CLEVELAND — It wasn’t the “Guards Ball” we’ve grown accustomed to watching and marveling at, but maybe that’s for the best.
On the brink of elimination against the Detroit Tigers in the AL wild-card series, the Cleveland Guardians’ offense exploded for five runs in the bottom of the eighth inning Wednesday in Game 2, supplying all the scoring required for a 6-1 victory to force a winner-take-all Game 3 on Thursday.
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All season, the Guardians have struggled in nearly every facet of production at the plate. Getting on base consistently has been a chore. Crooked numbers have been rare. Slugging has been a tall task. Instead, Cleveland leaned heavily on its standout pitching staff to fuel an unlikely surge up the standings and into the postseason. Its run production was timely but rarely bountiful. The Guardians found ways to manufacture just enough scoring to secure close victories, but it was fair to wonder whether such a style could survive once the October tournament began.
And while Tarik Skubal’s outright domination of Cleveland in Game 1 was more reflective of his brilliance than the Guardians’ offensive ineptitude, it pushed the Guardians into a win-or-go-home scenario, with time running out for their bats to show up on the big stage. After all, you can get by on conveniently-placed soft contact and aggressive baserunning for only so long. At some point, you need to hit some baseballs with authority and drive in runs the old-fashioned way.
In the bottom of the first inning Wednesday, rookie outfielder George Valera provided the first hint that Cleveland was ready to break through in this regard. The 24-year-old rookie with one of the sweetest left-handed swings you’ll ever see smashed a fastball from Tigers starter Casey Mize well beyond the center-field fence for a solo homer and a 1-0 Guardians lead.
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But after Valera’s opening blast raised the volume at Progressive Field tenfold, the Cleveland bats reverted into hibernation. Mize settled in before turning the ball over to Detroit relievers Tyler Holton and Kyle Finnegan, who continued to keep Cleveland in check. The Tigers, meanwhile, weren’t faring any better in the batter’s box. While Cleveland was barely mustering baserunners, Detroit created several chances, only to squander them, with Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee plus a brilliant showing from the bullpen stifling the Tigers over and over. The Tigers ultimately finished the day 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position, and the one such hit they did collect — a Javier Baez two-out single with the bases loaded in the fourth — preceded an inning-ending out when Zach McKinstry was thrown out at third.
So with the wind blowing in and the shadows creeping into place over Progressive Field to make the hitters’ jobs on both sides even more daunting, the 1-1 stalemate looked to be the status quo for the foreseeable future, with extra innings beckoning.
Enter Brayan Rocchio — or, as he’s known this time of year in Cleveland, “Playoff Rocchio.”
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It’s a moniker the switch-hitting infielder earned a year ago, when he recorded hits in his first eight postseason games, elevating his offensive performance after a regular season in which his .206 batting average and 79 wRC+ both ranked in the bottom 10 in MLB among hitters with at least 400 plate appearances. The Guardians were optimistic entering 2025 that Rocchio could carry that October momentum into a more steady showing at the plate, but roughly the opposite occurred: Rocchio hit .165/.235/.198 over his first 35 games and was optioned to Triple-A on May 12.
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He resurfaced in early July and immediately looked more comfortable in his at-bats. The numbers were still fairly pedestrian on the surface, but the reset in the minors helped instill enough confidence for Rocchio to become a more reliable contributor at the bottom of the lineup, especially amidst Cleveland’s chase for a playoff spot. His signature moment came in the final game of the regular season, when he clobbered a walk-off home run against Texas to punctuate the Guardians’ magical September run to an AL Central title. The blast also got fans excited about the possibility of Rocchio finding his groove as the calendar flipped to his favorite month.
Still, the substantial sample of lackluster production had Rocchio batting ninth on Wednesday. But with no other Guardians besides Valera managing to do much of anything with the bat, someone needed to step up to break the deadlock. And facing rookie right-hander Troy Melton with one out in the eighth inning, Playoff Rocchio struck again.
Melton started Rocchio off with a slider for a called strike one. Rocchio then fouled off a splitter to fall into an 0-2 hole. Melton reared back and unleashed a four-seam fastball at 99.9 mph. Rocchio was ready.
He connected cleanly, sending the ball on a picturesque trajectory toward the right-field seats. It landed three seconds later in a sea of red pandemonium. 2-1 Guardians.
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“It was huge,” manager Stephen Vogt said postgame. “An 0-2 count, and he was ready to fire.”
“Funny enough, when the game started, I was thinking, with this wind, we have to put the ball on the ground, try to get ground balls,” Rocchio said afterward through interpreter Agustin Rivero. “When I get that mindset to get the ball on the ground is when I get better and better results.”
Added outfielder Steven Kwan: “We were waiting for the big hit. Playoff Rocc came up and did his thing.”
The Guardians weren’t finished. With the crowd of nearly 30,000 fans still audibly ecstatic at the possibility that the offseason had been extended at least one more day, Kwan followed Rocchio’s homer with a line-drive double into the right-field corner. Daniel Schneemann smoked Troy Melton’s next pitch to the same spot to score Kwan, marking a third consecutive extra-base hit after Cleveland had produced zero in the first 16 innings of this series.
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Suddenly, hitting didn’t seem so hard.
After an intentional walk to José Ramirez and a pitching change, catcher Bo Naylor provided the exclamation point. Facing a tough southpaw in Brant Hurter, the lefty-hitting Naylor — who has historically scuffled to an extreme degree against same-handed hurlers — battled for seven pitches before lofting a sweeper over the right-field fence for a three-run homer, giving Cleveland a commanding 6-1 lead it would not relinquish.
“As our bullpen is keeping them off the board, we feel like we have a knack to do it late in the game,” Vogt said. “Whether we saw a five-run explosion coming or not, we felt like as our outs came off the board and their outs came off the board, we felt really good about it.
“Rocchio kind of broke the tension with the homer, and the boys let loose.”
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Detroit made it a dramatic finish, loading the bases in the ninth against closer Cade Smith, but the Tigers once again failed to cash in — a fitting finale to a game filled with missed opportunities.
And if the nature of Detroit’s Game 2 loss with the ALDS within reach weren’t frustrating enough, the Tigers now have to suppress the bad memories from a year ago, when they were seven outs away from eliminating Cleveland in the ALDS before they blew a late lead in Game 4 and lost soundly in Game 5. The Guardians, meanwhile, have recaptured that winning feeling that defined their past month of play, perhaps just in time.
On Thursday, the Guards will give the ball to Slade Cecconi for Game 3, while the Tigers will counter with veteran Jack Flaherty. It will be Cecconi’s first career postseason start and Flaherty’s 10th, setting up an intriguing contrast for two pitchers tasked with the high stakes of a winner-take-all affair.