Cleveland leads this ALCS 2-1, and the explanation sits in the Tampa Bay box scores rather than in any Guardians pitching line. The Rays have scored eight runs across three games. They have not reached four in any of them.
A staff can carry an offense through one quiet night. Three straight nights without a crooked number is how a team gives a pennant away.
The Top of the Order Has Vanished
Junior Caminero, Yandy Diaz and Jonathan Aranda hit in the first three spots because they are the best bats on this roster. Through three games they are a combined 5-for-34 with one home run and one RBI between them.
Aranda is 0-for-10. Caminero, who is widely expected to finish top three in American League MVP voting, struck out four times in Game 3. One RBI from your three best hitters over three games of a championship series is the whole story of this series.
Game 3 was the floor. Tampa Bay went 3-for-30 with one walk and 13 strikeouts in a 3-2 loss. A low hit total in October is survivable. Thirteen strikeouts in 30 at-bats, in a game decided by one run, means a lineup that is getting beaten on pure stuff.
Cleveland Is Doing This Without Thunder
What should sting in St. Petersburg is who is doing the beating. The Guardians are not a slugging team and they have not pretended to be one. Catcher Patrick Bailey, who owns a .339 career slugging percentage, is slugging .609 this postseason with home runs in both the ALDS and the ALCS.
Cedric Mullins has been the one Ray swinging it, hitting .333 with a home run in the series, and he has mostly been left standing on the bases. Everyone around him has gone cold at once.
Cleveland has also been patching its pitching together, using five and six arms a night and leaning on closer Cade Smith for four outs in Game 3. That is a staff a good offense breaks open. Tampa Bay has not laid a glove on it.
The Room Is Gone
Friday’s rain in Cleveland pushed Game 4 to Saturday night, with Nick Martinez starting for the Rays against Guardians opener Shawn Armstrong. Game 5 follows Sunday at 5 p.m. ET at Progressive Field, and the off-day Tampa Bay expected has disappeared with it.
Games 6 and 7, if they exist, go back to St. Petersburg on Monday and Tuesday. To get there, the Rays have to win in Cleveland, where the Guardians have already shown they will take a 3-2 game and feel fine about it.
Kevin Cash can shuffle the batting order and he can try to steal a run with Chandler Simpson’s legs. None of that matters if Caminero, Diaz and Aranda keep producing one RBI per three games.
Tampa Bay has the better collection of hitters in this series on paper. Paper stopped mattering around Monday. The Rays are two bad nights from going home with a trophy case still empty and an MVP candidate hitting like a backup catcher.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.