Guardians keeping calm despite tough stretch

DETROIT -- With 162 games in a season, there’s bound to be a stretch or two during which everything that can go wrong, will. One of those nights surfaced Tuesday for the Guardians during an 11-4 loss to the Tigers.

That it came amid a brutal scheduling stretch made things a bit worse than they might have been on a normal night, but Cleveland has earned a little leeway after three doubleheaders in seven days. No one in the clubhouse is complaining, but it’s evident that Thursday’s off-day will certainly be a welcome one, and the upcoming All-Star break, a time to refuel.

“I think people probably laugh because we're so young, but a lot of these guys have never done this before, so they're gonna have to fight through it,” manager Terry Francona said. “And we're gonna find out a lot about our guys. That's part of why we're here.

“We obviously want to win every game we can, but this is a tough stretch for us. We've got to fight through it.”

As the Guardians continue to battle, here are three reasons why there’s no reason to hit the panic button:

Quantrill’s night was a blip
Cal Quantrill is a proven Mr. Dependable, and not just this year: The 27-year-old has 10 starts of six or more innings this season, and entering Tuesday’s outing had reached the sixth in 22 of 27 outings dating back to July 22, 2021.

His fortune swung from his longest outing of the season to the shortest in less than a week, but that doesn’t mean the sky is falling. The fact that Quantrill’s off-night fell on the same date that the Guardians’ offense was stymied and the defense stalled only exacerbated the issue.

At four innings and six runs (three earned), Tuesday’s performance was both atypical for Quantrill and bound to happen eventually. The Tigers batted around during a four-run second that got a bit out of hand, and Quantrill never really recovered.

“It was one of those days where I really wasn't pitching well enough to afford the good pitches getting hit, too,” he said. “We had a good plan; I just didn't execute very well.”

Bad hops aren’t the norm
Francona has been high on Andrés Giménez for a while and rightfully so: The 23-year-old is not only slashing .298/.350/.484 this season, he’s playing what Francona dubbed “Gold Glove-caliber” defense at second.

Giménez was dinged for an error in that extra-long second inning when he took a Jeimer Candelario grounder off his chest. What could have been the second out of the inning instead allowed Candelario to reach safely and Jonathan Schoop to advance to second.

“In these moments, any little error gets magnified, so I take full accountability for that error that happened with Quantrill,” Giménez said through interpreter Agustin Rivero. “I felt after that happened, he had to throw more pitches and get hit a little more than he should have been, so I take full responsibility.”

He has six errors at second this season and a .972 fielding percentage, but Giménez is in his first full season, and is one of those young guys Francona alluded to; the guys who need to learn as they go.

Sandy won’t always pitch
The bullpen is still chugging along but man, could they use a break. A sure sign of that surfaced in the bottom of the seventh, when Cleveland, in an 11-2 hole, sent catcher Sandy León to the bump.

León more than held his own: With a fastball that sat comfortably at 77 mph and touched 80, he sat the Tigers down in order for the only time all night … then repeated the feat during a perfect eighth.

Despite the sparkling results, no one feels good when a position player takes the mound. The fact that the Guardians have done this three times in eight days -- Ernie Clement pitched on June 27 and again on Saturday -- but are still holding firm to second place in the American League Central means this one, too, shall pass.

And maybe, just maybe, the Guardians will emerge stronger on the other side.

“I think we're going through a tough stretch of the season,” Giménez said. “We need to learn how to battle this as a team, and hopefully we're going to figure it out and get through this.”