The Cleveland Guardians have touted their depth and resilience while climbing to the top of the American League Central.
Catcher Bo Naylor is working to add more of the latter as Cleveland aims to hold on to the division lead down the stretch.
Naylor enters Cleveland’s Tuesday road game against the Chicago White Sox with renewed confidence. He contributed two hits, including a solo home run, to a series-opening 5-3 win Monday after going hitless in his previous nine at-bats.
“Just trying to help the team on the offensive side as much as I can,” he said, “so being able to just stick to my approach and execute it is always a good thing to see.”
Cleveland (82-62) increased its division lead to 3 1/2 games over the Kansas City Royals while Chicago (33-112) lost its 13th consecutive home game.
Naylor and his brother, Josh, contributed two hits apiece. David Fry also hit a solo shot for the Guardians.
Chicago batters struck out 14 times as Cleveland took a 6-5 advantage in the season series with two games remaining between the teams. White Sox left fielder Andrew Benintendi spoiled Joey Cantillo’s perfect-game bid with a seventh-inning single. Bryan Ramos contributed a two-run shot in the eighth, his first career homer.
Right-hander Ben Lively will aim to pitch the Guardians to a series victory on Tuesday.
Lively (11-9, 4.07 ERA) initially was set to start on Monday. He has struggled over his past six outings, going 1-3 with a 6.37 ERA while issuing 13 walks over 29 2/3 innings.
Lively enters with 135 innings pitched this season, well beyond his previous career high of 88 2/3. He is coming off a Wednesday loss at Kansas City, where he yielded four runs and seven hits in four innings with one walk and three strikeouts.
“Thinking about being better,” Lively said, “that’s what pushes me (after) games like this. … There’s only one way to fix it, and it’s getting back out there and doing it.”
Chicago can attest to pushing for improvement. The White Sox must win 10 of their remaining 17 games to avoid tying the 1962 New York Mets for the highest single-season loss total in modern baseball history (120).
“Even though we’ve been struggling a little bit lately, we want to go out there and compete and try to win every game,” White Sox outfielder Dominic Fletcher said.
Rookie right-hander Jonathan Cannon gets the call for Chicago on Tuesday. Cannon (3-9, 4.53 ERA) will try to win consecutive starts for the first time in his career after prevailing at Baltimore on Wednesday, when he permitted one run and five hits in 5 2/3 innings.
“We’ve talked about in my last couple starts just being in bad counts and just being behind,” Cannon said. “And that was just the biggest focus … just to get ahead of these guys.”
Cannon has not faced the Guardians in his initial season.
Lively is 1-1 with a 4.63 ERA in two career starts against the White Sox covering 11 2/3 innings. Both came this season. Lively avenged a May 9 road loss to Chicago with a July 4 home win, when he pitched six innings of three-run, three-hit ball.
–Field Level Media