Jim Ingraham: Guardians need more firepower to compete with the Tigers but aren't likely to change their stripes

Cleveland's American League baseball team has finished either first or second in its division in 20 of the last 30 years. Pretty good, huh? You bet. Cleveland's American League baseball team has had only six managers in the last 30 years. Six! That's it! That's all. These dudes know what they are doing, right? Well, um ... Yeah, I know what you mean. Overall, the answer would be a solid "yes," but then along came Thursday. Thursday, bloody Thursday. If you missed Thursday's game, congratulations. So did the Guardians. Yikes! Hey, every team has a bad game now and then, and Thursday, against Toronto, the Guardians had what seemed like three or four of them, including a whopper. Toronto won 6-0 but the game wasn't nearly that close. The Guardians as a team hit .069. Their on-base percentage was .156, and their slugging percentage was a rousing .103. Waiter, check please! The Guardians also had twice as many errors (four) as hits (two), which is never a good sign. But even that doesn't read as bad as it looked, because three of their four errors came in one inning. Hey, errors happen, OK? In this game it happened four times when the Guardians were in the field (three times in one inning!), but no times when the Blue Jays were. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the humidity or maybe it was a long-distance voodoo whammy from the rampaging Detroit Tigers, who this season seem to be on a search-and-destroy mission in the American League. Whatever it was, it wasn't the Guardians playing Guards Ball. Nevertheless, in case you hadn't noticed, at the start of play Friday, the Guardians were in second place in the AL Central, but a mere spec on the horizon, a whopping, and distant 9½ games behind the division-leading Tigers. Offensively, the Guardians are no match for Detroit. Indeed, it is hard to find any team in the American League that the Tigers can't regularly beat, or that the Guardians consistently can. The season to date has been a methodical march by Detroit to the top of the AL standings, and there is no reason to believe that any of the teams chasing them have the wherewithal to catch them, much less pass them. Especially the Guardians, whose meager slap-and-dash offensive approach is no match to run down one of baseball's most lethal, productive and well-rounded offenses. What we have here, to a certain extent, is a bunch of singles hitters trying to chase down one of baseball's most productive and well-financed offenses, supported by a starting rotation that has no trouble outpitching what seems to be a chronically injured opponent. Indeed, the Tigers have everything that is needed to hold off one of baseball's most determined, yet financially challenged rosters, whose razor-thin margin when pursuing far more wealthier opponents, is decidedly more negligible. The Guardians have been down this street before, however. Holding off a big market and more-talented opponent in the heat of a division race is not uncharted territory for this bunch. What's worrisome for them, however, is what is always worrisome for them when it comes time to play ball against more talented, and experienced opponents — of which almost all of them are. That is this: having to match the thunder in the other team's dugout, not just the hitters, but the pitchers. What compounds the problem for the Guardians, of course, is trying to stay the course when the other team keeps knocking you off it. The Blue Jays did the Guards no favors by hammering Cleveland 20-11 in their three-game series, although the Guards did win one of them. Cleveland also was forced to use 14 pitchers in the three games, which is no manager's or pitching coach's idea of a day at the beach. Indeed, the bigger the game, or the bigger the time of the season, the more it seems like Cleveland is always the team on the defensive. Whatever. You play the cards that are dealt you, and you hope for the best. The season is just about half over, and the trade deadline isn't that far away. This is when the season starts to get interesting. It's also when the season starts to get heartbreaking. The big-payroll teams are champing at the bit, anxious to add a piece or two that will push them over the top and into the winner's circle. Some of the medium-payroll teams will be doing the same. The Guardians? Well, let's just say that Guards fans know not to hyperventilate too much, because Guards fans have been around the trade deadline block enough to know what their team usually does this time of year. It's a familiar refrain. You do your best with what you have where you are. The problem for the Guards is what they have, and where they are is too often not enough. Contact Jim Ingraham at (440) 329-7135 or jingraham4@gmail.com.