Hot Guardians face hot White Sox in battle of hotness

The Cleveland Guardians are one of the hottest teams in baseball right now, having won seven of their last 10 games, including taking three out of four from the tough Toronto Blue Jays. Franmil Reyes has awoken, every pitcher besides Bieber seems to be clicking to some degree, and in general this is does not look like the same team that dropped seven-straight games to finish out the month of April.

Why, the only team hotter than them is ... checks notes ... oh no. It’s probably the White Sox.

Winners of their last six in a row, the 14-13 White Sox will look to repeat the sweep they pulled against the Guardians last month. Chicago is enjoying their surge of wins even without their offense clicking the way many expected, mostly due to injuries. They enter this series as a middle-of-the-road offensive team, with a run differential suggesting they still have some work to do. Currently, their offense is without Yermín Mercedes, Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jiménez, and Andrew Vaughn. In other words, basically their whole lineup, or the equivalent of the Guardians losing José Ramírez for a month. Nightmarish.

Luis Robert has been their shining light during the winning streak, with nine hits in his last 22 plate appearances. His lone home run of the week was this absolute moonshot over the green monster.

Team at a glance

• Record: 14-13 (7th in AL)
• Runs Scored: 9
• Run Differential: -13 (10th in AL)
• Last 10: 7-3
• Slash: .225./281/.351
• wOBA: .284 (11th in AL)
• wRC+: 89 (11th in AL)
• ERA: 3.34 (5th in AL)
• SIERA: 3.52 (5th in AL)
• K-BB%: 15.0% (5th in AL)

Projected starters

Monday, May 9, 8:10 p.m. ET: RHP Michael Kopech vs. RHP Zach Plesac
Tuesday, May 10, 8:10 p.m. ET: RHP Lucas Giolito vs. RHP Cal Quantrill
Wednesday, May 11, 2:10 p.m. ET: TBD (RHP Vince Velasquez) vs. RHP Aaron Civale

Roster

• 40-man roster
• Depth chart