Guardians disastrous pitching plan dooms them in season-ending ALCS loss to Rays 

The story of the Guardians’ 2026 season will include plenty of highlights. Parker Messick’s emergence as a frontline ace. Chase DeLauter’s wild homer streak at the start of the season. Cade Smith’s incredible performance. 

Their final game of the season won’t be included in that list. 

After the Guardians’ starting rotation was one of their’ biggest strengths in the regular season, it ended up being their downfall today. While Shawn Armstrong set the tone with a scoreless first inning, it all came undone in the second inning when Richie Palacios hit a double into short right field that led to two runs scoring and Palacios screamed at second base. 

But his celebration paled in comparison to Junior Caminero’s celebration in the seventh inning after he recorded a back-breaking, two-run home run that increased the Rays’ lead to 5-1. Or the celebration Yandy Díaz had after he hit his back-breaking homer in the eighth inning off Hunter Gaddis. 

There are demoralizing losses, and then there’s whatever happened to the Guardians on Monday.

The Guardians pitching struggles doomed them against the Rays in the ALCS 

The biggest “what if” from their rough Game 6 was the 6-foot-6 ace who spent the entire game sitting in the Guardians' dugout waiting for a Game 7 that’s not going to come. 

The Guardians knew that they were going to need to throw at least one bullpen game after Friday’s game was postponed to Sunday, and the Guardians’ decision makers elected to use that window to push Messick up to start Game 5. 

That decision blew up in their face when Messick went just two innings, and the residual effects of that carried over into Monday’s loss. 

By the time the dust had settled in the second inning, the Guardians had burned through three pitchers and were trailing 2-0. Then things went from bad to worse when Joey Cantillo entered the game and immediately gave up a run in the third inning. 

Although Cantillo settled down the rest of the way and carried the middle innings, their 3-0 deficit may have well been a 300-0 deficit the way their offense was going. 

The Guardians ended up scraping three runs across the plate and even put the tying run in scoring position in the eighth inning, but they never got the big hit needed to pick up the win.

They clearly have talent (otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten this far), but the end of the ALCS showed clear avenues for improvement. 

They may have had a stable rotation that was able to keep the Guardians afloat during the regular season, but the postseason was a completely different story. The same can be said for their soft middle of the bullpen that struggled to get the games to Hunter Gaddis, Cade Smith and Erik Sabrowski. 

Early in the series it looked like the Guardians had a legitimate chance at winning the series thanks to their timely hitting and quality bullpen arms, but those hits dried up, which negated the back of the bullpen’s impact. 

Monday’s game was the worst of both worlds since Vogt was forced to use Smith with the Guardians trailing and he gave up a two-run homer to Caminero and Gaddis gave up a two-run bomb to Díaz.

Caminero's homer set off a wild trot that lasted 38 seconds and featured plenty of histrionics from Caminero. A lot went right for the Guardians this postseason, but it’s going to be the lasting image of the Guardians’ season whether we like it or not.

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