Cleveland: Grit and magic

As this blog is posted, my Cleveland Guardians are on the brink of their season. It all might end today — or not. But either way, I must say it has been a pleasure following this team.

It's been mighty frustrating at times, and if you follow the Cleveland Guardians as closely as I do, my overall prediction of this season likely will come true. My prediction: "These offseason moves will ensure we do worse than last year."

But before we get into that ominous, and inevitable, prediction, let's celebrate what the Guards did right. They battled — and battled — and set a Major League Baseball record for winning their division, despite being 15 1/2 games out in July. No team ever came back from a deficit that large, and we did. A ridiculous accomplishment! That is ginormous. Wow, wow, wow.

How in the world did they do that?

My answer: Grit and magic.

Cleveland is a place of grit and magic. We really don't have a reasonable offense to compete, so it makes no sense they'd come back like they did. In fact, this year, they had the second worst batting average of all 30 teams at .226. Only the Angels batted worse at .225, but Anaheim actually scored 30 more runs than Cleveland. 

Through gritty pitching and magic and the Detroit Tigers on tilt, they won the AL Central. We could itemize the starting pitchers who really came into their own, especially Gavin Williams, Joey Cantillo and Parker Messick, but to consistently win with such a low-octane offense is grit and magic.

Most people I run across, sadly, have zero grit or magic. Or if they ever had grit or magic, they quickly turn it into stupidity. If you are too much into money or are mesmerized by appearances, you have zero grit. If you believe too much into magic and make it your life's purpose, you no longer have magic. You have certainty; that ain't magic.

I sense that Bani, Dominican Republic, is full of grit and magic, and that is why Jose Ramirez took a contract below market value to become one of the best players — and leaders — of his generation. You could only possibly do that if you have grit and magic and come from a place like that, like Bani. Jose Ramirez: Mr. Grit and Magic.

So on the brink of the season ending, I must say that with the offseason moves, the management of the Guardians assured they would not improve upon making it to the American League Championship Series.

After being one series from the World Series, they traded an All-Star first baseman, Josh Naylor, and a Gold Glove winning second baseman, Andres Gimenez. Both are on teams with AL playoff byes right now. Gimenez is with top-seeded Toronto, and Naylor is with second-seeded Seattle. Oftentimes, the best move in poker is to check. Why didn't you just stay pat, guys?

I don't skirt away from the economics of the game. I understand that the Guards are in a perpetual "cut payroll" mode and that they want to get something for players before they leave as free agents. But they absolutely, positively needed Josh Naylor this year as a bat who could hit behind Jose Ramirez, regardless of who is on the mound.

Without Naylor, in yesterday's Game 1 loss to the Tigers, they had a minor leaguer hitting fourth who had no business being on a playoff roster, let alone backing up Jose Ramirez. Of course, being down 2-1 in the ninth inning, Jose led off the inning by getting a single and getting to third with no outs. The Guards simply had no one who could bring him home in that situation. Josh Naylor would have.

Naylor's stats were exceptional this year, and if he and Gimenez stayed put, I believe the Guards would have been the top seed in the AL this season. But shoulda, coulda, woulda. Management made horrible moves in the offseason, yet Jose and his minions somehow recovered to get in the playoffs. It shouldn't have been that hard, management!
 

I'm not sure I'll ever see my Guardians win a World Series in my lifetime, and I'm at peace with that. They have been oh-so-close in 1997 and 2016, making it to extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series in both of those years.

But I've learned that sports, and life, isn't only about the final result. It's about the process, and even though I'm bitter about letting Naylor go when we still had him under contract, I still don't believe there is a more enjoyable club to follow than Cleveland.

So, yeah, I'm critical of the moves because the Cleveland media — mostly owned by the Guardians — somehow glossed over the huge negative impact of getting rid of Naylor and Gimenez. However, honestly, the franchise is absolutely excellent at developing pitchers, and that is what matters most.

Pitching, yes, is much, much more valuable than hitting, but you can't have completely inexperienced minor leaguers behind Jose Ramirez. That's disrespectful to both Jose and the fans.

Grit and magic. Jose has it. Josh Naylor has it. Let's hope that management understands that when you have grit and magic, you keep it as long as possible. If not, you face elimination on Oct. 1 and are lucky to just be there.

The art of overachievement

It feels great to overachieve. But what does that even mean?

Achievement and goals can be tricky to gauge because we usually move the goalposts back once we achieve something. So in a way, we can never fully achieve anything if we keep moving those goalposts.

Of course, I need to talk about my Cleveland Guardians, who had the best record in Major League Baseball at one point this past month, only to wobble to a 2.5-game lead in their division.

Heading into the season, I would have just been happy for the Guards to have a winning record — for sure. But then, they swashbuckled to a 58-37 record at the All-Star Break, so it was reasonable to move those goalposts to “I hope they get a bye for the first round of the playoffs!”

By any metric, the Guards have overachieved this season, but if you think about it, practically anyone who is a professional athlete has overachieved. Of course, there are exceptions to that, such as the Philadelphia Phillies' Bryce Harper, the No. 1 overall pick in 2010 and an All-Star at 19, now in the midst of a 13-year, $330 million contract. With that background, it's impossible to overachieve. Right?

But for most not in the Bryce Harper stratosphere, becoming a pro athlete usually is a celebration of overachievement. With the Guardians, they always will be an overachieving team because of their low, low payroll. They started the season with the fourth lowest payroll in baseball, only to collect a couple midlevel veterans to have the eighth lowest payroll.

Let's put this payroll thing into perspective in the non-salary cap MLB. The Guards' $106 million payroll is nearly one-third of the Yankees' $316 payroll. Two players — Shohei Ohtani ($70 million) and you can actually pick one of six other guys and I'll go with the Angels' Anthony Rendon ($38 million) make more than our entire team. So let's just repeat: The Guardians always will be an overachieving team because of their low, low payroll.

But the fact that the Guards compete and frequently beat these overpriced dudes makes their success even sweeter.

The Guards' Jose Ramirez leads the way with the overachieving. He’s been spectacular for us and has only played Cleveland, but because of the small market and his less than adonis-looking body, he often is overlooked as an elite MLB player. He is on a contract that in the realm of reality is astronomical — seven years, $141 million — but in comparison to elite MLB contracts, he might still be overachieving.

 

As I get older, I understand that goals are important, and I’ve been goal-driven throughout my life. But finally, I see that the process matters as well. Baseball, to me, warrants more of a focus on process than most other sports because of its linear nature. One pitch at a time. Base to base. One, two, three strikes. Three outs. I find a unique mathematical beauty to the game. 

To truly overachieve, one must embrace the process, and my Cleveland Guardians have turned that process into an art. Yeah, I could get hung up on some front-office moves that actually hurt the team, or I can get frustrated because they've come down to earth and are 19-22 since the All-Star break.

But, nah, let's enjoy these hungry rookies and youngsters try to maximize their talent by playing smart, fundamental baseball and enjoying the art of base running, fouling off pitches and overachieving.