The Cleveland Guardians got a fantastic performance from their starting pitcher, Peyton Battenfield , but they weren't able to score runs leading to another loss. That's been the story of Cleveland baseball over the last few weeks.
Unfortunately for the Guardians, these same struggles show no signs of going away and the opposition is exploiting them. The Twins stole the opening game of the series 2-0 as the difficulties continued for Cleveland.
Hear What Terry Francona Had To Say After The Loss:
The Guardians were shut out by the Twins in the series opener as they continue to have problems bringing runs across the plate. They've now scored just one run in the last 18 innings highlighting the problems this offense has.
Cleveland and Minnesota each had three hits, but the Twins were able to top the Guards because of the power in their lineup. Max Kepler hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning which proved to be the difference maker.
The three hits from Cleveland came from Jose Ramirez, Oscar Gonzalez, and Josh Naylor.
Power and slugging have become one of this team's biggest issues as they just can't seem to tally together extra-base hits let alone hit home runs. This game showed exactly why it's important to have some reliable pop in the lineup.
There's been a lot of calls from fans to switch up the order, however, this may not be as beneficial as some may think with how the entire lineup is struggling. Terry Francona is aware that his team isn't getting it done at the plate right now. After the game he said,
"Right now if the pitcher has the ability to spin or change speeds in any count it's giving us fits right now. We're going to have to earn pitches to hit in the zone because we're trying to hit everything."
That's a pretty alarming assessment of the offense considering a lot of pitchers in MLB have some sort of offspeed pitch they use.
Tito says that the team is going to need to be patient at the plate to get the pitches they want to hit, and fans are going to have to be patient in this turnaround because it's not going to happen overnight.
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