The three catalysts in Guardians' 14-inning, marathon win

CLEVELAND -- Will Brennan rounded first base with his helmet in his hand high above his head and a grin across his face. His team came storming out of the dugout, celebrating the end of a 14-inning marathon on Friday night at Progressive Field.

It was a relief to come out on top after the Astros took the lead three times in extra innings. No team in the modern era had overcome a deficit five separate times in the seventh inning or later in the same game before the Guardians did so on Friday night, according to OptaSTATS. But it meant even more for this club to finally come out on the winning side of one of these grueling, one-run matchups.

After Tyler Freeman knocked in the tying run, Brennan’s line drive to left field lifted Cleveland to a 10-9 extra-inning victory over Houston. The 14-inning battle was tied for the longest game, in terms of innings, this season. The longest regular-season game played, in terms of innings, since the new extra-innings rule was implemented at the beginning of the 2020 season was a 16-inning game between the Dodgers and Padres on Aug. 25, 2021.

There were three big reasons why Cleveland came out on top:

The catalyst
We all know how badly this offense needs José Ramírez. When he’s going, he’s not only one of the most lethal hitters in the game, but he has an effortless ability to spread his energy up and down the lineup.

Ramírez carried the momentum from his first three-homer performance into Friday, hitting a game-tying solo shot in the seventh inning. He also picked up a single and a double, finishing just shy of the cycle that Brennan predicted he’d have hours before the game started.

“He’s our leader,” Brennan said. “He rallied us through this entire game. He rallied us yesterday. It’s super special. He’s a Hall of Famer.”

The saver
There were many moments throughout Friday’s game that could be labeled: “The Guardians couldn’t have won if this didn’t happen.” However, the two instances that need to be bolded both came from left fielder Steven Kwan in the 13th inning.

In the era of the automatic runner in extra innings, the home team doesn’t need to panic if one run scores because it knows it will have a runner in scoring position to start the bottom half of the frame. But if multiple runs are plated, that deficit becomes much harder to overcome.

Kwan knows this. And when a long fly ball was soaring over his head in left field with two outs in a tie game and runners on the corners, he knew he needed to limit the damage. He went all the way to the warning track, made an impressive bare-handed snag after the ball bounced off the wall and off the ground and fired it into the infield to prevent more than one run from scoring.

“We have some gating out there, so usually when a ball hits there, it dies down,” Kwan said on MLB Network in a postgame interview. “I was a little too close to field that ball off the top because it hit that thin padding. Luckily, the reflexes took over, and [I] just snagged it.”

On the next play, he made a head-first diving catch to end the inning. According to Statcast, he had just a 10% chance to make the play (a five-star rating) and needed to cover 33 feet in 2.7 seconds to get to the ball.

“If he hadn't made that diving catch, it would have been a three-run lead,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “That shows the value of defense.”

Guardians manager Terry Francona added: “It’s a game-saver.”

The ender
Brennan was doused with a cooler of water in celebration of his first walk-off plate appearance. It was a game Cleveland needed to win to help keep the momentum moving in its favor, and Brennan delivered the clutch hit. But the bigger takeaway is that he’s still heating up at the plate.

Brennan got off to a slow start. He grinded through it and went on a red-hot seven-game stretch. Even after an 0-for-4 night on Wednesday, Brennan didn’t let it impact him, picking up two hits on Thursday before the big knock on Friday. He’s now hit safely in nine of his last 10 games, batting .462 with five doubles, two homers and eight RBIs in that span.

And if he can join Ramírez and Josh Naylor as hot bats in the middle of this lineup, the Guardians may finally see the offense they imagined having in 2023.