Guardians can't continue to 'live and die' with long ball

NEW YORK -- The Guardians reached the postseason on quality contact hitting and tough at-bats. They reached Yankee Stadium for this American League Division Series by hitting enough timely home runs to support their dominant starting pitching and beat the Rays twice in the Wild Card Series.

One game into the ALDS, Cleveland has still scored all of its runs this postseason on homers. But it’ll need more than the run or two it has been getting in games so far if its October run is to continue much longer.

“Getting the next guy up, walks, taking advantage of errors, running counts up, taking first to third, I think that's when we're at our best,” said rookie outfielder Steven Kwan, whose third-inning homer comprised the Guardians’ offense in a 4-1 loss in Game 1 on Tuesday night.

“It's contributions from everybody. It's not just live and die by the long ball. When we can get that going, I think we're a pretty good team.”

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Kwan believes they’ve shown signs. Now they have to sustain it. The early innings of Game 1 marked their best sign yet, something they hope yields results against a pitcher other than Gerrit Cole.

The Guardians’ approach against Cole in the first inning seemed like an early investment to eventually chase the Yankees’ ace and test their bullpen. Though Cole responded to an Isiah Kiner-Falefa error by fanning José Ramírez and Josh Naylor, the 24-pitch opening inning took some effort thanks to nine pitches fouled off, six of them with two strikes to extend at-bats.

After a 15-pitch second inning, Kwan’s homer off a 2-0 fastball was part of a 23-pitch third inning that gave Cleveland by far its best chance to take command of the game.

They weren’t particularly deep at-bats to run up the count that inning, just more at-bats. Ramírez pounced on a 2-1 slider in the strike zone for a double with a 106 mph exit velocity, the hardest-hit ball of the game for Cleveland. Naylor hit an 0-1 fastball for a ground ball at 103 mph right to Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo, but Amed Rosario scrambled back to third in time to avoid a rundown and load the bases.

Up came Oscar Gonzalez, who was Cleveland’s Wild Card Series hero. He went at Cole’s first-pitch slider in the zone, but the resulting ground ball made for an easy forceout at home plate. Andrés Giménez saw five breaking balls in a six-pitch battle, fouling off a tough curveball below the zone to stay alive before chasing a slider to the same spot for a strikeout to end the threat.

“I had foreseen trying to work out of traffic because of undesirable contact,” Cole said. “So I was lucky to make pitches in those situations.”

The Guardians worked Cole for 62 pitches through the first three innings, including 16 foul balls, but had little to show for it beyond a 1-0 lead with three hits and five strikeouts. Once Harrison Bader homered in the bottom of the third, that lead was gone. Once Cole followed with an eight-pitch fourth inning, so were the pitch-count concerns.

“If [Cole is] at 60 after three, we're doing some things right,” Cleveland manager Terry Francona said. “He had a quick fourth and kind of settled in. He can have overwhelming stuff. You know, he starts to speed you up and then he spins it. It can get tough.”

Cole needed just 35 pitches from the fourth through sixth innings. None of those pitches were fouled off. A four-pitch walk to Ramírez accounted for Cleveland’s lone baserunner in a 13-batter stretch between the third-inning rally and Myles Straw’s seventh-inning single off Kiner-Falefa’s glove came on Cole’s 101st and final pitch.

“The third time [through the order], he was kind of throwing some changeups at us,” Kwan said. “It was a little different from the first two times through. He was spotting that up, and that's kind of a fourth pitch he has in his back pocket, which speaks to how good of a pitcher he is.”

Cole finished with eight strikeouts over 6 1/3 innings. Guardians hitters had 19 swinging strikes, 14 on breaking pitches. Cleveland seemed relieved when he gave way to reliever Jonathan Loáisiga, whose high-velocity arsenal was easier to battle.

“The priority is to score and to stay ahead,” Francona said. “But when we have at-bats like that, longer at-bats, that's a good sign. It just would be nice to have some runs on the scoreboard also.”

Ironically for the approach, Cleveland is halfway to the AL record for most consecutive runs scored via homers to begin a postseason, set by the 1998 Red Sox. The Padres reached nine with a Wil Myers home run to open their scoring in Game 1 of their NL Division Series against the Dodgers on Tuesday before adding runs on a groundout and sacrifice fly.