Guardians of the Wild Card
Following the series victory in the Steel City over another NL Wild Card in the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Dbacks made the last stop on their 4 city road trip, this time facing off against another Wild Card contender in the Cleveland Guardians. While both the Guards and Pirates are trying to make a push for October, they are doing it in entirely different ways as the Snakes would go from facing a top 3 offense OPS wise in all of baseball in the Pirates, to a team that is dead last in the majors in team OPS in the Guardians. Even though the offense in Cleveland is lackluster, they would make up for their lack of offensive production with stellar pitching as their starting staff ranks 6th in baseball in ERA.
The Cleveland staff lived up to their hype in this series, only allowing 3 ER across a combined 17.1 IP and 19 K's, keeping the Diamondbacks offense quiet for the most part. Thankfully the snakes were able to do their damage against the guardians bullpen and steal 2 very crucial games right before the trade deadline.
Speaking of doing damage against a team's bullpen, that's exactly what the Guardians did in Saturday's Game 2 win that saw a combined 20 runs on 30 hits between the 2 teams. Of the 6 runs the Diamondbacks bullpen surrendered this series, 5 of them were in because of Paul Sewald's continued struggles over his last 30 games (more so his last 11 outings). In those last 30 outings for Sewald he has pitched 26.2 innings to the tune of a 7.43 ERA with an opposing slash line of .262/.302/.569 and 9 HR allowed. After this outing in which he failed to record even one out and allowing 5 ER, his ERA on the season is now up to 6.45, which would be the worst ERA in his entire career and his highest since having a 6.07 ERA across 56.1 IP in 2018 with the Mets (13.50 in just 6 IP in 2020 so im not counting that small of a sample size).
These struggles of late had Gabe, Brandon and I asking ourselves if this was the last time we would see Paul Sewald pitch for the Diamondbacks in 2026 and if these struggle of late would put any pressure on DBacks GM Mike Hazen to try to add a high leverage arm to the bullpen before the deadline passes. The three of us were in the same boat in saying that we appreciate and acknowledge that Paul did have some early season success and had a stretch where he was as reliable of a closer as one could ask for (outside of Mason Miller obviously), hitters have finally started to readjust to his approach and that's being shown in not only his career high ERA, but his career high in home runs allowed. It's one thing to struggle against a top offense like Pittsburgh is one thing, but to fail to even record an out against a team who is dead last in OPS out of all 30 Major League teams shows that Pauls time in the desert just might need to come to an end.
#Guardians #pirates #cleveland
Following the series victory in the Steel City over another NL Wild Card in the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Dbacks made the last stop on their 4 city road trip, this time facing off against another Wild Card contender in the Cleveland Guardians. While both the Guards and Pirates are trying to make a push for October, they are doing it in entirely different ways as the Snakes would go from facing a top 3 offense OPS wise in all of baseball in the Pirates, to a team that is dead last in the majors in team OPS in the Guardians. Even though the offense in Cleveland is lackluster, they would make up for their lack of offensive production with stellar pitching as their starting staff ranks 6th in baseball in ERA.
The Cleveland staff lived up to their hype in this series, only allowing 3 ER across a combined 17.1 IP and 19 K's, keeping the Diamondbacks offense quiet for the most part. Thankfully the snakes were able to do their damage against the guardians bullpen and steal 2 very crucial games right before the trade deadline.
Speaking of doing damage against a team's bullpen, that's exactly what the Guardians did in Saturday's Game 2 win that saw a combined 20 runs on 30 hits between the 2 teams. Of the 6 runs the Diamondbacks bullpen surrendered this series, 5 of them were in because of Paul Sewald's continued struggles over his last 30 games (more so his last 11 outings). In those last 30 outings for Sewald he has pitched 26.2 innings to the tune of a 7.43 ERA with an opposing slash line of .262/.302/.569 and 9 HR allowed. After this outing in which he failed to record even one out and allowing 5 ER, his ERA on the season is now up to 6.45, which would be the worst ERA in his entire career and his highest since having a 6.07 ERA across 56.1 IP in 2018 with the Mets (13.50 in just 6 IP in 2020 so im not counting that small of a sample size).
These struggles of late had Gabe, Brandon and I asking ourselves if this was the last time we would see Paul Sewald pitch for the Diamondbacks in 2026 and if these struggle of late would put any pressure on DBacks GM Mike Hazen to try to add a high leverage arm to the bullpen before the deadline passes. The three of us were in the same boat in saying that we appreciate and acknowledge that Paul did have some early season success and had a stretch where he was as reliable of a closer as one could ask for (outside of Mason Miller obviously), hitters have finally started to readjust to his approach and that's being shown in not only his career high ERA, but his career high in home runs allowed. It's one thing to struggle against a top offense like Pittsburgh is one thing, but to fail to even record an out against a team who is dead last in OPS out of all 30 Major League teams shows that Pauls time in the desert just might need to come to an end.
#Guardians #pirates #cleveland
2 days ago
