Commentary: Guardians are off to good start ... but offense doesn't make any sense

Baseball is a crazy game. At the start of play Wednesday the Guardians were last in the American League in runs scored, 14th in the league in team batting average and they were the second-worst hitting team in the American League. Only five AL teams had struck out more times than Cleveland, but only two AL teams had hit more than Cleveland's 11 home runs. Wait. There is more. When the lads put their equipment away following Wednesday's games, only Seattle had a worse team batting average (.197) than Cleveland's .191. Having said all that, let's say all this: At the start of play Wednesday only two AL teams had more home runs than the .197-hitting Guardians. Here is another one for you to chuckle on: at the start of play Wednesday, only two American League teams had hit more home runs than the Guardians' paltry 11. What, in the name of Nolan Jones, is going on here? Guards Ball! enjoy! Good luck trying to figure out Cleveland's major league baseball team. Oh yeah, there is one more incomprehensible Guards tidbit the baseball world deserves to enjoy: Despite all you have read to this point, only two American League teams have hit more home runs than Cleveland's 11: Houston, with 16, and the Angels, with 14. Go figure. The crazier the American League standings get, the crazier the Fighting Vogt-ers respond. Speaking of crazy, how about Chase DeLauter's cliff-diving cannonball into the start of the 2026 season? All he has done so far is everything, including turning the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" into the Guardians' new fight song, despite the fact that it is older than Guards' pitching coach Carl Willis. The Chase Craze has swallowed the first month of this giddy Guardians season, and this is just the appetizer. You get the feeling that we haven't seen anything yet. DeLauter has been waiting forever for all of his wounded appendages to simultaneously heal, at which point this Guards' season is going to break out the gongs, and start banging. Loudly! Every game he plays, DeLauter does something delicious, which brings the customers back to the ballpark begging for more. So far this season baseball's John Denver has delivered. At the start of play Wednesday, he was seventh in the league with a .714 slugging percentage, 10th in on-base percentage, plus a slugging percentage of 1.064, 12th with 25 total bases, a league-leading 7.0 mark in at-bats per home runs and his five homers matched him for the league lead. Anyway you slice it, this season's loaf of baseball bread comes out much better than it did in recent years, and a lot of it is directly attributable to Doctor DeLauter's arrival in the lineup. Where once a roster of Guardians resembled little more than a hope-for-the-best-but-expect-the-worst outcome, in this year's version, the tables have turned and the chairs aren't far behind. Two-time Manager of the Year Stephen Vogt is a parade waiting to happen, in an arena filled with desperate revelers who have spent most of their adult or adolescent lives waiting for the arrival of the baseball circus that tends to visit all the pertinent locations desperate for a visit from the baseball gods who have, seemingly forever, chosen to pursue that which rarely gets the time of day in The Land. That, of course, is the course religiously followed by the teams in the towns where, if not every day, then a good majority of them, get to strike up the band, as opposed to those who hope for the best, but expect the worst, and know how to deal with it, when the broken-down horses stumble into town. One would prefer, of course, a more enlightened return for the grievously deprived, but in these parts, Rome was built in a day, just not a very good one. It also was not built in a week, or, for that matter, it wasn't built at all. It still hasn't. For once in their lives, Guards fans would like to dream a little dream to come true — just this once — of life on the other side, where — is this too much to ask? Dreams finally come through. The ball is in your court, Chase. Sigh! Contact Jim Ingraham at (440) 329-7135 or jingraham4@gmail.com.