Only one baseball play from me yesterday, but it was a winner. Dylan Cease remained in control of the Boston Red Sox, and that hot streak they've been having has now turned into a cold streak. Still, the Red Sox will take suffering four straight losses after winning something around 80% of their games over the past couple of months. We will stay in the American League for today's game, but it will come in a Central Division battle.
The Cleveland Guardians were one of the better teams in the division for a while, but they seem to have lost their luster. They are 58-62 for the season and are 30-31 on the road. Maybe that's what the Guardians are: an average team. They did make some moves at the deadline to bolster an already strong rotation. However, it still seems like this team is always in need of another bat or two to make the lineup more potent. In fairness, they can hit homers and do hit for average, but it just never seems like they are one of the best offensive teams.
Today, they send out one of those deadline deals to the mound in the form of Foster Griffin. He's had a special year after coming back from the Japanese league. For the season, Griffin is 12-4 with a 3.31 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP. Additionally, he has 122 strikeouts for the season. Those numbers are all Ace-level, or at least similar to a second starter. He wasn't great with the Guardians in his first start, giving up five earned runs in four innings on seven hits. Those hits included two homers. That seems to be the main way to score off of Griffin — he's only allowed 54 runs this season, and at least 21 have come off of home runs.
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You probably won't be aware of this considering the major news around the Tigers was about trading away the best pitcher in baseball, but they've been surprisingly great this season. That is, if you remove the month of May from their record. In May, the team went 6-22, one of the worst records in baseball. Outside of that, they've been 53-38, which is good for a .582 winning percentage. Only five teams in baseball have a better winning percentage than that currently. The Red Sox don't even have that high of a percentage, and they just had their best stretch in history.
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The Tigers will send out their offseason addition, intended to soften the blow when they traded away Tarik Skubal. They added Framber Valdez to the rotation, and it has been a bit of mixed results this season. He is 7-7 with a 4.17 ERA and a 1.37 WHIP for the year. Valdez had a terrible July, but his first two starts in August have been very strong with just two earned runs allowed in 14 innings. He faced Cleveland once this season, allowing four earned runs over five innings.
What is the way to beat Griffin? It is to hit homers. Which is something that the Tigers are at least decent at. They are 12th in the league in home runs, but a lot of that power seems to go away when they hit against a left-handed pitcher like Griffin. The Tigers have never faced Griffin before, and I think he gives the Guardians the edge here. Give me Cleveland to win this game.
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