ARLINGTON -- As Stephen Vogt met the media prior to Friday’s series opener against the Rangers, he did not shy away from the fact that the Guardians have reached or are nearing a key point in their 2025 campaign.
“Absolutely,” Vogt said when asked whether he feels like the ballclub is at a critical juncture in the season. “We've seen with our trends, we’ll have a three-week span where we're playing really well and we're hitting well, and then we'll go into a week to 10-day little break. We have to nip that in the bud.
“... We have to play very, very clean baseball the rest of the way on.”
Friday was setting up to deliver a storybook ending for Vogt’s ballclub, but it ended in stunning fashion. Joc Pederson delivered a first-pitch walk-off double off Cade Smith in the ninth inning, to stun the Guardians in their 4-3 loss to the Rangers at Globe Life Field.
Cleveland dropped to 64-63 with the loss and fell to four games behind Seattle (69-60) for the final American League Wild Card Spot. The Guardians also trail the Royals (66-63) in the race.
Smith only threw seven pitches in the inning. Wyatt Langford picked up a hustle double off a splitter down in the zone, on the fifth pitch of his at-bat. Corey Seager hit a first-pitch single on a splitter, and Pederson doubled on a low heater.
“It just looked like they jumped Cade,” Vogt said. “... Obviously, there's times where we've seen Cade and he's perfect, and you don't even have to worry about it. This is baseball. He threw seven pitches. They got to him."
There still is a little over one month left in the regular season, and it’s perhaps too early to begin nonstop scoreboard watching. But the math makes urgency high at this point forward on the calendar. There is only so much time a team has to make a run at securing a spot in the postseason field.
And ultimately, any given game can make the difference between reaching the postseason or watching it on TV. That’s what makes losses such as those on Friday (and Wednesday) tough. Cleveland had a late lead and was unable to finish things off.
It’s all part of the back-and-forth nature of the club’s results recently that Vogt alluded to.
Of course, a loss such as Friday’s does not fall squarely on Smith’s shoulders. The Guardians went 23-9 from July 7 through Aug. 14, a stretch that directly followed their 10-game losing streak. Notably, during that stretch, they were having success with runners in scoring position.
Over that stretch, Cleveland hit .271 with RISP (tied for seventh in MLB), with a .364 on-base percentage (tied for sixth), a .421 slugging percentage (tied for 13th) and 122 RBIs (third).
Over their next six games (entering Friday), the Guardians hit .135 with RISP (last), with a .283 on-base percentage (tied for 24th), a .216 slugging percentage (28th) and just nine RBIs (29th). Cleveland posted a 1-5 record over that span.
Friday, the Guardians went 3-for-12 with RISP. They did face Rangers ace Nathan Eovaldi, who allowed one run on four hits in seven innings.
But after Cleveland loaded the bases with nobody out in the eighth, beyond José Ramírez’s double, Angel Martínez, Kyle Manzardo and Carlos Santana struck out.
“We got the one run [off Eovaldi] early,” said Vogt of C.J. Kayfus’ RBI double in the second. “We went the other way off him in that inning, and then kind of got out of our plan there. But he can make you do that. … He pitched outstanding. I thought the at-bat quality was there.
“I just didn't feel like we shot enough balls the other way. And that's tough to do against a good pitcher like that.”
Friday marked Smith’s second straight blown save; he permitted a solo homer to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in the ninth on Wednesday. The right-hander has largely assumed the ninth inning for the Guardians since Emmanuel Clase went on non-disciplinary paid leave on July 28.
Smith entered Friday with a 2.13 ERA in 12 2/3 innings over 12 appearances over that stretch. He had converted four of his six save tries.
“Regardless of momentum, I’ve got to learn from it and move on and rebound,” Smith said when asked of the fast-paced nature of Texas’ rally. “Seven pitches later, it was over. It’s just a job of being able to execute and adjust and rebound.”