Guardians’ series win over Cubs showed exactly why they haven’t quit on Gabriel Arias

For the past five seasons, Gabriel Arias has given the Guardians plenty of reasons to be excited. He’s played all over the diamond. He’s hit majestic home runs. He’s made uncanny throws look normal. 

But he’s also given them plenty of reasons to get rid of him via inconsistent play and a penchant for swinging and missing. 

And while he had a rough start to the season, he spent the weekend showing why the Guardians haven’t given up on him thanks to a 3-for-9 performance highlighted by two clutch hits in wins over the Cubs. 

Gabriel Arias continues to be maddeningly inconsistent for the Guardians 

The Guardians’ 4-1 win over the Cubs on Friday was perhaps the perfect encapsulation of who Arias is as a ballplayer. 

It started out about as poorly as it could in the third inning when he failed to catch a routine pop-up from Pete Crow-Armstrong that eventually led to the Cubs scoring their first run of the game.

The ball traveled just .200 feet in the air and had an expected batting average of .050. It should have been caught. 

And if that wasn’t enough, he struck out on four pitches in the bottom of the inning to drop his batting average below .100. 

But things changed two innings later when he worked a six-pitch walk that helped keep the line moving for Chase DeLauter’s game-tying single. Sure, he was thrown out trying to score on the single, but it was still a step in the right direction. 

That step turned into a sprint in the seventh inning when he lined a go-ahead opposite field home run. Not only was it an impressive display of power, but it came on a slider away — the exact type of pitch that’s given him fits throughout his career. 

He picked up where he left off on Sunday. While he went 0-for-3 in the first game of the doubleheader, he changed things in the second game by hitting the game-tying and go-ahead singles late in what could be the biggest wins of the year for the Guardians. 

His first big hit came in the sixth inning when he recorded that aforementioned game-tying single via a 109 mile per hour hit up the middle, marking what was the hardest-hit ball of the season for him. 

He bested himself the next time he stepped to the plate thanks to a 111 mph ball to left that gave the Guardians the lead. 

While both pitches were over the heart of the plate, Arias didn’t try to do too much with them. Instead he took what he was given and used his power to push the ball through the infield. 

This is a make-or-break year for Arias thanks to his lack of options and the variety of minor league players the Guardians have waiting in the minors. And although it initially looked like this year was going to break him, this weekend showed why the Guardians keep giving him chance after chance. 

He’s going to need more performances like that to hold off the reinforcements that are coming, but it was a great step in the right direction.