News and Notes: The Guardians Won. But Something Bad Still Happened

News and Notes for Sunday, May 5th, 2024

The Guardians beat a bad Angels team 7-1 behind a Bo Naylor grand slam, but thoughts of Guardians’ fans remain focused on Steven Kwan’s left-hamstring.

In the top of the third, Mickey Moniak flied out to Kwan in the photo above. Kwan came up a bit gingerly on the play and was removed after the conclusion of the inning. After the game, Kwan sounded concerned:

So, we will see how that goes. I wonder if a Kwan injury list stint would mean the long-awaited debut of Kyle Manzardo, or if the team would look to Jonathan Rodriguez or Daniel Schneemann first. In any case, hopefully Kwan, who has had a tremendous start to the season, will be ok after a couple games off.

The rest of the game was great, with Austin Hedges hitting a two-run homer:

Hedges was like a kid in a candy shop:

And extremely pumped on returning to the dugout:

Hedges was followed up by Ramon Laureano’s first homer of the year, off a lefty, no less:

And the aforementioned Bo Naylor grand slam:

It was great to see the Guardians get to a very good pitcher in Reid Detmers. David Fry and Tyler Freeman both had a hit and a walk. I’ve been encouraged recently by Jose Ramirez taking walks, and he did again. He had a 3-1 count late and fouled off two pitches MLB GameDay had as just clipping the bottom of the zone before popping out on a pitch that Carson Fulmer went down below the zone to get him with.

Ben Lively looked very good again in six innings of one-run ball, only running into a little trouble in the fifth when he struggled with his command. Nick Sandlin, Cade Smith and Scott Barlow were dominant in their three scoreless innings.

I wanted to note that the Astros were not responsible for the lack of a getaway game as MLB requires that there be at least one evening game and the finale of the Guardians-Astros series was the game the furthest west so that was the choice. I saw some misinformation from Hoynes about this.

MLB.com’s Mandy Bell wrote about Stephen Vogt’s approach to the first adversity the team has faced, and the Athletic’s Zack Meisel wrote about what we’ve learned about Vogt so far.

Charlie Condon of Georgia homered again. I still have some questions about his home-road splits, and this homer was at home again, but he’s definitely going to make it hard to resist picking him:

Around MLB:

The Twins have won twelve straight. Bleah.

The Royals lost and the Tigers lost.

Gunnar Henderon’s Star Wars bat is amazing.