The Cleveland Guardians rode their top arms to a slim 3-2 victory on Thursday, taking a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. Gavin Williams and the Guardians did their thing, racking up 13 strikeouts and allowing just two hits on the night. Williams, however, saw his velocity start to plummet beyond 50 pitches in that outing and manager Stephen Vogt got the hook out after just five innings. That’s a little ominous for the Guardians chances in a long series and perhaps in the World Series if they
get there, but at this time of year everyone is gassed and leaving it all on the field. They may have just told Williams to air it out, expecting a shorter outing. Either way, he was dominant as long as he was in the game.
The Rays still went toe-to-toe with them in Game 3, so they won’t be feeling down on themselves either. With the final two games, assuming they go seven, in Tampa Bay, they really just need to stay with the Guardians and make sure they bring the series back home. However, that does mean they really need a victory tonight to even the series and avoid the Guardians riding momentum and running away with it.
The Guardians top relief arms are carrying a lot of the load in the series and Hunter Gaddis and Cade Smith both pitched on Thursday. So a bullpen game tonight is going to lean on them pretty hard. Probably Martinez isn’t going very deep in this one either. Both managers will be trying to keep their top arms fresh and not waste them in a losing effort, so holding a lead into the middle innings will be huge. For his part, Rays manager Kevin Cash probably doesn’t care either way. Unless they get blown out, he’s got to bring his best arms to bear in any close game and try to square the series.
This has been a pretty entertaining matchup. We’ll probably see another close one tonight.
RHP Nick Martinez (0-0, 4.91 ERA) vs. RHP Shawn Armstrong (0-0, 0.00 ERA) at 8:00 p.m. ET on TBS.
