News and Notes: Guardians Win Series, Lose Steven Kwan

News and Notes for Monday, May 6th, 2024

The Guardians beat the Angels 4-1, winning another series while losing Steven Kwan for a little while.

We didn’t get official word, but the always reliable Zack Meisel of the Athletic reported than Steven Kwan will head to the 10-day IL and Kyle Manzardo will join the 26-man roster and the 40-man roster (the latter at the expense of the recently DFA’d Tyler Beede). Not how any of us wanted to see Manzardo, at the expense of the Guardians’ best hitter so far in 2024. Hopefully, Kwan’s hamstring injury will be mild, but even a grade 1 strain is probably 3-4 weeks. This will be a chance to get a good look at players like Will Brennan, Estevan Florial and the aforementioned Manzardo. Look for a couple other articles from us about Manzardo later today.

Carlos Carrasco gave the Guardians’ six innings of one run ball. Now, the Angels had an expected batting average of .312 while the Guardians were at .230, showing that Carrasco was giving up a lot of hard hit balls to a pretty bad lineup. But, credit to Cookie who did what crafty vets do, and even limited damage after a comically misjudged flyball by Tyler Freeman. Meanwhile, the bullpen was SENSATIONAL again with Scott Barlow, Tim Herrin and Emmanuel Clase combing for three scoreless, hitless innings with four strikeouts.

The Guardians’ offense struggled for most of the game against a bad pitcher in Griffin Canning, but then Jose Ramirez found himself in an extended count again:

After Guardians’ legend Matt Moore showed no desire to pitch to Jose Ramirez, Josh Naylor took his revenge:

Estevan Florial got the first chance to bat leadoff, and I didn’t hate it. He’s capable of drawing a walk. But, he didn’t. He just did the other thing he can do well - smacked a 103.4 mph single.

The Guardians will face the Tigers at 6:10PM EST in Cleveland tonight, and I’d bet Manzardo gets his chance to debut. Good luck, young man! I found it interesting that Meisel noted that a scout reported that Tampa Bay regrets the Civale-Manzardo deal, so, that’s good.

Matt Dallas and I talked about how the Guardians can sustain their hot start on the latest Disgusting Baseball Podcast.

Meanwhile, Charlie Condon hit ANOTHER home run:

Travis Bazzana responded by hitting THREE home runs:

Around MLB:

The Twins finally lost a baseball game.

The Yankees, helpfully, beat the Tigers again.

The defending champs beat the Royals.

Shohei, that baseball had a family.