MIAMI - By the time the Guardians reach Sunday’s game against the Marlins, they’ll have played 97 games, and the shape of their season is already clear.
They can pitch.
They don’t score enough.
They’ve leaned hard on rookies.
And Cade Smith has been outrageous.
Smith slammed the door on Friday night in a 3-2 win over Miami, needing only nine pitches to finish the ninth inning for his 28th save in 31 chances. It was his third straight day of work and his second straight save, the kind of workload that says as much about his importance as the numbers do.
The stretch started Wednesday in Minnesota, when Stephen Vogt made the unusual call to use Smith in a tie game in the eighth inning. The situation was messy: no outs, runners on second and third, and the score tied 5-5.
Smith handled three of the four hitters he saw and kept Cleveland alive. Vogt said that if the Guardians had pushed across a run in the ninth, Smith would have gone back out there.
They didn’t score, so Matt Festa took the ninth instead. Minnesota walked it off 6-5.
Smith is on his way to the All-Star Game in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and it’s hard to argue with the selection. Emmanuel Clase, the man Smith replaced, set Cleveland’s single-season save record with 47 in 2024.
At the All-Star break that year, Clase had 29 saves. Smith is right there.
The offense, meanwhile, has been a problem for a while, and it got worse after Jose Ramirez, Angel Martinez and Chase DeLauter were injured on June 13. DeLauter returned to the active roster on June 28, which helped some, but the lack of run production has helped turn the AL Central into a four-team fight. The Guardians entered Saturday in a virtual first-place tie with the White Sox, with the Twins and Tigers still in the mix.
Minnesota seemed to sense the opening during this three-game set. On Wednesday, Guardians reliever Erik Sabrowski was walking batters in a hurry, and when Kody Clemens challenged a strike call after Sabrowski finally threw one, it came off like a little extra edge from the Twins.
Maybe that was all it was. Maybe it was a sign they thought Cleveland was vulnerable.
Thursday brought another tense moment. Gavin Williams retired the first 15 batters he faced before Royce Lewis tried to bunt twice with one out in the fifth.
The Guardians’ dugout reacted, and Lewis eventually broke up the no-hit bid with a bloop single to center. Cleveland still won 5-2, but Williams didn’t love the sequence.
“Look, I understand what he was trying to do,” said Williams on Friday. “We’re leading 1-0 and he’s trying to get a hit and win a game. But I think anyone would have been surprised by that (the bunt attempts).”
The roster tells its own story, too. Nine rookies have made their big-league debuts for the Guardians this season, and six rookies are on the 26-man roster right now. Smith will be joined at the All-Star Game by two of them, Travis Bazzana and Parker Messick.
“That’s who we are,” said manager Stephen Vogt, when asked about sending two rookies to the All-Star Game. “We’re always going to be young.”
Bazzana, Messick and DeLauter may be rookies, but they’ve already started to feel like fixtures. Most of the others haven’t.
Petey Halpin is a good example. He’s bounced between Triple-A Columbus and Cleveland three times this season, and that has taught him to be ready for the next call.
When Columbus travels, manager Andy Tracy tells players to pack collared shirts and dress pants so they’re covered if the Guardians summon them on the road. Halpin took the message seriously.
“The last thing you want to do is get called up and walk on the team charter wearing a hoodie,” said Halpin. “That shows you weren’t prepared and looking ahead.”
And the Guardians do need to look ahead. On May 24, they were 32-23 and up 4 1/2 games in the division. They looked in control.
Now the AL Central has been scrambled.
“The race in the AL Central always seems to come down the last week of the season,” said Vogt.
That’s not exactly a comforting place to be.
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