Guardians: Ben Lively picks up rotation with five shutout innings

CLEVELAND — Ben Lively and the Guardians were more than ready for a little home cooking. After a rough 11-day, nine-game road trip, Lively took the mound for Cleveland's home opener at Progressive Field on Tuesday and delivered five shutout innings in helping the Guardians to a 1-0 win against the Chicago White Sox. "I love pitching here, it's so cool," said Lively, who allowed two hits and three walks while striking out four. "Especially warming up next to everybody and everyone is yelling everything they want. It fires me up, it's so cool." While Lively was fired up, the day was anything but hot as the temperature hovered at 35 degrees, but that didn't stop him from holding the White Sox hitless for the first three innings, allowing just two walks. Both walks came in the first, but Chicago didn't have more than one baserunner because Luis Robert Jr. got caught stealing second base, which allowed Lively to get out of the inning when he caused Andrew Vaughn to pop out. "Ben was outstanding," Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. "That's a tough day to pitch. Their guy (Shane) Smith and him were both phenomenal. Saw a little bit of a bend in command, he wasn't himself today, but he was able to power through and give us five innings. He probably used more pitches than he's used to in five innings, but he did his job. Just excellent, excellent. We love Ben, we love what he means for us. He was outstanding today." Lively got into a little trouble in the fourth when Robert got Chicago's first hit with a grounder into left. He stole second and Nick Maton moved him to third with a single to deep right. A shallow pop out by Vaughn gave Lively a chance to escape, and he did just that with a routine double play. "It was electric," Lively said of the double play. "Stuff like that fires me up. I even told myself in my head, don't try and make a perfect pitch, just execute. We got what we wanted, it was perfect." The Guardians needed a boost on all fronts after starting the season 3-6, but especially in the rotation, which had allowed 32 earned runs coming into Tuesday's game. The pitching staff as a whole allowed 43 with a 5.09 ERA to rank fourth-worst in the majors. Opponents batted .284 against the Guardians, the second-worst mark in the majors. Cade Smith, Paul Sewald, Hunter Gaddis and Emmanuel Clase combined to keep the shutout alive the last four innings, allowing just three baserunners the rest of the way. A leadoff error by shortstop Brayan Rocchio didn't affect Clase, who retired the next three — two by strikeout — to pick up the win. "I thought he was awesome," Smith said of Lively. "That glove-side two-seamer was pretty to watch. Just how repeatable it was, just over and over again running it back in the zone. Nobody wanted to swing at it. They just wanted to watch it and he did that all day. I thought it was awesome." Contact Chris Sweeney at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com. Follow him @CSweeney1686 on X.