Stone Soup
— by Mario Crescibene
In my most recent article portraying the Guardians as knights of the Round Table, one reader commented:
Enchanting, sir Knight. However I must warn thee that the denizens of yonder woods feast on meat and potatoes, while Shakespearean tales of yore leave them most chilled.
And so meat and potatoes it shall be!
One of my favorite stories growing up was Stone Soup. The story where a wandering group of soldiers happen upon a town and are famished. But they don’t have anything to eat.
So the captain tells the soldiers to gather stones and put them in a big pot with water. Once the water starts boiling, the captain tries the stone soup and remarks, “My… that does taste pretty good. But it’s missing something… If only we had some salt.”
One of the townspeople who had been hiding from the soldiers, heard this and came out and offered some extra salt they had. The captain added the salt gratefully and tasted the soup again. “My… that does taste pretty good. But it’s still missing something… If only we had some meat.”
And another one of the townspeople came out from hiding to offer some extra meat they had. And the pattern continued until they had a mouthwatering soup of meat and potatoes and onions and parsley, and anything else you could imagine. What a delicious stone soup they made by combining all their unique gifts.
That’s the story I’m reminded of when looking at the Guardians’ lineups now. With Ramirez, Martinez, and DeLauter injured, the roster looks more like the Cleveland Clippers than the Cleveland Guardians. But when you lose your top 3 hitters, you’re going to have to get creative with how you put a lineup together: you’re going to have to make stone soup.
The only problem is that the soup hasn’t tasted that good: In the month of June, the Guards have gone 2 and 5 in series play. If they lose the final game of the Seattle series today, that will take them to 2-6.
“Sir, I believe I have a fly in my soup.”
The good news is that the team is 3 games above .500 and a lot of prospects are going to get the chance to make their case. Just imagine the clarity the team will have on the other side of the All-Star Break: Arias will have had every chance to showcase his talent. Watson will have had a fair chance… and seems to be taking advantage of it. Fairchild, on the other hand, didn’t show it when he had his chances and got DFA’d. The prospect-selection-machine I talked about in April will be churning away. So no, the most recent results have not been encouraging, but it’s a long season and this is still a young team.
Let the soup simmer a bit longer…
