Commentary: Wait pays off as Chase DeLauter debuts, rally comes late for Guardians

The timing was perfect. With their backs to the Wild Card Series wall, the ever-vigilant, ever-preparatory, ever-roster-delicious Guardians calmly summoned another employee from the bunkhouse to potentially help save a season on the brink. No major league team out-kiddies the whiz kids biding their time in Guardsville. So say hello to Chase DeLauter, the latest phenom who was added to the Guards roster Tuesday, and promptly said hello to the home fans Wednesday by dropping a fly ball in the first inning. All you need to know is that the good guys won, and if they win again today, their winning streak will be at two. Bring your own tranquilizers. Chase DeLauter needed his immediately. The former first-round draft pick started in center field and immediately dropped the first ball hit to him. The waiting is the hard part. Any team can draft young players. Any team can develop them. But when push comes to shove, no major league organization more brazenly, more stubbornly, adheres to its core values more than your Cleveland Guardians. All of that was on display Wednesday afternoon, when the Guardians, DeLauter included, once again did their Guardians thing. Where do they come up with this stuff? Don't ask. Just enjoy. The party started in the first inning, and for the rest of the game both teams took turns giving the other headaches. It was a game between division rivals who have competed against each other more times than either enjoyed. The Tigers have a decided, built-in advantage in any Cleveland-Detroit baseball pie fight. That advantage is ownership. One of the teams has an owner for whom spending the big bucks means nothing. The other owner is Cleveland's. To their credit, the Guardians, when it comes to baseball money, don't even try to fake it. But here they were Wednesday, gamely trying to avoid not being eliminated from a postseason tournament that, a mere 24 hours earlier, they were leading. That may not sit well with you, me and the fan base, but until the three of us are the ones calling the shots for the franchise, well, then, it's too bad for us. The Guardians have an owner, and when it comes to going your own way as an MLB owner, no owner rides solo more committedly than the one in Cleveland, where the indefatigable worker bees know exactly what kind of players the organization seeks, how best to acquire them and how to develop them when they do. The whole operation isn't that complicated, and it is very repeatable — some would say (guilty, your honor!) TOO repeatable. That's where Chase DeLauter comes in. As we all know, or at least some of us who pay attention to such things know, the Guardians hardly ever draft big, burly sluggers capable of hitting baseballs to faraway places. As bad luck would have it, there was a prodigious slugger available in last year's MLB Draft. His name is Nick Kurtz. As a rookie with the A's this year, the 6-foot-5, 240-pound Kurtz hit .290, with 86 RBIs, 36 home runs and a 1.002 slugging percentage. Kurtz was the fourth player taken in the draft. The first player taken in the draft was second baseman Travis Bazzana, who hit .243 with 39 RBIs, nine home runs and 17 stolen bases in an injury-plagued minor league season. Nobody is questioning whether or not Bazzana will become a solid major league player. But Kurtz is already a star in his first year in the league. With the first pick in the draft, the Guardians could have selected Kurtz, or any other player in the draft, but their choice was Bazzana, who will likely have a productive major league career. But Kurtz is already a star. So it wasn't like this was a difficult either/or decision facing the Guardians. This was a simple "Which one do you want? The second baseman, or the prodigious slugger?" At the time Guardians officials made their choice, the team was already knee-deep in middle infield players and prospects. They were not knee-deep in hulking home run-hitting sluggers. They still aren't, and the clock is ticking. The fact that the Guardians are one of the worst offensive teams in the American League curiously does not seem to enter the equation. Indeed, the organization seems to enjoy that distinction. This year's fabulous Guardians season was on full display Wednesday — and it needed to be. Playing the Tigers is no day at the beach. Beating the Tigers is no week at the beach. The final score was Guards 6, Tigers 1. Today the teams will play a deciding Game 3. Bring your own fungo bat. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com. Follow him @Jim_Ingraham on X.