Guardians woes in Game 1 of ALDS could spell short series against White Sox

Murphy's Law is quite simple: "anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Well, everything went wrong for the Cleveland Guardians in Saturday’s Game 1 loss to the Chicago White Sox. 

And it may not be philosophy, but the age-old adage “good pitching beats good hitting” did not necessarily apply here. Perhaps we coin a new phrase: “bad hitting loses to mediocre pitching.”

That is not to take credit away from the White Sox, who deployed a bullpen game strategy that looked brilliant.

The Guardians had opportunities, but White Sox pitching got the job done when it mattered most. Grant Taylor, in a throwback performance circa 1974 (before one-inning closers became the new fad), pitched wonderfully with four scoreless innings out of the bullpen.

The Guardians left their offense at the door and were thoroughly outclassed by a White Sox staff that is one of the weakest pitching units in all of baseball.They left seven runners on base and the top five hitters in the batting order were held hitless.

The Guardians' need their offense to wake up in Game 2 of the ALDS

As I highlighted before the series began, it seemed like that the Guardians' offense was going to limited in the postseason after they finished the regular season in the bottom five in home runs and bottom seven in batting average

Steven Kwan may have only gotten on base once, but he did a good job working counts and staying true to his approach, which is a good sign moving forward. The Guardians are going to need to get on base early in Game 2.

Chase DeLauter had a couple of good swings and hit a couple of tough liners right to outfielders. Hopefully, those will drop for him in future at-bats.

José Ramírez still looked like he is being affected by his hamate bone injury, something unlikely to change for the remainder of the postseason. He had a nice swing on a ball in the eighth inning that is looked destined for the gap before Tristian Peters caught it.

Even though the Guardians lost, you couldn't have asked more from Cleveland's staff.

Parker Messick pitched 4 1/3 innings with the lone blemish being a two-run homer from Munetaka Murakami. (If you recall my previous article, I said the Guardians cannot give up multi-run home runs.)

I thought Messick looked good. He had command of both his fastball/sinker and off speed pitches and most importantly, he attacked hitters.

Stephen Vogt pulled him early in favor of reliever Daniel Espino but I would have liked to have seen Messick get an opportunity to get out of the fifth. That said, Vogt's hands were kind of tied thanks to his team's lack of offense.

The bullpen was impressive as well, surrendering only one run. I understand why the Guardians used Cade Smith and Hunter Gaddis since there's an off day tomorrow, but I'm still scared of over usage. The more a lineup sees a reliever, the more familiar they become.

Let's hope the White Sox don't get to Gaddis or Smith later in the series.

The Guardians are going to have to scratch and claw for runs in this series, which means they must hit better with runners in scoring position. The longball isn't going to save them, and their season could be over in a hurry if they don't make an adjustment.

Gavin Williams is going to take the bump in Game 2 and is going to need to dominate the White Sox in what has become a must-win game.

The Guardians will need it couple Williams' dominance with some better situational hitting in order to not have their backs against the wall when they head to Chicago.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow