Guardians August free-fall can be traced back to middle-infield power outage 

Take yourself back to May for a moment. The Guardians are beating every team of them, everyone’s healthy and Brayan Rocchio is playing like one of the best shortstops in all of baseball.

When the month ended, Rocchio ended up with an .815 OPS along with 10 RBI and 10 walks in 27 games. He went from organizational afterthought to roster staple. 

But Rocchio’s season has had some up and down moments since, and he’s currently mired in his deepest slump of the season. 

After putting together an 0-for-4 showing against the Tigers on Tuesday, Rocchio entered Wednesday’s game slashing just .125/.243/.125 in nine games in August. Pull it back a little further than that, and Rocchio’s hit just .109 across his last 15 games (since July 25). 

And that slump has come at the worst possible time, as the Guardians have fallen out of the postseason picture due in large part to offensive struggles from pretty much everyone in their lineup. 

Even if Rocchio isn’t as bad as his recent run of play would make it seem, his struggles have made it even harder for the Guardians to try to claw their way back into the postseason picture. 

José Ramírez and Brayan Rocchio are both mired in big slumps 

Rocchio’s struggles have looked even worse due to how much José Ramírez has struggled since returning from the injured list. 

Ramírez has also had a disastrous August (.217/.345/.217 slashline) and has hit just .208 since that July 25 date we mentioned above with Rocchio. 

In total, Rocchio and Ramírez have combined to go just 16-for-103 (.155) since July 25. It’s going to be hard to win when two of your top hitters have combined for a batting average that’s a good bit lower than the Mendoza line. 

But the Guardians don’t really have an option other than to stay the course. Ramírez still clearly isn’t 100% after fracturing his hamate earlier this season, while Rocchio has recorded double-digit RBI in three of the five months he’s played in this season. 

Part of the reason for Rocchio’s strong run production earlier in the year was because the rest of Cleveland’s lineup did a great job getting on base in front of him. Now those opportunities have all but dried up. 

But it’s hard to believe Rocchio would be able to do anything even if he was stepping up to the plate with runners on base in front of him. 

Rocchio and Ramírez both have solid on-base percentages based around good plate discipline, but their struggles as of late have shown the limitations that come with that when you’re getting big hits. 

At a certain point, both hitters will eventually get hot again; the Guardians are just praying it comes before they fall too far out of the postseason picture.

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