The Cleveland Guardians Have The 26th Highest Payroll And THE BEST RECORD IN BASEBALL!!!

This will be my last blog detailing the MLB Standings, I promise. But how am I supposed to sit here biting my tongue when this team had an Over/Under Win Total of 79.5 before the season and has rattled off 51 wins in their first 76 games with the most talented team in baseball and a veteran manager a bunch of no names and a first year skipper. Let's be honest with ourselves for a second: Jose Ramirez is known as being pretty good. Steven Kwan has shown to have been promising. And Emmanuel Clase has been an underrated closer in the league since serving his PED suspension. NONE of them were in the best in baseball discussion though. And the rest of these guys (excluding Shane Bieber who is out for the year) are kind of relative nobodies when it comes to the grand scheme of things? 

Fast Forward to this morning and Jose Ramirez might be the Most Valuable Player in the entire sport, with the only argument I can think of that he isn't even the most valuable player on his own team....because Steven Kwan is. Oh, and Emmanuel Clase is the best Closer in baseball and if he keeps this up, should legitimately be considered for Cy Young. Forget even discussing Manager of the Year, as Vogt has already locked that up. We're fucking 9 games up in the extremely competitive AL Central and if the season ended today, the Yankees would be coming to us in the ALCS!!!

.....all while having a fraction of the payroll. I don't love talk about our spending because it's no one's fault other than our own at this point, but the fact that the top 3 goes:

1. Guardians (51-26) 26th Highest Payroll - $100 Million

2. Phillies (52-27) 4th Highest Payroll - $245 Million

3. Yankees (52-28) 2nd Highest Payroll - $307 Million

...must be noted. And it must be noted that while everyone is saying the Guardians haven't beaten anyone (horrible argument), we just went into Baltimore the past two nights and beat them in two completely different styles of ball games. This team can win every which way! Is taking a series and perhaps sweeping the Orioles not beating anyone? Then again, everyone was hyping up this series and I simply don't understand how the Orioles have even won one game all season with the decisions they make....

Okay, I'm getting off the mountain top for a second to let everyone know this isn't just a pump up piece. I do think the Guardians are a prime candidate to regress as the season goes on....unless we can fix one thing: the Starting Rotation. The fact that we have a 51-26 record with THREE of our 5 starters having a negative WAR is up there with one of the craziest stats I've ever seen. The fact of the matter is Bibee is really good (would be a legit 2 on a World Series team), Ben Lively is good, and we need Gavin Williams to come back from injury more than we can breathe. Tristen McKenzie has shown to be a batting practice pitcher, Logan Allen is the luckiest / worst 8-3 pitcher in the league, and Carlos Carrasco is simply not a playoff starter in this league anymore. At best we need a front end guy (who will be available? so many teams think they're in it) to move everyone back one slot. But at worst we need to be able to bump someone (or two) out and get more quality starts from our lower guys. Because as much as our rotation is bad, our hitting and especially our bullpen is World Series ready.

* If our management is happy with the surprise success and content with making the playoffs instead of going for it, this might be the last fucking straw. This is the fucking year, Cleveland. Act accordingly.