Cleveland ended their home game against A on Sunday afternoon with a good performance all the way. Cal Quantrill performed quite well after allowing Homer to solo in the first inning, the Guards received timely shots and never turned back after taking the lead in the first inning.
Sunday’s 6-3 win over Auckland ended in a 5-2 home run. The Guardians already have 10-3 in their last 13 games and are 3.5 games behind Minnesota at the top of AL Central. The Twins and Tampa Bay Rays are set to play this afternoon.
Starter from Auckland Cole Irwin proved difficult for a good part of the game. After allowing three runs in the first, he withdrew from 13 consecutive strikes before the Guardians reached him again. Miles Straw interrupted section 0-for-14 with a base strike in the sixth, Amed Rosario double it at home and Josh Naylor added an RBI single later in the inning.
Joseph Ramirez had a 3-RBI day to lead the way to Cleveland.
Cal Quantrill spun one of his two best performances of the season so far. Rival only with the exit of the Reds on May 19, he gave up only this independent home run to Ramon Laureano in the first inning and scattered three other hits.
Brian Shaw, Trevor Stefan and Emmanuel Claise closed A for the rest of the way to keep the win. Stefan gave up a pair of solo home runs in the eighth inning, but Auckland never threatened to take the lead.
Jose Ramirez is making a club story … Again
Cleveland’s third baseman continues to play at the MVP-caliber level this year. With his 2-run double at the end of the first inning, Ramirez won his 37th extra-base shot of the season. He equaled former Indian Roy Weatherly (1936) as the only player in club history to have so many extra shots in the team’s first 56 games of the season.
Ramirez has 473 additional goals in his career, which puts him in 11th place for all time in the history of the team (since 1901). Next on the list – a few big hits from the middle of the order in the 90’s: Albert Bell (481) and Manny Ramirez (484).
Coffee baseball?
Sunday’s starting time at 11:35 a.m. ET was certainly unusual for Guardians fans. As part of NBC’s exclusive Major League Baseball streaming deal, today’s game was the only game played in the major leagues in the first two hours of the game before traditional games began this afternoon.
According to Elias Sports, this is the first time Cleveland has played a game before noon local time since October 2, 2004 in Minnesota, when the first field was thrown at 11:10 a.m. Metrodome staff needed enough time to turn the field to host a Big Ten football match that night between Golden Gophers and Penn State.
Oddly enough, the game was stopped after 11 innings due to time constraints when turning the field. The Indians lost 6-5 in 12 innings the next day when the tribe and twins played a doubleheader.
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Prior to that, the team had not played a pre-lunch game on April 20, 1998 in Boston, as part of the Red Sox celebration of Patriot Day. Boston has hosted this day’s games since 1968.
Hit The Road
The guards do not work on Mondays until they start a 3-day, 12-day trip. The first two series included an interleague game against the Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers before the team headed to Minneapolis to play the Twins.
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