Guardians ‘having so much fun’ amid MLB-best start

For the time being, call them the Cleveland Guardians of the Galaxy, because they won again on Tuesday night, beating Boston to move their record to 17-6. It means that as we move up on everybody having played their first month of baseball, the Guardians have won more games than anybody.

“We’re having so much fun,” Tyler Freeman, their center fielder, said.

You would be, too. There has never been a Cleveland baseball team that had a better start than this — not the one that won the 1948 World Series, nor the teams that would come so close in 1997 against the Marlins and in 2016 against the Cubs.

No one is sure how good Stephen Vogt’s young team can be across the long season, how it will stand up the rest of the way. But right now, they really are having a lot of fun and are fun to watch. Cleveland is not just leading baseball in wins, but in run differential, too. They’re enjoying the moment and so are their fans, who may have to revise their expectations of what their team is capable of in 2023.

There’s actually a line from the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” that covers what we’re seeing from them, at least for now:

“Today it’s giving us something. It is giving us a chance.”

The ’97 Indians started out 17-6. So did the ’66 team. But it’s not the record that’s been pretty amazing — with more wins than the Braves or Orioles or Yankees or Dodgers or anybody — it’s that they’ve done this while waiting for their star and one of the stars of the game, José Ramírez, to look like himself.

But then on Tuesday night against the Red Sox, in what became a steady rain at Progressive Field, the switch-hitting Ramírez, batting right-handed, hit his first opposite-field home run in seven years, stretching his team’s lead from 2-1 to 3-1 and keeping the Guardians’ lead over the second-place Royals at 3 1/2 games.

The American League Central wasn’t supposed to look like this at the top. The Guardians weren’t expected to be this dominant. Yet here they are. And maybe they have a right to think that if Ramírez is about to get hot, they really are capable of being more than just the surprise team of April.

Here’s what Boston manager Alex Cora said of Ramírez’s home run when he met the media after the game:

“There’s probably only two guys that can do that. Him and [Jose] Altuve. Like I always say, he’s a stud. He’s a good player. Obviously, I’m not rooting for him, but you’re in awe. I was like, ‘For real, bro? You’re doing this?’ He’s amazing. That at-bat tells the story. He’s one of the best players in baseball.”

Ramírez has been one of the best players for a long time. And it was just the season before last, in Terry Francona’s second-to-last season managing the team, that the Guardians gave the Yankees all they could have possibly wanted in a Division Series, leading two games to one before finally losing in five. But a lot happened in Cleveland last season, very little of it good, and they fell to 76-86, not just finishing 11 games behind the Twins, but landing in third place behind the Tigers, too.

Francona retired. Vogt replaced him. A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that their ace, Shane Bieber, would be undergoing Tommy John surgery and was gone for the season. This was after Bieber had led the league with 20 strikeouts after his first two starts. The Guardians have just kept coming, anyway, as Vogt promised they would after the announcement about Bieber’s surgery.

“We have an opportunity to still go out and play every day,” the manager said at the time. “The next-man-up mentality is what we have to be thinking about. You can’t replace Shane Bieber, but we do have guys that can step up and give us meaningful innings and get a lot of quality outs for us as we move forward.”

Ramírez is still right there in the middle of Vogt’s order. After last night his OPS is .680, well below his career mark of .851, to give you an idea of what might be coming. Josh Naylor, hitting .321, is in the process of becoming a star himself. (“He’s something to see right now,” Vogt said the other day.) Steven Kwan is merely hitting .351 from the leadoff spot. Behind Kwan is Andrés Giménez , who has proven to be the centerpiece of that Francisco Lindor trade with the Mets from 2021. He has scored 15 runs, knocked in 14, has 24 hits, and is batting .279 ahead of Ramírez.

There is no dominant starter without Bieber. But Ben Lively was terrific on Tuesday night against the Red Sox, and even though there are no dazzling earned run averages across the rest of the rotation — Tanner Bibbee, Logan Allen, Triston McKenzie and old friend Carlos Carrasco — they still have combined for a win-loss record of 8-3. Their mission is pretty clear: Keep the Guardians in there until Vogt can give the ball to Hunter Gaddis and then Emmanuel Clase at the end.

Through it all, the Guardians keep winning. Guardians of the Galaxy for now. Giving their fans something. Giving themselves a chance. All you can ask for.