Offensive outburst a 'confidence booster' for Guardians

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Guardians’ offense had experienced a dreadful couple of weeks leading into the club’s three-game series against the Rays. As Cleveland departs Florida, however, it has a lot to build upon following a 9-2 victory on Sunday at Tropicana Field.

Consider that through their previous 13 games before this series, the Guardians hit .159 and were held to fewer than 10 hits in each. But they reached double-digit knocks in every game of this set, topping out at 15 in the finale despite facing one of the best pitchers in the American League in Zach Eflin, not having the services of the injured Josh Naylor for the entirety and being without José Ramírez for the final two games as he served a suspension.

“Obviously, those are the stars of our team, and we need them in order to make any deep runs,” outfielder Steven Kwan said, “but to be able to do it without them is really confidence-building and big for the young guys.”

“We really needed it,” second baseman Andrés Giménez said via team interpreter Agustin Rivero. “It was kind of like that confidence booster for the offense to get this type of weekend.”

Kwan and Giménez led the charge for the entire weekend at the top of the lineup, as they combined for 14 hits in 29 at-bats. And they opened Sunday’s contest with arguably the two most important plate appearances of the game.

Kwan greeted Eflin by fouling off six pitches and four pitch types. Although he ultimately grounded out to first, Kwan set the tone with his 10-pitch at-bat: The Guardians were going to make it a long afternoon for Eflin, who entered as the Major League leader in WHIP (0.97).

“I’ve talked to a bunch of pitchers, and I think having long [at-bats] like that is just their worst nightmare,” Kwan said.

Giménez followed with a much shorter but louder at-bat as he crushed the second pitch he saw, a fastball, for a Statcast-projected 413-foot home run to center field. The solo shot was his 11th of the season and his longest since July 2022.

“Every time when you are on deck and the guy in front of you sees so many pitches,” Giménez said, “you have more of an idea of what the pitcher is doing.”

Every Guardians batter seemed to know what was coming from the right-hander. Gabriel Arias hit a two-run homer in the second inning. After Bo Naylor, the next batter, drew a seven-pitch walk and moved to second on a fielder's-choice grounder, Kwan brought him home with a double that he slapped off the third-base bag and down the left-field line.

Kole Calhoun singled and Oscar Gonzalez and Will Brennan followed with back-to-back doubles to score two runs in the third. Each had multiple hits Sunday. Gonzalez picked up three doubles, and Giménez paced the offense with his second-four hit game of the season.

“Any mistake I made, they pretty much put it in play and found a hole,” said Eflin, who was out of the game after the third inning, having thrown 82 pitches and allowing season highs in runs (six) and baserunners (10).

Meanwhile, right-hander Tanner Bibee continued to build his AL Rookie of the Year case with a second consecutive start with no walks over seven innings. He struck out five and allowed two runs, and he holds a 1.79 ERA over his past nine starts.

The Guardians posted two more runs in the fourth and another in the fifth, marking the first time since Sept. 4, 2019, that the team plated a run in each of the first five frames.

And besides Cleveland missing two of its most potent batters, this hit parade came after back-to-back walk-off defeats, including Saturday’s crushing loss, which saw the Guardians squander a two-run lead in the ninth.

“It’s hard to come out on a day game after that walk-off win and kind of swing the bats like we did,” Calhoun said. “[Giménez] started us off early, and it seemed like everybody just followed suit.”

The Guardians did damage all weekend on the road against one of the best teams in baseball, and they handed Eflin, an AL Cy Young Award candidate, his worst start of the season. Ramírez will be present for Cleveland’s next game on Tuesday in Cincinnati. After an extremely rough couple of weeks, perhaps this lineup is finding a groove as the season’s stretch run nears.

“I’ve talked about it before: Hitting is contagious,” Kwan said.