News and Notes: That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

News and Notes for Saturday, May 11th, 2024

The Guardians have accounted for roughly a fourth of the White Sox wins in 2024.

Thanks to a key error by Gabriel Arias playing second base, poor situational hitting, and three gofer-balls late, the Guardians lost to the White Sox, 6-3.

With runners on second and third and one out, Nicky Lopez hit a room service hop grounder to Arias as the runner at third headed home, dead to rights. Arias simply missed the ball and both runners scored.

It was the most prominent of several less than stellar defensive plays by the Guardians, but it led to some criticism on the TV broadcast, with sideline reporter, Andre Knott, implying that Arias does not give 100% in infield drills. This uncharacteristically blunt observation led one of my friends to share with me a story an Indians’ beat reporter had told him about noticing Milton Bradley regularly showing up half an hour late to practices and telling the team “if this keeps happening, I’m going to have to report it.” If a guy like Knott is sharing something like this, there’s probably a fairly noticeable issue.

Manager Stephen Vogt raved about Carlos Carrasco’s seven inning performance after the game, and it was a great relief to the overworked Guardians’ pen, but he did give up two smoked home run balls in the seventh to put the game out of reach. Pedro Avila also added a home run served up in the eighth.

Tyler Freeman hit a home run

as did Jose Ramirez (after a David Fry double), featuring a patented Rick Manning “uh-huh”:

but the Guardians failed to get runners in scoring position home several times, notably after a leadoff triple from Will Brennan in the 2nd after which Arias and Austin Hedges struck out and Brayan Rocchio grounded out weakly. Kyle Manzardo and Ramon Laureano, who looks quite bad at the plate, also had key strikeouts. Overall, the team looked overmatched against lefty Garrett Crochet, especially when it mattered most.

It’s time to turn the page and hope Triston McKenzie can continue a good run of recent starts tonight and the Guardians can get to Mike Clevinger and stop this two-game skid against a very bad baseball team.

Baseball America offered an interesting recent podcast spending some time debating Charlie Condon or Travis Bazzana at 1.1 in the MLB Draft.

Around MLB:

Well, the Twins have forgotten how to lose.

The Tigers lost to the Astros.