“Faith, Balls, and Patience.”
“Hit him with a sandwich.”
Two immortal phrases tweeted by the god of the right field foul pole, Brayan Hommy Rocchio.
The path to tonight’s 6-5 walk-off win over the White Sox was a winding one. The Guardians started the game by failing to score with runners on first and third and no outs through a pick off and a line drive double-play. It was dumber than it sounds there. Slade Cecconi delivered four
shutout innings, however (despite another Cooper Ingle error in left field as he desparately tries to learn a brand new position at the major league level and hit enough to make the experiment worthwhile). This allowed the Guardians to take the lead in the bottom of the third on a Travis Bazzana RBI double scoring Patrick Bailey
and then a Brayan Rocchio bases-loaded walk. Great game for Bazzana who went 2-3 with 2 walks, and it was needed.
Unfortunately, Cecconi ran out of gas on an extremely hot night in the fifth. He surrended four doubles and each was hard hit, and three runs, before getting out of the inning down 3-2. Having thrown 93 pitches, Cecconi was clearly done as the temperature neared 5,000 degrees. Clear to everyone except manager Stephen Vogt who explained after the game “We had to get 100 pitches from Slade with where our bullpen was.” No. That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard. If your pitcher is done, you figure things out. As the bullpen proceeded to do! Scoreless one and 2/3rds from Daniel Espino, one and 1/3rd from Sean Armstrong (with no help from Gabriel Arias but yes help from Steven Kwan and Rhys Hopkins) and one from Tim Herrin (good time for 2024 Herrin to show up, imho). But, not before Vogt had sent Cecconi out for the sixth and he had given up two more runs because, again, he was obviously done in the fifth. Stupid move by Vogt. Absolutely inexcusable.
However, the Guardians were not done. Arias did something for once and singled to open the sixth, Bailey popped out, Kwan walked, Bazzana walked and DeLauter grounded out to score Arias. All this against Sean Newcomb who dominated the lineup in Chicago last week. Hoskins then pinch-hit for Manzardo and predictably struck out to end the inning. But Manzardo must never face a lefty with where our bullpen was. Or something.
Bottom of the 7th seemed quiet against a second lefty reliever… but then David Fry pinch hit for Cooper Ingle (I approve) and hit a homer!
The bottom of the ninth featured Rhys Hoskins redeeming himself with a leadoff walk (sensibly pinch-run for by Daniel Schneemann) then a really good at-bat from Kahlil Watson who ended up seeing seven pitches and flying out to center. That was apparently enough pitches for Rocchio to perform his magic on Grant Taylor and send the home fans happy.
Yet, I still hope Vogt is doing some serious self-reflection. Rote doesn’t make right. Gotta adjust to what you see in front of you. Or let playoff Rocchio fix it for you, I guess! I’ll take it.
I yelled so loud in our kitchen doing dishes that my wife thought I cut my finger off with a knife.
