Guardians Are Reeling, But the AL Central Is Still Sitting Right There

I want to start with the good news, because there isn’t much of it lately, and the Guardians are going to need every ounce of optimism their fans can muster over the next month or so.

Cleveland sits at 39-34, tied for the top of the AL Central as of this writing. That’s the good news. The bad news is everything else. The Guardians have gone 3-7 over their last 10 games, and that stretch lines up almost perfectly with the worst injury run this team has had all season. In the span of one game against the Tigers on June 13, Cleveland lost three players to injury, and as I’m writing this, all three are either already on the IL or trending that direction.

Let’s go position by position, because the scope of this is honestly hard to wrap your head around all at once.

José Ramírez is the one that hurts the most, and I don’t think that’s even up for debate. He fractured the hamate bone in his left hand on a foul pop-up, had surgery to remove the bone fragment, and is looking at five to seven weeks out, which puts a realistic return somewhere around early August if everything goes well. Before the injury, Ramírez was slashing .239/.339/.418 with 10 home runs and 33 RBIs, numbers that are actually a bit below his career standard, but he’d been heating up in June, hitting .293 with a much better overall line over his last 10 games before he got hurt. Losing him isn’t just about the production on the stat sheet either. This is a guy who’s played in every single game this season until this happened, a true ironman, and the leader of this entire roster. You don’t replace that with one player. You replace it, if you’re lucky, with three or four guys all doing a little bit more than they’re used to.

Then there’s Angel Martínez, who left that same game with a foot injury that turned out to be a nondisplaced fracture. He’s looking at four to six weeks. Here’s what makes this one sting in a different way: Martínez was actually leading the team in home runs with 11, despite a batting average sitting at .239 and an on-base percentage around .276. He wasn’t hitting for a great average, but he was providing thump in a lineup that, frankly, hasn’t had a ton of it this year.

And finally, Chase DeLauter, the rookie outfielder who crashed into the right field wall chasing a ball in that same game. His situation took a few days to sort out, going from a vague rib cage contusion to a confirmed fracture, and the Guardians officially placed him on the IL as of today. DeLauter was actually one of the better stories on this roster, slashing .263/.337/.408 with seven homers and a team-leading 34 RBIs through 66 games. He’d cooled off a bit since a scorching start that saw him hit four homers in his first three games, but he was still a steady, productive bat in that lineup. Now he’s out too, with the Guardians recalling outfielder Kahlil Watson from Triple-A Columbus to fill the roster spot.

So let’s just sit with that for a second. The Guardians’ top three home run hitters, and a big chunk of their offensive production overall, are all out at the same time. That’s not a “next man up” situation. That’s a full-on crisis of depth at the plate for a team that, even with all three of those guys healthy, wasn’t exactly an offensive juggernaut to begin with.

Here’s where I try to find the silver lining, because I promised myself I’d have some hope going into this. The AL Central is genuinely bad this year. I don’t say that as an insult, I say it as a simple fact that actually works in Cleveland’s favor. The Guardians are tied for first place despite everything that’s gone wrong, which tells you nobody else in this division is running away with anything. Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, Kansas City, none of them have separated themselves enough to make this feel like a lost cause. If this were the AL East or AL West, I’d be writing a very different article right now! In this division, .500-ish baseball over the next month might be enough to stay right in the thick of it.

As for what the betting markets think, the picture’s a little mixed depending on when and where you look, but the general signal is clear: Cleveland isn’t viewed as a serious World Series contender, with longer-shot odds in that range, but their AL pennant and division odds have stayed competitive given how much of a mess the Central is. Vegas isn’t writing this team off, even with the injuries. That’s not nothing.

But I’d be lying if I said this couldn’t go south fast, because it absolutely could. If Ramírez’s recovery drags into late August instead of early August, if Martínez or DeLauter has any kind of setback, if the bats that are still healthy (and they weren’t lighting the world on fire even before this) can’t find any consistency, this division lead evaporates in a hurry. A bad two-week stretch right now, with this much firepower out of the lineup, could be the difference between Cleveland hanging around in September and Cleveland watching the race from the outside looking in.

I want to believe in this team. I want to believe that the pitching staff, which has carried this roster’s identity for years now, can keep games close enough that a thinned-out lineup can still scratch out wins. But I’m not going to pretend the next month isn’t genuinely scary. The Guardians have the AL Central within reach. Whether they’re still within reach of it by the time their guys start coming back off the IL is a completely different question.