For The Cleveland Guardians It’s A New Season With An Old Problem

These are trying days for Cleveland Guardians manager Terry Francona, who last year, with an offensively-challenged team, somehow guided the Guardians to a 96-win season (counting the postseason), a Central Division title, and to within one win off reaching the ALCS.

Those Guardians, at one point late in the season, lost six consecutive games by a combined score of 20-4 (4-0, 3-0, 6-1, 4-0, and 6-3).

Those Guardians, however, pulled out of that nose dive and won 24 of their last 34 regular season games to clinch the division.

Those late-season heroics overshadowed Cleveland’s season-long struggle to score runs. They scored two runs or less in 31% of their games (50 of 162), and they scored three-runs or less in almost half their games (45%): 71 of 162.

That prompted the notoriously financially conservative Guardians from taking a rare plunge into the free agent waters last winter, signing first baseman Josh Bell (two-years, $33 million) and catcher Mike Zunino (one-year, $6 million) in hopes bolstering Cleveland’s offense.

That was the plan, anyway, but so far the Guardians are one of the weakest-hitting teams in the majors. Cleveland ranks last, or second last in the American League in hits, runs, home runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS.

In a 10-game stretch that began on April 30, the Guardians scored an average of 1.9 runs per game. Their runs scored in those 10 games: 1, 3, 2, 3, 0, 4, 2, 2, 2, 0.

“It hasn’t been fun, what we’ve been going through,” said Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti. “We need to make sure we’re doing what we can to help guys get better and improve the outcomes.”

Francona, who is generally considered to be on a Hall of Fame trajectory as a manager, is doing his best to try to guide his sputtering team out of these choppy early-season waters.

“It’s easy when you win eight in a row,” Francona said. “But it’s when you get pushed into a corner and things aren’t necessarily going your way – how do you react? How do you respond?”

Like most good managers Francona tries to deflect criticism away from the team and towards himself when things aren’t going well.

“When we’re not winning, I feel like it’s me. That I’m letting them down,” said Francona, who held a team meeting recently to address the team’s losing ways (21-27). “We’re in this together, and I wanted to make sure they understand that.”

Francona, now in his 23^rd year as a big-league manager, with Philadelphia (four years), Boston (eight years, including two World Series titles), and Cleveland (11 years, six trips to the postseason, one American League pennant, and three AL Manager of the Year awards), has been around the baseball block enough times to not be shaken by a shaky start to the season by his young team. He’s conducted enough team meetings to know what points need to be emphasized.

“When you yell at a team the only person it helps is you, because you’re venting a bunch of stress,” he said. “When I talk to guys I want them to want to listen and I want to make sense. Sometimes you go too long and you end up yelling and don’t know what you said. That doesn’t help anybody.”

Among fans and media, the biggest complaints have been at the catching position, where the 32-year-old Zunino, who hit 33 home runs for Tampa Bay just two years ago, has been a major disappointment, both offensively, where he’s struck out in almost half of his at bats, is hitting .170 with three home runs, and defensively, where he’s thrown out only five of 34 attempted base stealers.

“We all recognize it hasn’t been ideal, the way things have played out so far with our catchers. . . the results haven’t been what anyone would want so far,” Antonetti said.

Cleveland does have apparent catcher of the future and former first round draft pick Bo Naylor, brother of Guardians DH Josh Naylor, at Triple-A Columbus, where he is putting up good numbers. But for now the big- league staff is committed to Zunino.

“What we look at is, what is our major league situation? What is our need, and is the player in a position to come up and contribute in a positive way to help us win games.”

Evidently Guardians officials don’t feel Naylor, who is hitting .257, with nine home runs and 32 RBI at Columbus, is the answer at that position yet.

Meanwhile, this year’s offensive woes are looking a lot like last year’s. In 2022 the Guardians scored two runs or less in 31% of their games, and three runs or less in almost half their games (45%).

So far this year they have scored two runs or less in 40% of their games and three runs or less in 63% of their games. In a 10-game stretch that started on April 30, the Guardians scored an average of 1.9 runs per game: 1,3,2,3,0,4,2,2,2,0. Amazingly, they won four of those 10 games.

Cleveland’s hitters are last or second-last in the American League in hits, runs, home runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, and OPS. Yet, in the weak AL Central, the Guardians’ minus-55 run differential ranks second in the division.