Guardians bring league-leading offense to face Yankees

You won’t hear any excuses from the clubhouse, but the Cleveland Guardians are in a tough spot heading into their weekend series against the New York Yankees. Snow forced a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday and a COVID outbreak has several players on the injured list.

Among those who will be missing this series are Cal Quantrill and Owen Miller, two pivotal pieces of their early-season success that could have had huge impacts against one of the league’s strongest teams. The storm of uncertain circumstances means that two of the Guardians’ three starters will likely be spot starts.

Terry Francona announced last night that Eli Morgan and Kirk McCarty will pick up the slack in the starts, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see either turned into a bullpen game early. Morgan has exclusively come out of the pen for the first time in his career this year, and he only has 6.0 innings in three games so far. If McCarty is the call for Game 2, he’d be pitching on a week’s worth of rest from his last outing in Triple-A (4.1 innings on April 16). This would be McCarty’s first MLB appearance since being drafted by the Guardians in the seventh round of the 2017 draft.

Meanwhile, the Yankees, while healthy, have not been hitting on all cylinders so far this season. They are averaging just barely over three runs a game, which is wild for a team that employs Aaron Judge, DJ LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Donaldson, and Joey Gallo in the same lineup. But when half a lineup is struggling — no matter who they are in — it’s not going to be a fun time.

This team won’t stay down offensively forever, though they were just shut out by the Tigers in their series finale Thursday. Consider it cosmic karma for walking Miguel Cabrera when he was trying to get his 3,000th hit in front of his home crowd. They have been blanked three times this season, compared to the Guardians’ one shutout loss on April 9. But, unlike the Guardians, the Yankees haven’t scored double-digit runs in four games. There’s no analysis in that, it’s just fun to say. The Guardians have scored double-digit runs in four of their 12 games so far. Chills.

Team at a glance

• Record: 7-6 (5th in AL)
• Runs Scored: 39 (12th in AL)
• Run Differential: +2 (6th in AL)
• Last 10: 5-5
• Slash: .220/.301/.342
• wOBA: .293 (8th in AL)
• wRC+: 95 (8th in AL)
• ERA: 2.58 (1st in AL)
• SIERA: 3.37 (2nd in AL)
• K-BB%: 15.2% (5th in AL)

Projected starters

Friday, April 22, 7:05 p.m. ET: RHP Jameson Taillon vs. TBD (Eli Morgan)
Saturday, April 23, 1:05 p.m. ET: LHP Nestor Cortes vs. TBD (Kirk McCarty)
Sunday, April 24, 1:35 p.m. ET: RHP Gerrit Cole vs. Aaron Civale

Roster

• 40-man roster
• Depth chart