The Cleveland Guardians have been searching for a hitter who can protect Jose Ramirez in the lineup for a long time. Ramirez currently has 20 intentional walks this season which trails Shohei Ohtani by one for the most in baseball.
Josh Bell was supposed to be the answer but that experiment didn't end well for either side. However, a different Josh emerged as a key piece to Cleveland's success as Josh Naylor broke out to have a career year with the Guardians.
Now, the successful one-two punch of Naylor and Ramirez can't be ignored.
An August Without Naylor
The Guardians lost Naylor for almost the entire month of August as he was working through an oblique injury that popped up shortly after the trade deadline. All of the Cleveland offense missed having Josh in their lineup but no one suffered more than Ramirez.
Cleveland's third baseman suffered one of his worst months at the plate in three years hitting .207/.305/.370. Some may say that this poor performance had to do with Ramirez losing his feel at the plate but in reality, Jose was trying to do too much with not good pitches.
Pitchers and teams knew Ramirez was the only one in the lineup who could do damage and avoided giving him anything to hit. This forced him to swing at pitches out of the zone in hopes that he would get some sort of
Naylor-Ramirez Duo Is Back
Naylor was activated on September 3 and picked up right where he left off. He owns a batting average of .378, is slugging .578, and has a wRC+ of 167 since coming off the injured list.
Another player who has ramped it up in the last two weeks since Naylor has returned is Ramirez. Jose has put together a two-week stretch where he has a slashline of .327/.397/.538 including 17 hits and five RBI.
The correlation between Ramirez's success and Naylor being in the lineup is hard to miss. The Guardians have been searching for protection for their franchise cornerstone for years now and they finally found it in Naylor.
Next on their list should be to make sure this duo sticks together by locking up Josh with a contract extension this offseason.
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