Ramírez's on-base streak snapped as Guardians suffer sweep

SEATTLE -- Cleveland’s lean spell got even leaner Sunday at T-Mobile Park, in a 6-0 loss at the hands of the Mariners.

The Guardians managed just four hits and didn’t get a runner to second base. It's the second time this year that the Guardians had a game in which they didn't have an at-bat with runners in scoring position.

The most newsworthy piece of the puzzle came from José Ramírez, who went 0-for-3 -- making this the first series since Cleveland’s April 8-10 set against the White Sox he’s gone hitless twice in a set -- to end his career-high on-base streak at 39 games.

The six-time All-Star struck out in the first inning, popped out in the fourth and flied out in the seventh. The Guardians -- who had gone 1-2-3 in every inning to that point save the second -- got singles from Nolan Jones in the eighth and Kyle Manzardo in the ninth to give Ramírez one more at-bat with two down, but he grounded out to second base to end the game.

Ramírez’s 39-game streak was the longest single-season on-base streak by a Cleveland player since Jim Thome’s franchise-record 55-game run in 2002, and was second only to Kyle Schwarber’s 41-gamer in the Majors this year. Over the course of the streak, which began on April 30, Ramírez hit .370 with eight home runs, 20 RBIs and a 1.046 OPS, and raised his slash line from .264/.317/.453 to .325/.387/.545.

“It’s a testament to him and his talent, and it shows how good he is, too,” Steven Kwan said. “Everyone wants to be the one to end it, and he still works his way on. It was cool seeing him do that.”

Kwan’s own day ended a few innings early. The three-time Gold Glove Award winner, who’s been dealing with a right wrist injury, got jammed in his second at-bat when he grounded out to shortstop, and was seen wincing on the broadcast.

He stayed in to play the next three frames in the field, but when his spot was due up in the top of the sixth, manager Stephen Vogt sent Johnathan Rodríguez to the plate in his place.

“With where the game state was, I just felt [I wanted to] try to give him 48 hours,” Vogt said. “That was my decision. He wasn’t very happy with me; he wanted to stay in. But battling through the wrist thing, I just wanted to get him off his feet.”

The loss puts Cleveland at 35-35, just over a month after the Guardians reached as high as eight games over .500 -- a time frame that’s seen them drop six games further back in the AL Central standings. Between May 14 and June 14, Cleveland ranked 27th in the Majors in team batting average (.232), was tied for 26th in runs (99) and was tied for 27th in OPS (.671).

Going a level deeper, the Statcast numbers back up the on-field results; the Guardians’ .309 expected wOBA in that time frame ranks 26th, while their 37.3% hard-hit rate (percent of batted balls with exit velocity over 95 mph) is dead last.

And when the Guardians did get on base Saturday, they weren’t able to string anything together. Three of Cleveland’s five baserunners came with two outs, and the next batter got out to end the inning. The other two were immediately wiped out when the next batter hit into a double play, helping Seattle starter Emerson Hancock go a season-high seven scoreless innings.

“We didn’t do ourselves any favors on offense today, but Hancock was pretty good,” Vogt said.

On the other side of things, Luis L. Ortiz struggled to find consistency of his own, battling traffic in all six of his innings. For five of them, he held things pretty in check, but things got away from him in a five-run second that was punctuated by a J.P. Crawford grand slam.

Ortiz finished with six runs allowed in six innings on five hits and five walks.

“I thought Luis really struggled with his command,” Vogt said. “We saw it for some innings, it was sharp. But the free bases got to him. ... When you give a team like that free baserunners, there’s not a whole lot of room for error. Obviously not his best performance, the big blow really got us.”