Cleveland Guardians: 3 can’t miss series on Cleveland’s 2022 schedule

Cleveland Guardians Home Opener: vs. Kansas City (March 31-April 3)

Introducing the Cleveland Guardians. It still seems a bit surreal that we’re just a couple months away from entering into the next era of Cleveland baseball and that era will take a huge step on March 31. For the first time since 1950, a professional baseball team other than the Cleveland Indians will call the city home.

While the Tribe have been around for a lot longer than 1950, that was the final season of the Cleveland Buckeyes. Now, the Cleveland Guardians will usher in the 2022 season at Progressive Field on March 31 against the Kansas City Royals.

Not only will this game carry significance as being the first game ever for the Cleveland Guardians, but it will also serve as a test-run for so many different aspects of the organization that could be changing.

We’ll get to see the new uniforms in action for the first time. The giant script “Indians” above the scoreboard, what happens there? Will John Adams still have his drum in the bleachers when runners are in scoring position?

While the name is now known, there’s still so many new things that will come with the first game of the season and for fans of the organization it will truly be a “can’t miss” event.

Cleveland Guardians first home Ohio Cup: vs. Cincinnati (May 17-18)

Like it has been in recent seasons, the Ohio Cup will pit the Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds against each other early in the season for both series. Cleveland will head down to the Ohio-Kentucky border on April 12-13 before the Reds make their way up to Lake Erie on May 17-18.

While it might not be as important as say a division series, the Ohio Cup is one series that sticks out each season. There’s only two professional sports that have teams in both Cleveland and Cincinnati. The MLB and the NFL. The Browns and Bengals are division rivals and play twice a year, accounting for about 12% of each team’s schedules.

Being that the baseball edition of the Ohio matchup is played during interleague, it takes a different meaning. With 162 games on the slate and just four against each other, the series accounts for only about 2.5% of the campaign. Despite that, it still feels like one of the more anticipated series of the season on both sides of the Ohio Cup.

With this marking the first Ohio Cup with the new moniker for Cleveland, it will have an extra level to it. For that reason, the fans should be in full force on May 17-18 at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

Cleveland Guardians Interleague Play: vs. Arizona (August 1-3)

Every year there’s a few teams that make a rare trip to Progressive Field, or just play against Cleveland in general. In 2022, one of those teams will be the Arizona Diamondbacks. The D-Backs will be making the trip to Northeast Ohio on August 1-3, marking the team’s first trip to Cleveland since 2014.

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The Tribe went out to Arizona in 2017, but you have to go back to the 2014 series in Cleveland to find the club’s last win over the Diamondbacks. When Cleveland made the trip out to the desert in 2017 they unfortunately were swept by a margin of 21-7. Luckily, the series is much better when it’s in Cleveland.

When the D-Backs are at Progressive Field, the Tribe lead the all-time series with a 5-3 record. However, when Cleveland is out in Arizona the Diamondbacks lead the series 4-7. For the math wizards, that means that the two clubs have faced a grand total of 19 times since Arizona entered the league in 1998.

This is a rare matchup for the club and it’s even more rare to have the chance to see Arizona in Cleveland. For fans who like to see different teams, this is a must-go series to kickoff August 2022 after the trade deadline.