CLEVELAND — The tale of the 2024 Cleveland Guardians traces back to January, when nearly every member of the roster reported a couple weeks early to spring training in Goodyear, Ariz.
It started with Carlos Carrasco settling into a familiar corner locker for a tear-inducing homecoming, with Emmanuel Clase pumping 96-mph heaters in navy gym shorts on a back field and with Stephen Vogt shaking hands while matching names with faces. It started with Austin Hedges leaping out of the chair at his locker to start a “U-S-A” chant when asked if MLB should incorporate the Summer Olympics into its calendar. It started with José Ramírez asking teammates for spare change only to whip out a stack of bills taller than his Marucci bat.
Every team puffs out its chest in the spring and proclaims World Series aspirations. Some of them actually believe it. The Guardians insisted everyone outside of that room was wrong about them. And then their journey to prove it began.
For nearly nine months, the momentum built. The days were long, Vogt would say — as evidenced by his graying beard, his dad would say — but the 162-game slate races by. And then the playoffs arrive.
The month of October saps every ounce of energy from every player or coach or fan who joined at any juncture, whether a midseason addition like Lane Thomas or Matthew Boyd or a skeptic from Fairview Park who refused to buy in until the club recovered from relinquishing its cushy AL Central lead.
Playoff baseball provides highs and lows that make a June matinee seem like a meaningless scrimmage and offers momentum swings that can jeopardize sleep cycles, hairlines and cardiac health. It’s a frantic, anxiety-sponsored ride, and no one would have it any other way.
It’s why Austin Hedges hasn’t been able to shake the first time he heard Gerrit Cole refer to the postseason as “a drug,” especially after Hedges won a World Series with the Texas Rangers a year ago and experienced the euphoria for himself.
Only one team gets to hoist a trophy, however. For those who fall short, the end can come without much warning. The instant Juan Soto squeezed the 30th Cleveland out on Saturday night, the Guardians replaced their strategizing for extra innings and for two games at Yankee Stadium and for the National League pennant winner with plans to clean out their lockers on Sunday morning.
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“It’s gut-wrenching,” Hedges said.
Instead of chest-thumping music, there were whispers of encouragement. Instead of high fives, there were hugs and tears. There were players gripping beer cans while sitting in small circles, either on the carpet or on black leather chairs. There were squeaky shower shoes. There were noisy shipping tape dispensers sealing cardboard boxes bound for Florida, Canada, California, the Dominican Republic or Venezuela.
The finality of a season, Terry Francona used to say — especially a season that lasts into October — is like slamming into a brick wall that wasn’t there a second ago.
Tanner Bibee, his shoulder wrapped and his eyes welling, wasn’t ready to navigate through his thoughts about his valiant start on short rest, his misplaced slider to Giancarlo Stanton, his growth throughout the season, the disappointing conclusion or the team’s feats.
This postgame interview the Cleveland Guardians manager Stephan Vogt is just amazing! He taught everyone a lesson in that clubhouse. Love this as a baseball player and fan. #ClevelandGuardians #NewYorkYankees #ALCS #NYYvsCLE pic.twitter.com/FpwRVYuZD1
— Mason (@OdeJr12) October 20, 2024
Vogt told the group: “Remember this feeling you have right now, because there’s more left on the table for this group.”
It’s a similar sentiment Francona relayed when the Guardians surprised the masses two years ago and pushed these same Yankees — the ones responsible for Cleveland’s exit in four of their last five trips to the postseason — to the brink in the ALDS. That season wasn’t a springboard to better outcomes, though. The Guardians sputtered in 2023. There are no guarantees, just more spring optimism; some warranted, some manufactured.
Hedges and Steven Kwan pointed out the projections of 70-some wins for the club in 2024. Any team can clutch onto any morsel of doubt to convert into motivation. The questions about the Guardians were valid after a 76-win season, a managerial change and a dormant offseason. They were furthered when a Cy Young-caliber, made-for-October version of Shane Bieber tore his elbow in early April.
But the Guardians never caved. Imagine learning in March that the bullpen would feature Clase and three newcomers pitching the high-leverage innings, or that Daniel Schneemann would bat sixth in a couple of the team’s most pivotal games of the season, or that Boyd, a guy who was coaching 7-year-olds in softball in the Pacific Northwest in the spring while recovering from Tommy John surgery, would wind up a rare, trusted rotation piece when it mattered most.
“The intangibles,” Hedges said, “you can’t measure it. People just can’t understand why we won games, and that fires me up because we know what it is. It’s just a feeling. It’s just something inside of you. Honestly, it’s tough to even describe it. … The only way you can really measure it is wins and losses, and we won a hell of a lot of games this year.”
Guardians fans show their support, despite the Game 5 loss to the Yankees. (Lauren Leigh Bacho / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
That resilience is what made this group so captivating. It’s what convinced fans to pack Progressive Field. It’s what created unforgettable playoff moments, what cemented the names David Fry and Jhonkensy Noel as names that Budweiser-guzzling night owls will recite from their barstools years from now. It’s what has the Guardians declaring they’ll be back, ready to finally vanquish a championship drought that dates to the Truman administration, even though it’s impossible to know, in a game of roster movement and volatile performances, what truly lies ahead.
“Now we know, exactly, the roadmap,” Hedges said. “We know exactly next year what it takes.”
The nine-month journey, the slow burn through the summer in anticipation of an October crescendo, begins soon.
(Top photo of pitcher Tanner Bibee with pitching coach Carl Willis: David Dermer / Imagn Images)
