News and Notes — Jose back? You know, bro

A Jose Ramirez grand slam capped off yet another Guardians series win

The sun was out on Thursday afternoon, and the big bat of Jose Ramirez was awake.

The cold weather tempered chances on Wednesday, but a nice breeze was all it took for the Guardians to get back to their early 2024 form against the Red Sox, beating the team from Beantown 6-4.

Will Brennan continued his recent hot streak, powering out a solo shot in the bottom of the second inning to give the Guardians the early 1-0 lead. Later that inning, the Guardians loaded the bases for the GOAT, and he didn’t miss.

Triston McKenzie toed the rubber for the Guards on Thursday afternoon, and he showed signs that he might be getting closer to full strength. Sticks went four innings, throwing 75 pitches total, allowing two runs on 6 hits with a pair of walks and seven strikeouts. His overall struggles came with runners on base as the stretch still continues to be a mechanical struggle for Sticks, but overall, things are progressing in the right direction for McKenzie.

Boston made pushes after falling behind, most prominently in the fifth and sixth innings. Facing Tim Herrin, Boston put runners on with no outs, but Nick Sandlin came on after Herrin was able to record an out and retired Masataka Yoshida on a weak tapper back to the mound before striking out Enmanuel Valdez to retire the Sox and end the threat.

Just an inning later, Vogt got a bit greedy with Sandlin, leaving him out there to try and steal some outs without expending the rest of the bullpen, but that did not pan out as Boston finally got to Sandlin. After hitting David Hamilton with a pitch, Reese McGuire singled, putting runners on the corners. Rafaela grounded out as a run scored, then Hunter Gaddis came in to relieve Sandlin and gave up a single to Jarren Duran, plating McGuire. All of a sudden, a 5-2 game quickly turned into 5-4.

Then, in the seventh inning, Jose struck again. After roping a single up the middle, Ramirez stole second and got to third on a wild throw. Boston chose to then intentionally walk Josh Naylor to face David Fry. Naylor then made a dash for second on a steal attempt, McGuire couldn’t handle the pitch, and because Chris Martin was slow covering the plate, Jose came in to score, making it 6-4 which wound up being the final score.

Emmanuel Clase threw just 12 pitches to carve through the Red Sox top of the order to lock down win 18 and save number eight.

AL Central Standings

CLE | 18-7 | - GB | @ ATL
KC | 15-10 | 3.0 GB | @ DET
DET | 14-11 | 4.0 GB | vs. KC
MIN | 11-13 | 6.5 GB | @ LAA
CWS | 3-22 | 15.0 GB | vs. TB

Who’s Hot?

Jose Ramirez
— That’s right, the GOAT is back. Jose Ramirez had his best day on the season so far on Thursday, going 3-4 with the grand slam, and all four balls he put in play were scorched at over 99 miles per hour. If you’ve been watching JRam in recent games, you could see this was coming. In just this Boston series, Ramirez registered nine batted balls of at least 95 mph, with two home runs and a double. After a sluggish start, Jose is starting to make his way back to normal.

Emmanuel Clase
— My goodness is Clase cooking right now. Clase picked up his eighth save, lowering his ERA to 0.69. Nice! After an up and down 2023, 2024 — as well as his offense — has been much kinder to Clase.

Will Brennan
— Look out, Silly Willy might have figured something out. Pulling more fly balls than he ever has before, Brennan is making it hard for Vogt to take him out of the lineup right now, adding another home run coupled with a double on Thursday.

Who’s Not?

Andres Gimenez
— After a hot start, Andres Gimenez has cooled to Arctic temperatures. Just 6 for his last 39, Gimenez hasn’t tallied an extra base hit since April 8th. From the start of the season through April 13th, Gimenez was running a 33.0% chase rate, roughly in the 20th percentile of all qualified hitters at that time, and a major improvement upon his 40% chase rate last season. From April 14th on, however, that number has ballooned to 46.2%, a 1st percentile of all qualified hitters. He’s swinging at everything again because he’s pressing, and all of his power as well as his overall plate presence has been zapped. Hopefully, it won’t take as long for him to find his old form as it did last year.

Brayan Rocchio
— Similar to Gimenez, Rocchio is experiencing quite the power outage. On April 13, Rocchio roped a double to give him his sixth on the season and a tie for the AL lead. Since then, he has one double and is 5 for his last 28. The issue with Rocchio is he just isn’t impacting the ball. Rocchio had 23 batted ball events going into Thursday since April 14. Of them, 12 have been groundballs. The silver lining for Rocchio here is that even in this slump, he’s still running a 35% sweet spot rate. Compared to Andres’s 24.1% sweet spot rate in this same slumping range, the positives are at least there for Rocchio.

Who’s Next?

Cleveland will hit the road for a six game road trip that could define what this team is and could be. They’ll head to Truist Park for the first time ever and face the always dangerous Braves, and from there, they head to Houston, a slumping team, yes, but MinuteMaid has been a house of horrors for this franchise for quite some time.

Additional Notes (from editor):

You can catch Covering the Corner’s Quincy and Nicole on the latest episode of the Disgusting Baseball podcast as they discuss the Guardians’ hot start, pulled fly ball rates, and answer some fun listener questions.

Finally, if you’d like some neat batted ball data on the potential number one draft picks, Carlos Collazo of Baseball America has you covered: