Cleveland Guardians News: Bullpen meltdowns, brawl aftermath, more

All in all, it has been an interesting week or so for the Cleveland Guardians. In their last three series, the Guardians split a four game set with the Blue Jays, lost two out of three to the Rays, and split a short two game series against the Reds. If you were looking for a microcosm of the Guardians' 2023 season, that was it.

Beyond that, fans did get some finalization of the aftermath in the brawl between the Guardians and White Sox which saw Tim Anderson get dropped by a haymaker from Jose Ramirez. Ramirez originally received a three game suspension, but got it reduced to two games on appeal. Tim Anderson also appealed his six game suspension and word came down yesterday that his suspension was also reduced by a game.

Cleveland Guardians News

Elsewhere with the Guardians, Zack Meisel from The Athletic put together an excellent piece chronicling the various bullpen implosions that have plagued the Guardians this season. The Cleveland bullpen has certainly been a lesson in how what the overall stats say does not tell the whole story because there woof have there been some tough games to watch.

Noah Syndergaard's stint with the Guardians has been a decidedly mixed bag. As the afore-linked piece from James Mastrucci points out, until Shane Bieber and Triston McKenzie get healthy, the Syndergaard Experiment is something that Cleveland fans are just going to have to suffer through together.

On a more positive note, Oscar Gonzalez has been playing quite well ever since he got called back up to the big leagues. He certainly has his warts as a hitter including an aversion to drawing walks, but the Guardians are not in a position to split too many hairs given the state of their outfield. Hopefully this is a stretch that he can build on.

MLB News

Looking at the league at large, some playoff contenders have seemingly a much easier path to the postseason than others. The fine folks over at MLB dot com put together a look at each contender's remaining schedule and how strong their competition is the rest of the way. Red Sox fans may want to continue to temper their optimism for Boston's longshot playoff run given what their schedule looks like.

ESPN also came out with their MLB Power Rankings yesterday. To the surprise of exactly no one, the Atlanta Braves retained the top spot after they sent the entire state of New York into despair with back to back dominations of the Mets and Yankees. As for the Guardians, well...fans will have scroll a bit further down the list to find them.

More Guardians News from Away Back Gone