Youthful Guardians Will Face Yankees in Division Series

And they smile all the while. Kwan, Cleveland’s fifth-round pick out of Oregon State in 2018, said in some ways it reminded him of college ball.

“It might be a little cheesy, but first off it’s how we pull for each other,” Kwan said. “When I was in the minors, I heard major league ball can be really selfish, that you have to look out for yourself because it’s a business first, then baseball. But here it doesn’t feel like that. We really pull for each other. We want each one of us to succeed.”

As he did at the beginning of the season, Francona gathered the team for a talk just before the playoffs started, too.

“We said, like the season where there’s ups and downs and ebbs and flows, there will be that in a short series,” Francona said after the 1-0 clincher over the Rays on Saturday. “So just keep grinding. Keep playing. And they did a really good job of that. Because there was a lot of frustration on both sides. Nobody was scoring.”

In fact, before sweeping the Rays in their wild-card series, the Guardians had a total of just 42 games of postseason experience combined on their roster. And 25 were by Ramírez, the team’s slugging third baseman.

The total could have been higher, but it dropped significantly when the club designated reliever Bryan Shaw for assignment during the last week of the season. Shaw had 753 appearances over his career, including 519 with Cleveland, which ranks third in club history. He also made 15 postseason appearances for Cleveland from 2013 to 2017.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/sports/baseball/guardians-yankees-alds.html