value on that slider. So a plus five point seven this year it's a negative five point seven. So that slider is taking a huge turn on him. The cutter's actually been better for him. Last year was a negative pitch this year it's a positive pitch but that slider my God , it's really bottled on him and I was looking at the stuff plus and the location plus information and it looks like just the location is struggling with on the slider. Like his location is pretty consist ent on his fastballs from last year . His location has been better on the cutter this year, which is why it's now a positive pitch, but his location plus numbers, he went from a ninety eight location plus on a slider to a ninety. So if he's not hitting his spots with the slider, giving up more home runs, that really seems to be the problem pitch for him this year . So that's what I can see from the data on FESTA . All right, so that was the fun offensive game from Saturday night. And then we got to talk about the finale . Jumping over here to Sundays Box score . Again, Guard ians just do nothing offensively . It's just not going to get it done for hits is not going to get it done. They rally for a run, Bazana is able to drive in a run after Pete Halpin triples . That's nice to see be great if we got that spring training Pete Halpin because that guy could play Bazan is able to hit him in, I believe with the fielders choice. That's it offensively from the Guardians . Meanwhile, Sakone pitches great six innings pitch six hits, two, earned runs, two walks, one strikeout . So you know, not really making them swing and miss kind of day does give up a home run on seventy nine pitches. He's heard hit seven times, not terrible. Holderman and Hunterad Cdanis come out and throw zeros out of the bullpin like the pitching was there to win this game on Sunday, but you threw up one of your , you know, Josemes wasn't in the lineup and this is just a boring boring offense kind of games and man it was a really brutal one to watch and yeah you you waste an opportunity I was at the first inning that they go over to the scoreboard here. I think it was the first inning where we had multiple hits right yeah Bazana had a single to lead off weak single but a single was it an infield hit? Looks like it was an infield hit and then Rochio with a one out single. So he had two guys on Arius and Schneimen strike out and then Jordan Alvarez with a solo home run there in the first inning for them gets them going . It's kind of a boring game. It really was. I feel bad for Sakoni because he pitches all right and they just can't bring it offensively . So yeah , you lose another series. Luckily the White Sox got swept themselves by I believe Detroit . So you're actually holding on to first place right now still. So despite how bad everything's been, you're forty one and thirty seven. You got a game up on the White Sox here you're about to play . You got your top three hitters all injured and you know you're going to get reinforcements there like this still feels like a team that you could push your chips in and compete in this American League and go for a World Series this year. It does . I know that's never the plan from this front office . The plan is always let's stay competitive, keep fans interested and maybe every now every ten years will make a big trade for a hitter or something like that . You're playing above your expected win loss percentage, your expected win loss percentage is actually thirty eight and forty . So you're playing above you're having some luck, some success where they the numbers don't say you should be succeeding , but we'll take it . You're struggling against teams above five hundred now. You're fifteen and nineteen against teams above five hundred. You were doing okay in that for a while . But yeah, you're about to play the white socks. So you can you have a chance here to put a little distance between yourself and the and then the rest of the American League Central here. So you got to take advantage of this series coming up against the White Sox. I believe starting Tuesday, right? Oh no, starting tonight, starting tonight. Okay , you got three against the White Sox . Let's see who's pitching tonight. We got Gavin Williams on the mound our ace against K for the White Sox a lefty that. So gets Hoskins and Fry in the lineup. So we'll see what we can do against the lefty here . Yeah , man, we need this one . We need a bounce back game from Gavin Williams. That's what we need. We needed a start from Gavin Williams tonight because you can clearly see how important the starting pitching is to this team . All right, before MVP on the series before I turn it over to the emailers here and before we before we there's one more transaction thing I got to talk about Gotta go with Bazano, right? Got to go Joey Cantilo. I almost want to do co MVP because Cantilo's start was so good. I mean forty one percent for say forty percent CSW, forty one percent CSW. That's really I'm going co that just Saturday night was a great baseball game for the Guardians and it was both sides of it. It was Bazana, hammering balls to right center field. It was Cantillo dropping the hammer on that curveball. I'm going co MVP for those guys because they were two elite performances right there. All right. The other piece of transaction news is George Valera actually passed through Waivers, so he's back in Columbus. He's still on the pay you know he's not in the forty man roster anymore but he's still in the organization so he didn't lose George Valera so I don't know if that's good or bad that nobody wanted him at this point, honestly . But yeah, George Velera is sticking around . All right, so that was the other piece of transactional news. Let's go over to your emails. Let's see if anybody else came in this morning with a new email. We've got Jeff with the G , Jeff and Columbus. He says tough loss today and another series loss. At least the White Sox lost today as well. Cantila was awesome and Slade continues to put up solid starts. Bye even had a good start until the bullpen imploded. Yeah , the look on Bye's face, they had a camera on him, a camera locked on him as Festo was giving up the game. And Bybie just had this look on his face like come on, man. What do I got to do but the he says my MVP recommendation is the man from down under Travis Bazana. What a game he had. My brother threw out the nickname. You can crush him in the emails if you want, but my brother threw out the nickname idea of Bazlighty Year . Go ahead, you send the emails in. Tell me what you think of that. I said it wasn't as bad as Hoosier Herring at least. He said, What a game he had on Saturday night. I hope he can make the All Star team with Hosi Martinez and Chase out I feel like Travis is the only guardian with any juice. Okay, big series with White Sox coming up need to win that series for sure. Thanks for the podcast Jeff in Columbus . Yeah, Bazana really does. Bazanna really does feel like the only one with Juice offensively . He says our next email is from Dan in the Bronx. He says, Hey Davy, what a show by Bazana on Saturday and thank heavens for the pitching. But when Gabriel Arias is your cleanup hitter, when you're down and running your best move is to pinch hit Stewart Fairchild for Steven Kuan, you have no good options. It feels like the baseball groundhog saw his sh adow and now we've got six more weeks of this. Do you see any moves that might make a meaningful impact? Well, I Calia Watson I was hoping would bring a little thump, but he's clearly struggling with Major League pitching and do you give Cooper Engle a chance? Like that's that's the guy if he can handle a corner outfield spot it he's you know came up as a catcher but they're really trying to find other places for him. So I feel like Cooper English is the next one that we're watching like could he be reinforcement maybe? Who knows maybe George Velera ends up back on this team somehow. I don't know. But yeah, they