The Cleveland Guardians are traveling back home after a quick road trip north of the border, taking just one of three games from the Toronto Blue Jays.
It’s the second time in a week that the Guardians have dropped a series, and a similar theme is emerging, which plagued Cleveland at the Rogers Center: it just can’t seem to take advantage of scoring opportunities.
Luckily, the Guardians took the series opener on Friday night thanks to a five-run first inning, but the scoring largely stopped after that.
During Saturday’s contest, Cleveland’s best opportunity to put up crooked numbers actually came in the top of the ninth inning.
The Guardians entered the final frame trailing three runs, and were able to tack on one thanks to a Kyle Manzardo double following Rhys Hoskins and Georga Valera’s back-to-back base hits. Then, Juan Brito walked, loading the bases with just one out.
Toronto escaped the inning without the Guardians adding on any more runs after Bo Naylor and Brayan Rocchio's strikeouts.
A similar situation emerged for Cleveland in the series finale on Sunday. The Guardians scored two runs in the fifth inning, tying up the game, and it looked like they were going to add on more until David Fry struck out at the plate.
Should this strikeout on Fry actually have been called catcher’s interference?
However, it doesn’t change the fact that the Guardians still had plenty of chances to score runs, and didn’t convert on them. Over the final two games of the series, Cleveland hit just .176 (3-for-17) with runners in scoring position and left 15 runners on base.
Manager Stephen Vogt had a similar message after both losses: the Guardians put up good at-bats and had traffic all night, but they just couldn’t come up with the big hit.
Maybe the good news is that, even with some of these blunders over the weekend, Cleveland has still been strong with runners in scoring position. On the season, the Guardians own a .756 OPS in this situation, which is far from being the lowest in the league.
Cleveland has gotten some big hits at times this season, and other times it hasn’t gone their way. Hopefully, after RISP hurt the Guardians in their series loss to the Blue Jays, the pendulum will swing back the other way soon.
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