The opportunity was there.

The Cleveland Guardians had a real chance to get back to the World Series in a decade. However, Cleveland’s playoff run came to an end at the hands of the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS.

With the series in the rearview, what exactly is to blame for Cleveland’s ALCS loss?

Was it the offense, run prevention, or pitching? In all reality, it’s likely a combination of all of that.

The Guardians came out firing in all cylinders in Game 1 of the ALCS, scoring seven runs on 14 hits. However, after that, the bats seemingly disappeared and became a key reason Cleveland isn’t playing in the Fall Classic.

Cleveland’s best hitter against the Rays was Chase DeLauter, who logged a 1.098 OPS; the player with the second-best OPS (min. 20 at-bats) was Jose Ramirez at .689. Simply put, that just isn’t enough power from a team that had aspirations of winning the championship.

The Guardians ended up with a team slash line of .234/.298/.352 in the ALCS. Ironically, Tampa Bay’s wasn’t much better at .244/.312/.363.

The real difference came down to clutch hitting. The Guardians had opportunities, but had just a .576 OPS with runners in scoring position. On the flip side, the numbers were .878 for the Rays.

A team isn’t going to win if it can’t score runs, and that’s what happened to Cleveland.

The Guardians pride themselves on being one of the most fundamentally sound teams in baseball, and they should; Cleveland historically has been a tremendous defensive team. Unfortunately, that didn’t end up being the case in the ALCS.

Technically, Cleveland only committed three errors, but those accounted for four unearned runs throughout the series.

Looking past the box score, the Guardians just didn’t play as sharply in the field as they have throughout the 162-game marathon. Brayan Rocchio struggled with a few transfers; Steven Kwan, Petey Halpin, and Rocchio let a ball drop in the outfield after some clear miscommunication.

Jose Ramirez and Chase DeLauter each made costly errors that let Tampa score.

The Guardians were hoping to ride their pitching all the way to the World Series. Through the ALDS and halfway through the ALCS, that looked like a great plan, but then the pitching staff seemed to run out of gas.

For a pitcher like Gavin Williams, that was literally and figuratively. Cleveland took Williams out of his sole ALCS start in Game 3 after his velocity dramatically dipped in the fifth inning. The starter was routinely hitting triple digits in the postseason, but all of a sudden was struggling to reach 95 mph.

Parker Messick’s apparent fatigue didn’t show up on the radar gun, but rather in his command. The rookie is known for his ability to fill the zone, with a 6.6 percent walk rate in the regular season. Messick exited Game 5 after allowing five hits and two walks.