CHICAGO -- The calendar's turn to July offers the Guardians a fresh slate following their rough month of June. And with two weeks of baseball before the All-Star break, Cleveland has an important stretch ahead.
“It's huge. We're glad it's July 1,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said on Tuesday. “Every team has good months, bad months, in-between months. I'm thankful we had our bad month in June, and now we have three more months to turn it around and just be ourselves. We just have to play our baseball. We don't have to do anything more than that.
“Relax, believe in yourself and go have fun playing baseball.”
The Guardians went 9-16 in June while averaging just 2.88 runs per game. As they look to build some momentum before the break and hang in the postseason race, they’ll have to do so amid a tough schedule featuring three straight series against division leaders: the Cubs, Tigers and Astros.
It was only one game, but the Guardians fell, 5-2, in their series opener against the Cubs on Tuesday at Wrigley Field. It marked their fifth straight loss, tying their season-high losing streak. At 40-43, Cleveland is three games under .500 for the first time since April 6, when they were 3-6.
Facing former Cleveland lefty Matthew Boyd, the Guardians did not tally a hit or a run after the fourth inning. Boyd allowed two runs on five hits and one walk over seven innings.
“Vintage Boyd,” Vogt said. “[He was] really good. We had the one inning where we got something going. Outside of that, it was hard to get something going.”
That’s been a recurring theme for the Guardians throughout their skid.
Since José Ramírez’s 10th-inning walk-off single last Wednesday, they’ve gone 0-5 while scoring in just two out of 45 innings played: the fourth inning on Tuesday and the fourth of Saturday’s 9-6 loss to the Cardinals.
“I feel like we've had the same conversation for a few weeks,” Vogt said of the offensive struggles. “We're working. Our guys, I thought, had better swings tonight. Hit some balls hard up the middle that got caught. Some good defensive plays by them. I thought we had pretty good at-bats off Matt Boyd tonight. We just weren't able to string things together.”
To Vogt’s point, the Guardians did have 13 at-bats against Boyd (out of 27) of at least four pitches. That included a six-pitch walk by Lane Thomas in the fourth, following Carlos Santana’s first-pitch leadoff double. Nolan Jones followed Thomas with a first-pitch RBI single, and Angel Martínez followed him with a first-pitch sacrifice fly.
Chicago’s production included four runs on seven hits and four walks over 5 2/3 innings against Guardians starter Gavin Williams, a chunk of which came during a strange second inning. Williams allowed three runs and got out of the inning despite all six batters he faced reaching base.
Pete Crow-Armstrong, Dansby Swanson and Michael Busch hit three straight singles. Carson Kelly followed with a double, and after advancing to third was later thrown out trying to score on a wild pitch. Catcher Bo Naylor retrieved the ball and threw to Williams, who was covering home plate.
Williams walked Nico Hoerner, the fifth batter of the inning, and then picked him off. Williams then walked Matt Shaw and picked him off too.
It marked the first time since at least 1920 that Cleveland recorded three non-plate appearance outs. Williams also became the first Cleveland pitcher to record two pick-offs in an inning since Steve Gromek on July 18, 1945.
Williams said he walked off the mound and thought, “What just happened?”
“I didn’t know what to think about that,” he said.
Williams allowed one run the rest of the outing, on a Seiya Suzuki solo homer in the sixth. The Cubs tacked on another tally in the eighth, aided by a tough break. Jakob Junis took a Michael Busch comebacker off his left foot, and the ball ricocheted into left field. It helped Swanson advance from first to third base and then score on a Carson Kelly sac fly.
“We’ve just got to continue to work,” Vogt said. “We're going to continue to work and fight and believe. We're in it right now. We've got ground balls hitting our pitcher in the heel on tailor-made double plays. So this is when you have to get tough.
“This is when you have let go, relax and go play, and we're in it.”