Reflections on the 2024 season
There were plenty of wonderful things about these Guardians
There is nothing you can do to stop future Hall-of-Famers from coming through in the clutch every single time it mattered. The Yankees played a better ALCS and earned their forty-first World Series appearance.
Energies are better spent remembering the entire season. Back in spring the Guardians were not expected to win the division or even make the playoffs. And yet, a first-year manager pushed this team to outperform what most believed possible. While the other top contenders in baseball stuck with a core group of contributors the Guardians embraced a next-man-up mentality. I don’t know about you, but watching that group smolder all summer is not a memory that one difficult playoff series douses.
The article referenced above mentions only the hitters and any story about the 2024 Guardians season must highlight the bullpen. I’ll probably get around to that, eventually; in the meantime:
Not only was it the best bullpen in baseball but it too featured a slew of rookies. Some of those guys became Dudes, and we love to see it. A sharp commenter noted earlier in the postseason that this bullpen has the highest Winning Percentage Added since FanGraphs began tracking the stat — 15.62. One of the best seasons ever by a closer anchored it all and it does not look like Emmanuel Clase is going to slow down anytime soon.
Heck, we even had controversy and drama right down to the wire in this season’s Sugardale Hot Dog Derby. I wonder how exhausted Mustard’s PR folks are.
The point is we just witnessed an incredible season of baseball from the Cleveland Guardians. As expected it ended in absolute heartbreak at the hands of a hated opponent, again. You should not watch baseball if you expect anything else. As has been noted elsewhere, it is designed to do this.
It’s getting a lot worse in some ways. I won’t bother to watch the World Series — I legitimately don’t care now that the only teams left pay more in luxury tax than eight teams’ entire active payrolls.
The league should fix that. I don’t think it makes sense for Major League Baseball to feel like the Premier League when it comes to competitive balance. Expanding the playoffs did not help. Baseball might become yet another thing billionaires throw money at in order to control. How much do minor leaguers and academy players make, by the way?
Ahem — I believe this article is supposed to be about looking back and fondly remembering the year that was, and so I will get back to that.
The shipping containers are gone and the new deck in right field is Awesome™. Genuine fanaticism returned to the corner of Carnegie and Ontario. The Guardians earned their highest attendance totals since 2008, and the stadium sat 10,000 more fans back then. Shaq even held a postgame concert.
I noticed more families at the games I attended this season, too. While it is a bit of a bummer that some of those youngins experienced a heartbreaking postseason loss so early in their lives I think the more experienced among us can simply chalk that up as inevitable. Heartbreak visits all souls and sports are not a terrible place to begin learning about it.
The 2024 Guardians also made the following things cool again:
- Pinch hitters
- Squeeze bunters
- Relay throwers
- Batters of unusual size
The list can and should continue in the comments and I offer the four above as a humble starting point.
Please: share your favorite team moments and personal moments from the 2024 season below. It is important to remember the 161* that were played before the playoffs. The regular season will always be the heart baseball. It will be nice when the Guardians eventually win a trophy but I’m not sure a more entertaining team existed this year.