For much of the season to date, the Guardians lineup wasn’t just off course, it was a ship that had flipped upside down after falling about 1,000 miles away from their intended line. But they’ve seemingly corrected course and made up for lost time.
Manager Terry Francona recently lamented that, normally, a team will have 1/3 of the order hitting well, 1/3 scuffling a bit and 1/3 somewhere in the middle — not the 9-for-9 slump the lineup found itself in for a while.
On several counts, the Guardians have seemingly recovered, like a long-lost ship finally finding the lighthouse on the coast again.
There’s Josh Naylor, who entered Tuesday’s game on an 11-game hitting streak in which he’s been among the most productive hitters in baseball over that stretch, hitting .488 with a 1.231 OPS, one home run, seven doubles and 16 RBIs.
There’s Josh Bell, who in his last 10 games entering Tuesday night hit .333 with a .970 OPS, two home runs, four doubles and nine RBIs. That was before he added another home run in Tuesday’s 6-3 loss to the San Diego Padres.
There’s Andres Gimenez, who in his last 12 games has hit .333 with a .917 OPS, along with one home run, four doubles, one triple and 10 RBIs. Hitting coach Victor Rodriguez recently told the Beacon Journal that the team didn’t really want to change anything, as they believed he’d hit his way out of it if he stayed the course instead of panicking and adjusting too much, which is a strategy that seems to be paying dividends.
There’s Amed Rosario, who in a smaller sample size has hit .348 with a .901 OPS in his last 26 plate appearances as he tries to hold off Tyler Freeman and others at shortstop.
There’s Jose Ramirez, who over the last few days has been the hottest hitter on the planet thanks to four consecutive multi-hit games (entering Tuesday) and four home runs in the span of roughly 24 hours, not to mention another double that hit the warning track within that time.
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And just like that, baseball’s statistically worst lineup was, over their six-game homestand, arguably the league’s best. During that stretch, the Guardians led baseball in batting average (.317), hits (70) and extra-base hits (29) and they were second in runs (38) and OPS (.893).
That’s an extremely small sample size. It also offered the Guardians a chance for an extremely large exhale for an offense desperately trying to breathe.
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“It’s hard to pinpoint one thing,” Bell said when asked about the lineup’s collective turnaround. “Seems like Nayls has been locked in for a couple months now. Jose’s finally getting the ball to go over the wall. It seems like the first couple months he was flying out to the warning track a lot.
“Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s us.”
And maybe the lineup’s awakening has come in time for the Guardians, who somehow entered Tuesday only two games back in the American League Central, to overtake the Minnesota Twins by the end of June. Despite an icy cold opening to the 2023 season for the offense, it’s certainly a possibility — assuming they’ve put the worst of it behind them for good.
Ryan Lewis can be reached at [email protected]. Read more about the Guardians at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/cleveland-guardians. Follow him on Twitter at @ByRyanLewis.
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cleveland Guardians lineup heating up in June as Ramirez, Naylor lead way