Cleveland doesn’t need to win this ALDS by turning it into a home run derby. In fact, that would be the worst possible script.
The White Sox bring the kind of lineup that can bury a team fast. They have three players with more than 30 home runs, while the Guardians are the only club in baseball without a single 20-homer hitter. That gap is why Paul Hoynes boiled the matchup down to one hard truth: “You have to fight them in the middle of the ring, stay off the ropes.”
On the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, Hoynes said the Guardians cannot afford to get dragged into Chicago’s style of game. “They do not want to get into a slug fest with these guys,” he said.
Joe Noga took that idea even further, stressing how dangerous it would be if Cleveland had to keep answering every Chicago swing with one of its own.
“If they get into a slugfest with Chicago, that does not bode well for Cleveland. If they have to keep putting up runs and keep putting up runs and hit home runs and generate offense to keep pace or to beat Chicago in this series, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
The White Sox already showed what that pressure can look like in the wild-card series against Houston, scoring early and often while mostly covering up their pitching issues. With Munetaki Murakami, Miguel Vargas, and Colson Montgomery in the lineup, Chicago has enough pop to make a game feel out of reach in a hurry.
But Cleveland’s offense is not the same group it was when these teams first saw each other in the spring. Noga pointed to the trade deadline as the turning point, when the Guardians added Nathaniel Lowe and Jo Adell and gave the lineup a different shape.
“After that trade deadline, after they acquired Nathaniel Lowe and Jo Adell, Cleveland’s offense changed,” Noga said. “You couple that with the way Stephen Kwan has been able to turn his season around and be the table setter at the top of the lineup that he is.
He rediscovered himself. Adell gave them a professional hitter and a power bat from the right side.
And then there’s Travis Bazzana.”
Bazzana’s September stood out most of all. “I still can’t believe that he was fourth in the majors in slugging percentage in the month of September. Just the way he didn’t miss when they made mistakes over the plate throughout the entire month.”
When Cleveland clinched in Boston, manager Stephen Vogt said this team can hit with the other postseason clubs, a comment that would have sounded far less believable with some of the lineups Cleveland has carried in recent years.
Noga said that watching the 2024 ALCS left him wondering where the Guardians’ power was going to come from. That question still hangs over them, just not as heavily.
The real edge for Cleveland is not trying to match Chicago blow for blow. It’s having enough different answers to survive the moments that matter most.
“You cannot count this Guardians team out,” Noga said. “If they’re within a run or two late in the game, chaos shows up, Guards Ball shows up and they find a way to at least bring the tying run to the plate.”
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