Cleveland Guardians 2023 Season Preview
Baseball has always been my favorite sport, but I really rediscovered my love of the game watching the 2022 Cleveland Guardians. The youngest team in baseball was must-see TV on a nightly basis, as the “Guardiac Kids” moniker just seemed to fit. The throwback to the “Kardiac Kids” of the 1980 Cleveland Browns just made sense. The Guardians were 17-7 in games that entered the ninth inning tied. They had seven walk-off wins and 40 comeback wins. They were 62-4 with a lead after five innings.
I’ll be the first to admit that my hometown team fell on the right side of luck and variance a lot. Just as one example, Cleveland was 13-6 against the Twins, despite each team scoring 89 runs in the 19 regular season meetings. The Guardians had a magical 21-8 run in September to lock up the Central Division title and gave the Yankees everything they could handle in a five-game series that could very well have gone differently.
This was a team that went 46-35 at home with a +3 run differential and 46-35 on the road with a +61 run differential. It was a team that went 28-17 in one-run games. It was a team that reenergized 63-year-old Terry Francona. It was a team that the city, and to some degree, baseball fans around the country, rallied around.
In looking objectively, it’s fair to wonder what happens now. The Guardians didn’t really show a ton of signs of their storybook season by going 46-44 with a +5 run differential in the first half. They don’t get to beat up on the AL Central (47-29) to the same degree with the schedule changes. However, they’re armed with one of the best farm systems in baseball and an offensive philosophy that fits this season’s rule changes as well as any. Oh, yeah, and maybe the best bullpen in baseball.