Guardians Bounce Back With Gritty Win Over Orioles

The final score of the Cleveland Guardians' victory against the Baltimore Orioles may say 9-5, signaling an easy win for the away team, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The Guardians had to work for this win, and it was anything but smooth sailing throughout all nine innings.

Cleveland got out to a quick start, scoring six runs by the end of the third inning and knocking Baltimore’s starter, Brandon Young, out of the game by the end of the fourth inning.

The Guardians found ways to score in just about every way imaginable; Jo Adell, Patrick Bailey, and Petey Halpin each contributed RBI base hits, and Travis Bazzana did his part with a three-run home run in the top of the second.

The Guardians firmly planted themselves in the driver’s seat as Tanner Bibee was also perfect during his first time through the Orioles’ order on just 29 pitches.

Unfortunately for Bibee, chaos struck in the bottom of the fourth inning as he allowed four earned runs, and the Orioles got within one run thanks to Pete Alonso’s two-run

At this point, all momentum was in Baltimore’s favor, even though Cleveland was still up one run.

"It looked like they made a little adjustment off of him," explained manager Stephen Vogt of Tanner Bibee postgame.

"It looked like they were trying to get on the fastball the first time through, and then they looked like they all did a really good job of kind of moving their sights back and waiting for off speed. He made some mistakes, and they hammered him."

There were plenty of reasons for the Guardians to sit back and let the game get away from them, but to the team’s credit, they battled back and ended up putting together a gritty victory.

The key to the win came in the seventh inning when the Guardians plated three more runs, capped off by a Brayan Rocchio two-run single. 

"I was unbelievable at-bat," Vogt continued.

"The guy's throwing hard, with good stuff, and [Rocchio] laid off some really close pitches and fought off some tough ones to get the one in the middle, the last pitch. I mean, that's textbook, two strike hidden, textbook deep it, deep at-bat."

As it stands, the Guardians have a 74-72 record, have won eight of their last 10 games, and own the Wild Card spot in the American League and continue to stay on pace with the Chicago White Sox for the top of the division.

There’s a lot of baseball left to play, and if Cleveland shows the same grit the rest of the season as it did on Tuesday for the final few weeks, it should be in a good spot once all 162 games have been played.