Patience, Timely Hitting and Two Trades Put the Guardians in the ALCS

Cleveland was powerful, resourceful and above all itself in a memorable Game 5 win over the Tigers.

Lane Thomas celebrates his grand slam against the Tigers in Saturday’s Game 5. / Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

Back on July 29, as the Cleveland Guardians decompressed after an 8–4 win over the Detroit Tigers, Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez was informed that Cleveland had made a trade.

"Tell me," Ramirez said, via Zack Meisel of The Athletic.

"Lane Thomas," came the reply.

"From the..."

"[Washington] Nationals."

"Oh, O.K. O.K. Good player."

This anecdote is important not because Ramirez turned out to be clairvoyant, as the opening and closing salvos of the American League Division Series proved. It is important because, in the near term, Ramirez turned out to be exceedingly, dramatically not clairvoyant. Thomas spent August lost—he slashed .143/.239/.195 in 27 games, becoming a punching bag as a weary fan base watched a once-comfortable division lead melt away.

Still, the Guardians believed in him. After a homerless August, Thomas got hot and left the yard seven times in September, nearly matching his total of eight entering the month to help Cleveland win the AL Central. By the time the playoffs started, manager Stephen Vogt believed in Thomas enough to hit him fifth in the order in Game 1 of the ALDS, when his three-run home run gave Cleveland a 5–0 lead before it had even made an out, and again in Game 5, when his grand slam staked the Guardians to a 5–1 lead and send Progressive Field into hysteria. Vogt's team would relinquish neither advantage, and an ALCS date with the New York Yankees awaits.

Ultimately, Cleveland's 7–3 win over the Tigers on Saturday was a triumph of belief—which is not to say Detroit, one of the year's most compelling sports stories, lost because it did not believe enough. It is to say that the Guardians stuck to their guns in a fashion that allowed them to flaunt their superior talent—and stop a quiet drought of 27 years without a win in a winner-take-all playoff game.

They believed in rookie shortstop Brayan Rocchio. The 23-year-old hit .206 in a slog of an 143-game offensive season, but quietly saw his numbers creep up in September.

In the five-game series, Rocchio slashed .375/.444/.500. He singled in the third inning on Saturday, drove in Cleveland's final run in the eighth and made several stellar plays in the field throughout the series.

The Guardians could've asked less of pitcher Emmanuel Clase after the events of Monday, when baseball's best closer surrendered a go-ahead three-run home run to Tigers designated hitter Kerry Carpenter with two outs and two strikes in the ninth inning. They could've soft-launched left fielder Steven Kwan back into game action after he played just 12 games in September and October amid back issues.

Heck, Vogt—who appeared outmatched for much of the series by seasoned Detroit skipper A.J. Hinch—could even have backed down from his own aggressive tendencies.

And yet: there was Clase, getting the last six outs Saturday with relative ease. There was Kwan, hitting a mind-bending .524 for the series. There was Vogt, dialing up a squeeze play—a squeeze play in 2024!—to manufacture crucial a insurance run in Game 4.

In Game 5, Vogt out-Hinched Hinch as the two teams inverted their public images. While the Tigers asked ace Tarik Skubal for six innings, Vogt embraced “pitching chaos” and anarchically paraded in eight pitchers to strike out 16 Detroit hitters—a record for a winner-take-all playoff game.

The ruthless, exuberant execution of this confidence is what sets Cleveland apart from its small-market peers. When Thomas hit his grand slam Saturday, observers immediately compared it to New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor's go-ahead slam against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4 of the National League Division Series Wednesday. Nearly four years have passed since the Guardians traded Lindor to the Mets, parting ways with a wildly popular superstar at the tender age of 26.

In the popular imagination, that trade is often held aloft as an archetypical instance of a small-market team cutting costs at the expense of its on-field product. There is some truth in that, as owner Paul Dolan notoriously told Cleveland fans, but there is a more complex story here worth exploring.

When the Guardians traded Lindor, they took a substantial gamble on the heels of a playoff season. It was the kind of transaction that puts front offices on the hot seat and hastens teardowns if done incorrectly. Andrés Giménez, Isaiah Greene, Amed Rosario, Josh Wolf: Someone in that quartet acquired from the Mets had to amount to something and fast.

Giménez endured a difficult age-22 season in Cleveland in 2021 while trying to replace Lindor at shortstop, but the following season earned a trip to the All-Star Game, won a Gold Glove at second base and finished sixth in AL MVP voting after slashing .297/.371/.466. He won another Gold Glove last year and stole 30 bases in each of the last two seasons. A player who turned 26 on Sept. 4 is already in the top 25 among active players in defensive WAR.

On Saturday, the man once primarily known for not being Francisco Lindor went 2-for-4, scored twice, and kick-started the fateful fifth inning with a single to left field. Confidence. Belief.

The recent history of baseball provides many approaches to breaking multigenerational World Series droughts. You can live life one day at a time, like the 2004 Boston Red Sox. All your pitchers can get hot simultaneously, like the 2005 Chicago White Sox. You can build a fearsome lineup with a bunch of first-round draft picks, like the 2016 Chicago Cubs.

If the Guardians follow in those teams' footsteps, they will do so by more modest means. Ramirez will drive in runs and Kwan will score them. Clase will close. Thomas and Rocchio will keep the lineup moving. Vogt, very much a rookie at the helm, will terrify and delight. For a team so closely associated with trickery, this steadfastness is its greatest smokescreen of all.

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