The Best and worst of Times: Remembering the Guardians 2024 Season

The 2024 Cleveland Guardians season began with modest expectations. With the Tito Francona retirement that turned out to be a hiatus, uncertainty abounded. Most of us realized that while we had maximized our talent to a division title in 2022, that 2023 had been a Murphy’s Law kind of year where every margin that had gone our way suddenly went against us. Were we 92 win good? Probably not, but we were better than 76 wins, and we looked towards a healthier year with a fresh voice in the dugout.

What we got was a regular season beyond our most lofty expectations, and achieved in a far different manner than even an optimist like me(I predicted the third Wild Card and for our superior starting pitching to take us to the ALCS) dared to imagine. On another personal note, it was the first season I had ever been to four games(all wins!!), and it was also the season that further cemented me to my group of friends on a little corner of Guardians Twitter. Will this translate to the postseason? Who knows, but the regular season is deserving of recognition regardless of what happens in the chaotic crapshoot of October. Here are ten of my favorites of the 2024 Cleveland Guardians.

2024 Cleveland Guardians.

3/28-Cleveland 8, Oakland 0-We didn’t know what to expect. We’d heard good things about Vogt as a bullpen coach in Seattle. We had more young guys getting a shot at establishing themselves. We had an ace attempting to get back to his former self. We got early answers on them. Bieber looked like he was back, the lineup looked deep as my friend Matt’s favorite player Tyler Freeman drove in the season’s first run, and the vibes were going to be immaculate with Austin Hedges back and driving in runs. Given that it was his first major league win as a manager in the place where he had played so many years as a player, Steven Vogt could not have picked a better start as a manager.

4/10-Cleveland 7, Chicago 6-We had just gotten home from a long road trip where we won all three series. We had just lost our ace pitcher for the season with Tommy John surgery. And, in a trend that would continue inexplicably for the entire season, we would have a ton of trouble with a team that lost 121 games in falling behind 5-0 for the second night in a row. However, unlike the night before, we came back and finished the job. This was a night for the Naylors, as their response to a five run deficit was to hit two home runs in an inning. This repeated itself in the 10th inning when, down by a run, Josh Naylor doubled in the tying run, and Bo Naylor singled in the winning run. A Night For The Naylors, indeed.

5/19-Cleveland 5, Minnesota 2-In recent years, a fairly heated rivalry has developed between the Guardians and Twins, with the players, organizations, AND fans. One of the things that has driven the Twins crazy is the amount of late games that the Guardians win. This will be further explored later, but in this game, Will Brennan came to the plate with the score tied in the ninth inning, and two men on. Somewhere in NE OH, my pal Nicole was on pins and needles watching her favorite player at the plate, while starting to work on a wonderful piece she would finish later on Will Brennan’s new approach at the plate paying dividends. It paid dividends here, too, as he sent a Jhoan Duran pitch over the right field wall to send 25,000 people home happy, to send our group chat into hysterics, and to send Twins and AL Central fans to conspiracy theories involving wind tunnels.

5/22-Cleveland 6, NYM 3-In 2020, the Guardians traded one of their bona fide superstars to the New York Mets, a player who had captured the hearts of the fanbase, Mr. Smile, Francisco Lindor, who then signed one of the richest contracts in MLB history at 10 years, 341 million dollars. While his numbers had been good, they had not been what they were with Cleveland. He had made the playoffs once. The Mets were in a tailspin and he was hitting under .200. He talked openly about how he missed the winning here. Meanwhile, we had a player we received for him in Andres Gimenez who became the best defensive player in all of baseball, who we extended for 100 million dollars ourselves. As we came to bat in the sixth, we were lifeless and down 3-0, but a rally was started by none other than Austin Hedges with a surprise bunt. Suddenly, with two on, Gimenez took a fastball out of the park, letting out a scream that I could hear loud and clear on the north end of Columbus two hours away. He punctuated the reaction by stomping on home plate and kissing the C-L-E on the front of our newly-revealed City Connect jerseys, thereby clinching who I was getting as my version of them.

6/21-Cleveland 7, Toronto 1-At the end of 2021, newly separated and at the bottom of my personal barrel, I decided to rejoin Twitter after a nearly six month hiatus. I needed any connection. Shortly after, I met a man named Quincy Wheeler, who in turn connected me, directly, or indirectly, to a ton of Guardians fans on the site. I met many of those people for the first time that January in a Secret Santa gathering. We met again Opening Weekend in person. But it was here, on Pride Night, where I felt the most connected to these wonderful people, many of whom are LGBTQ themselves. The mother of the group, our beloved Meg, got to meet her favorite player, Austin Hedges, during a game where he hit a two run single. We screamed our heads off as Cookie Carrasco turned back the clock. My son literally couldn’t believe that I actually had friends(he wasn’t being insulting, I swear-he had literally never seen me in a friends group). On this night, baseball was family.

