Guardians 5, Athletics 3: Gelof Put Us Up Three Before Mason Barnett Threw a Pitch, and Then We Got Two Hits the Rest of the Night

Two walks and a Zack Gelof homer to center, three runs on the board in Cleveland before our starter had thrown a pitch. I actually thought we might steal one. Then Joey Cantillo happened, and the bullpen happened, and it's four straight losses and sixty one and ninety three.

It started at 4:10 on a Friday afternoon out here, which means I had it going in a little window in the corner of my work laptop with the sound off, pretending to answer emails. Daniel Espino opened for Cleveland and walked Henry Bolte. Struck out Shea Langeliers. Walked Lawrence Butler. And Gelof, who's quietly been the one guy on this team I never feel dumb watching, sent one out to center field. His nineteenth. Three nothing, top of the first.

I said "let's go" out loud. In an office. Somebody looked over.

That was the last good thing that happened, and I'd love to tell you I knew it right away, but I didn't. I sat there for three innings thinking a three run lead on the road against a first place team was a real thing we had. It wasn't. We never scored again. After that first inning the whole lineup got two hits, a Jeff McNeil single in the fourth that Tommy White immediately erased with a double play, and an Alika Williams single that went nowhere.

Joey Cantillo came in for the second and just owned us. Six innings, two hits, no runs, five strikeouts, 81 pitches. A lefty who'd been 9-9 walking in, and our guys looked like they'd never seen him before in their lives. I don't even know what to yell about. You can't yell at a pitcher for being good. You can yell at your own hitters for making him look like Randy Johnson, though, so I did, quietly, into my coffee.

And Mason Barnett. Man. I want to root for the kid, I really do, but you can't hand a guy a three run lead in the first inning and watch him walk four in three and a third. Seventy nine pitches for ten outs. He got bailed out in the first by a Travis Bazzana double play with the bases loaded, and I think that was the universe warning him. Then the fourth: Patrick Bailey singles, Petey Halpin singles, Brayan Rocchio lines a double into right and both of them score, and after a strikeout José Ramírez pokes a single into center and it's tied. Three runs gone in about ten minutes. His ERA's 7.16 now. I stopped pretending to answer emails right around there.

Scott Blewett actually did his job for a minute. Came in with a man on, got Chase DeLauter to line out and struck out Jo Adell, and I thought okay, fine, it's 3-3, we reset. Next inning Bazzana hits one out to center. That's the loss, on a guy who'd been one of the only relievers out there I trusted. Then Seth Johnson gives up a solo shot to Ramírez in the sixth, because of course it's Ramírez, it's always Ramírez, he's hitting .232 this year and he still finds a way to beat us twice in one night.

Medina and Alvarado threw scoreless innings in the seventh and eighth. Nice. Great. Where was that in the fourth?

The eighth is the one I can't let go of. Down two, Hunter Gaddis hits Bolte, and now the tying run's at the plate in Langeliers, a guy with 23 homers, and he rolls it right to Bazzana for a double play. Inning over. Then Cade Smith came out for the ninth and got his 38th save like he was on his lunch break. Butler struck out. Gelof took a called third strike, challenged it with the robot, and the robot said nope. McNeil grounded out. Game.

So the guy who drove in all three of our runs was the guy standing there watching the replay tell him he was out. That's the season in one at bat, honestly.

What got me most, though, was the crowd. 35,391 people on a Friday night in Cleveland, because their team is 79-75 and a game up in the Central and every pitch in September actually matters to them. I turned the sound on for the ninth and just listened to that through my little laptop speaker, and I thought about how long it's been since we had a September like that, and how the place we used to have those Septembers isn't ours anymore. That noise used to be us. Now we're the team that gets swept in Tampa and then walks into somebody else's pennant race.

61 and 93. Four in a row. Three hits. I'll watch tomorrow, obviously, in the same little window on the same laptop, and I'll probably say something out loud again when somebody does something good, and then I'll regret it by the fourth inning.

The roster is on the depth chart page, a slightly more fun loss is in the Twins column, and everything else is on the A's page.

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