Travis Bazzana makes emphatic Guardians statement with moonshot against Twins 

On April 29, Travis Bazzana thought he hit his first big league home run. With the Guardians leading 3-0 in the sixth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays, he got a first-pitch fastball from Casey Legiuma and drove it to center field. 

It looked like it was gone off the bat (Bazzana even flipped his bat and screamed), but it died in the cold Cleveland air and landed in Cedric Mullins’ glove. 

It took him all of one road trip to finally get that monkey off his back thanks to his first inning, three-run home run in the Guardians’ 6-4 win over the Twins on Friday. 

It was a near-perfect swing from Bazzana, who waited back on a Connor Prielipp slider in the zone, kept his hands and back and used an uppercut swing to send the ball deep into right center field. It had an expected batting average and would have been a homer in every park except for Fenway Park. 

While Bazzana’s blast would have been a great sign at any point in the season, it came on a day when Guardians manager Stephen Vogt announced that Gabriel Arias had hit a snag in the rehab from his hamstring strain. 

The Guardians are going to need to make some kind of decision about their middle-infield whenever Arias returns from the injured list, but Arias’ injury allows for them to kick that can further down the road. 

Travis Bazzana continues to look like a franchise cornerstone for the Guardians

It’s hard to believe the Guardians would send Bazzana down at this point considering how well he’s handled things at the keystone since being called up. He now has a .688 OPS through his first nine games while being worth 1 Out Above Average in the field. 

And, on the other side of the infield, Brayan Rocchio is in the midst of a career year and has hit .284 since taking over at shortstop. 

The middle-infield is the least of the Guardians’ problems right now, and Bazzana is a big reason for that. 

The Guardians only wanted to call him up unless they had an everyday opportunity for him, and Arias’ injury and Juan Brito’s struggles opened up that opportunity for him. 

His homer was the icing on the cake for a strong first inning for the Guardians’ offense, as they scored their first run on an error from José Ramírez before Rhys Hoskins picked up a sacrifice fly. 

Although it took Bazzana nine games to send a ball out of the park, he’s still had a ton of promising at-bats and would rank in the upper percentiles in walk rate (20.6%), chase rate (20%) and expected batting average (.292) if he had enough at-bats to qualify for the Baseball Savant leaderboards. 

If he keeps this up, that won’t be the only leaderboard he’ll be on top of.

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