San Francisco Giants hit Cleveland Guardians with hearty dose of reality in weekend sweep

The San Fransisco Giants put a hurting on the Guardians this weekend – how will this young Cleveland team respond?

The San Fransisco Giants won 107 games last season, and they look to be picking up right where they left off to begin the 2022 campaign.

The Giants tamed a hot Guardians offense in a weekend sweep at Progressive Field, providing the young Cleveland lineup with a healthy dose of reality they’ll need to quickly learn from, as they begin a four-game series with the Chicago White Sox Monday night.

The Guardians, of course, went into the Giants matchup with baseball’s hottest offense, but were unable to really do much of anything throughout the weekend, spoiling Cleveland’s first home series of the season. The rough three-game stretch was capped off with an 8-1 rout Sunday afternoon.

Offensive stagnation, defensive miscues, good pitching for the most part that isn’t rewarded – these are the types of stretches a young team like Cleveland is bound to endure this season. It’s not as though the Guardians didn’t have their chances on Friday and Saturday, either; they just couldn’t capitalize. The Guardians now sit at 4-5 and it will be interesting to see how they respond against the White Sox, with a weekend series at Yankee Stadium looming right after.

Even after the rough showing against the Giants, the Guardians still have baseball’s best wRC+ at 134, a fact that will certainly continue to be reported until it is no longer the case. San Francisco continues to have some of the best pitching in the game, and it will be up to the young Guardians lineup to make the necessary adjustments against Chicago and its own formidable – though currently banged-up – pitching staff. How Cleveland responds over the next seven games will say a lot about how the rest of this season might unfold.