News and Notes for Tuesday, October 8th, 2024
Tarik Skubal was dominant and Emmanuel Clase was not as the Tigers took game two in Cleveland, 3-0.
Our Matt Seese will have a full recap for you but it was definitely a gut punch to see Kerry Carpenter pound a rare hanging slider from Clase into the Progressive Field seats in right field. Meanwhile, Jose Ramirez went hitless with two strikeouts and not even the lefty masher lineup rolled out by manager Stephen Vogt could solve Skubal for seven innings and then Will Vest and Beau Briske in the Tiger pen.
I do not offer this as an excuse but I suspect Clase was struggling to pitch the suddenly colder weather, a concerning development given that it will only get colder from here.
Emmanuel Clase has thrown 211 sliders this year. If you think the homer to Carpenter was flat, it was: it was 210th of those 211 (!) in terms of horizontal break.
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) October 8, 2024
(That's: 0.8 inches, where his average is 7, and he's touched 14.)
Giving up hits with two outs to Jake Rogers and Trey Sweeney was honestly more concerning than hanging a slider to me. I'm also not quite sure why he threw three straight sliders to Carpenter there. As I said in our preview, you can't let Riley Greene and Carpenter beat you. But, I understand the Guardians like Clase in a matchup against anyone.
Matthew Boyd and the Guardians bullpen until Clase entered to close out the 8th (by the skin of his teeth and Steven Kwan's glove's leather) was great. Kwan, Josh Naylor and Brayan Rocchio were the only Guardians to get hits and Jhonkensy Noel reached on a hit-by-pitch. They will need a lot more from their lineup if they want to at least get back to Cleveland.
Now it's time to see if this great Guardians team can pick themselves up off the mat and go try to win two games in Detroit so they don't have to come home and face Skubal again. I know there'll likely be a lot of doom and gloom, a lot of talk about how Cleveland chokes in the playoffs. But this was a well-played game against two very good teams. Baseball's playoffs are a crapshoot so I refuse to get worked up over a bad result against the best pitcher of 2024 and one of the top two hitters against RHP this season.
Here's Mandy Bell's recap. Here's Zack Meisel's.
The Royals beat the Yankees so every division series is now tied 1-1. Maybe that's comforting! But no other division series has Tarik Skubal looming in a potential game 5...
Just remember, folks, as they say in the Princess Bride, baseball is pain. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.
