Hedges gives words of wisdom in hopes of sparking reeling Guardians

CLEVELAND -- Austin Hedges is the man who can surprise everyone in the ballpark -- including his manager -- by laying down a two-out, bases-loaded bunt as a catcher who’s certainly not known for his speed. He’s the man who will chug a full can of Red Bull before a game and spike it into the ground to fire up his dugout. But he’s also the one who knows what to say when things start to go sideways.

There’s no secret: The Guardians have hit a rough patch, dropping eight of their last 11 games, punctuated with an 8-2 loss to the Tigers on Monday night at Progressive Field. The loss was even harder to swallow given the fact that Cleveland logged 12 hits on the night and left 12 men on base.

They’ve now lost three games in a row. They have yet to lose four in a row this year. Every time they’ve hit a bump in the road, the Guardians have found a quick way to self correct. It’s been the reason they’ve been able to hold on to first place in the AL Central for nearly the entire season. And they know that they have to find a way to get back in the win column yet again.

So, how do they do that?

“It's at the point of the season where motivation is no longer a thing,” Hedges said. “You come into the season, it's easy to be motivated, but you can't rely on motivation. You've got to rely on discipline and doing the boring stuff.

"… When you're such a good team, you got teams like the Tigers that are saving pitchers to face us. You have teams really game planning for us coming in with everything they got, and we're right now figuring out how we're going to respond to that. And it's not happening as quickly as we want.”

There’s no need for a team meeting, Hedges said. Every time the Guardians even lose one game, they’re all having conversations about why it happened. It seems as though the entire room understands what’s happened and why it’s happening, but the problem is they haven’t been able to put that into action to stop the bleeding.

“Everybody wants to be the guy that turns this around, and that's why we're great,” Hedges said. “And I love that from our guys. I want them to want that. But now, we've got to lean on discipline a little bit and be like, 'I don't need to be that guy. I need to execute my plan in the box. When I'm pitching, I need to execute my pitches.' And that is it.”

Hedges tried to put that into practice on Monday night. He’s never been shy in bragging about his bunting skills and yet, it’s still a shock when he decides to lay one down -- especially when the bases are loaded with two outs.

“I mean, if the third baseman’s playing on the outfield grass, I’m probably going to bunt every single time,” Hedges said.

He placed it exactly where he wanted it -- down the third-base line and hard enough to get by Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal. Hedges knew it was the best chance of scoring a run in that situation and it worked. It wasn’t flashy or glamorous, but he wanted to stick to a simple approach to try to get things started. Although it plated a run, it wasn’t the answer.

Steven Kwan, who has led this lineup all season, had been 0-for-11 before a ninth-inning single. José Ramírez has gone a season-long 72 at-bats without a homer. Josh Naylor is 3-for-25 in his last seven games. As the collective offensive funk continues, more pressure builds on individual players.

“When you are missing that big hit, everyone’s trying to step up and do it,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “We’ve got a number of guys that want to step up for us. When we’re at our best, we’re sticking with our approach, we’re sticking with our plan and from time to time, we’ve gotten away from it.”

The Guardians are confident they know what they need to do and Hedges will continue to be one of the loudest voices in the room to get this team back on track.

“It's really simple,” Hedges said. “It doesn't make it easy, but it's not complicated. We just got to get back to doing that.”