A very important start for Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz

Saturday evening's contest between the Cleveland Guardians and the Kansas City Royals is an important one for a multitude of reasons. Not only is it a matchup between the two best teams in the American League Central, it is also an opportunity for starting pitcher Luis Ortiz to prove his worth to the ballclub that acquired his services this past offseason, a task he has struggled with to begin the 2025 campaign.

It is still very early in the season, but the results when Ortiz has been on the mound have left something to be desired. In his first two starts, Ortiz has allowed 10 runs on 16 hits and four walks while only striking out five batters in 10.2 innings. This was not what the Guardians thought they were getting when they worked the multi-team, multi-trade deal to bring Ortiz to Cleveland from Pittsburgh.

Now, it should be stated that Ortiz did improve from his first start to his second, going from seven runs on nine hits and four walks against San Diego to three runs on seven hits and zero walks when he faced the Angels last week is better, but the two long balls surrendered to Logan O'Hoppe and Jorge Soler on nearly identical hanging sliders cannot happen. Ortiz has to be better than that if he is going to be an arm the Guardians can rely upon in their rotation.

It should be said that the Guardians do not need Ortiz to be an overly dominant presence on the mound (even though that would be nice), they just need him to be serviceable and not do anything that is going to cost them the game. Ortiz was mostly serviceable in Los Angeles, but again, the middle-middle-breaking balls that caught way too much of the plate did him in.

Facing Kansas City on Saturday night presents a unique challenge for Ortiz, as they are a team that thrives on creating contact and being aggressive on the basepaths, and very few, if any, other teams in Major League Baseball can claim to have the same combination of traits. If Ortiz can come away with a productive outing that puts the Guardians in position to win, it would show that there is hope after all for him being a meaningful member of their rotation moving forward. If not, well, then the questions that Cleveland had in their rotation from last season will still exist, and that would be a major problem for their chances of competing. Not just in the AL Central, but in October as well, assuming they get that far, that is.