Series Preview: Guardians at White Sox
Chilly opener for a team off to a cold start
Weather permitting, the Guardians will open their home slate of games for the 2025 season against the Chicago White Sox today at 4:10PM EDT.
The Guardians enter the series with a 3-6 record after a disappointing end to a nine-game road trip to open their season. The White Sox enter with a 2-7 record, looking like a team that doesn’t have the juice to avoid another poor season, so far.
Brace yourself for some rough numbers (glossary of terms at the bottom of this article): the Guardians are 14th in MLB with a 98 wRC+ (23rd in BABIP with only a .246 so far, so MAYBE there’s some positive regression coming?), 28th in Baserunning Runs Above Average at -1, 25th in Defensive metric at -3.6, 30th in starting pitcher SIERA at 5.22, and 16th in bullpen SIERA at 3.61. The White Sox are 23rd in wRC+ at 75 (also with a very low BABIP of .238), 18th in Baserunning Runs Above Average at -0.4, 13th in Defensive metrics at -0.4, 28th in starting pitcher SIERA at 4.86, and 14th in bullpen SIERA at 3.48.
So far, the Guardians’ standouts in the hitting department are Jose Ramirez at 241 wRC+, Austin Hedges at 228 wRC+ (enjoy this moment, folks), Kyle Manzardo 158 wRC+, Steven Kwan 154 wRC+, Gabriel Arias 109 wRC+ and Carlos Santana 106 wRC+. The White Sox hitters to watch in the young season have been Koery Lee with a 176 wRC+, Mike Tauchman 159 wRC+, Austin Slater 150 wRC+, Andrew Benintendi 131 wRC+, and Matt Thaiss 118 wRC+.
Matchups:
Tuesday, 4:10PM EDT - Shane Smith, RHP 6.18 SIERA vs. Ben Lively, RHP 4.68 SIERA
Wednesday, 6:10PM EDT - Sean Burke, RHP 4.82 SIERA vs. Logan T. Allen, LHP 8.04 SIERA
Thursday, 1:10PM EDT - Jonathan Cannon, RHP 5.03 SIERA vs. Gavin Williams, RHP, 4.69 SIERA
Analysis: The Guardians have to get better pitching to win games. There’s some groundbreaking analysis. Their pitching has been very bad. Is playing in extreme cold conditions going to help with that? Well, it won’t help hitters, so who knows? The Guardians need Bo Naylor and Brayan Rocchio to build on some progress they showed in their last couple games in Anaheim, and they need some of Jhonkensy Noel’s and Nolan Jones’ hard-hit balls to start dropping, as both players have hard-hit rates over 50% and not much to show for it. Lane Thomas getting going would also help, immensely.
The major dynamics Cleveland fans will be monitoring aside from the dire state of the starting pitching are the team’s ability to shake sloppy defense and baserunning from their first nine games. A team that prides itself on the fundamentals should not look like it did in Kansas City, San Diego and Anaheim on the bases and in the field. Hopefully, as much as the failures were team-wide to begin the season, the return to normalcy and fundamental excellence can be just as team-wide. Time will tell.
Guardians fans will get a chance to view the improvements made to Progressive Field today and welcome professional baseball back to Cleveland for the 160th year (I’m counting seasons we lost to strikes here, for the pedantic among us) and MLB baseball to the shores of Lake Erie for the 124th year. That’s an event worth celebrating regardless of the results, but here’s hoping our boys get back on track and finish the month of April on a strong note.
GLOSSARY:
wRC+ - Weighted Runs Created Plus - A measure of determining a player’s run production value while controlling for park effects. 100 is league average.
Baserunning Runs Above Average - A metric including stolen base value, double-play avoidance, and taking extra bases to determine how many runs above average a team is on the basepaths
Def - This stat gives you how many runs above average a team’s defenders save their team, adjusted for positional value (i.e. a catcher has far more defensive value for a team than a first baseman)
SIERA - A metric to determine a pitcher’s true ERA based on strikeout rate, walk rate, and quality of batted-balls given up. This number is similar to ERA (3 and under is excellent) in determining player performance.
BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in Play. The league average for team BABIP is usually around .290, so if your team is notably above this number, it’s usually fair to expect some positive regression to come.