7/28-Cleveland 4, Philadelphia 3-Coming into late June and early July, the Guardians had been an inexplicable 51-26. During July, before and after the All-Star Break, we encountered our first real adversity of the year. Guys started to slump, we suddenly struggled to pull out wins. Into this stepped one of the best stories of the year, Jhonkensy Noel, a prospect who was known to have prodigious power, but also a ton of holes in his swing. However, needing power, and with him providing power in the minors that was impossible to ignore, up came this overgrown kid who radiated energy and swag, always looking to hit the ball over those mountains over there. Down 3-0, staring at yet another series loss to a perennial contender in Philly, the man we gave the best nickname in years, Big Christmas, continued his month of moonshots with a mammoth, 440 foot three run homer to the big boy part of the park in center field as my friend Peyton cheered wildly from her seats in right field. It was perhaps the most memorable of the 13 homers he hit in his first 120 plate appearances, winning several key games for a struggling team.

8/11-Cleveland 5, Minnesota 3-We had lost seven in a row. Minnesota was within 1.5 games. AL Central and Twin fans were putting up memes comparing us to Nazi Germany being closed in by the Allies, played by the Twins and Royals. Pleasant. After winning a low-scoring game, we were in yet another tight one. However, we had the most automatic closer in baseball in Emmanuel Clase. Here was yet another ten pitch, three hitter save, right? Wrong. The Twins loaded the bases with zero outs. Here was their chance to reverse the late inning mojo we had. Here was their chance to win three out of four, maintain momentum, and stay in the season series tiebreaker. Well….about that. Clase dotted a perfect cutter on a full count with the pressure on, got a strikeout, then got one of his patented GIDPs to jab the knife in the Twins. Commentators commented that this win felt like two wins. Well, it actually was. Not only did it restore our lead to 3.5 games, it gave us the season series tiebreaker on the Twins. They never seriously threatened us again.

8/28-Cleveland 7, Kansas City 5-Our next threat to address was Kansas City, and it was a threat that was even more serious than Minnesota, as they had largely dominated us this season to this point. They had won the first three games of a four game series in our place to pull even with us AND win the season series tiebreaker with us. Again, the AL Central fans had started to break out the memes, waiting for us to collapse. The Royals were up 5-2 in the seventh. Bo Naylor then jumpstarted us with a homer to plug in not only the team, but the crowd as well. This fed our guys to suddenly give us a throwback to the disgusting baseball of 2022 with a rally of five singles, most of them flares that make our opponents and their fans tear their hair out. Guards Ball had held the Royals off, and after a series win in Kansas City the next week, the Guards were on their way.

9/19-Cleveland 3, Minnesota 2-Minnesota swears they have more talent than us. They swear that we are lucky. They swear that at some point, we are going to collapse and that they will be the ones to win the late games. Well, since the last time we had dispatched of them, they had fallen into a tailspin, one that made them a desperate team not to win the division, but just to make the playoffs. Well, the first game of a four game series, Kyle Manzardo blasted a moonshot in the 8th inning to beat them. Two nights later, Rocchio sent them home with a walk off. And here they were, facing Andres Gimenez again, in a tie game, just as they were two years ago in a midsummer game that became famous for their announcer saying as Gimenez blasted a walkoff HR, complete with the putting to sleep celebration, “I think…we’ve had enough…of the Cleveland Guardians.” It turns out that everything old is new again, as yet again, Andres Gimenez had a walkoff hit, this time a hit that sent the Guardians to the playoffs and into a shower of alcohol as he reprised his going to sleep celebration. Minnesota, have you had enough of us yet?

9/25-Cleveland 5, Cincinnati 2-Four years ago, when we traded Francisco Lindor, I had resigned myself to Jose Ramirez leaving us eventually, too. It’s just the way things go with our franchise. We get our guys for 6-7 seasons, maybe eight if we extend them early, but they eventually leave us to get the bag. Belle did. Thome did. Lindor did. A funny thing happened, though, on the way to the eventual Progressive Field reunion where we gave Jose a standing ovation while wearing our Home Run Pitch shirts. He decided he liked it here and knew his life wouldn’t be any different with 200 million as opposed to 150. He’s still rich, and gets to play in a place that he loves. At that moment, he became our guy. The fact that he’s continued to perform at five to seven wins a season doesn’t hurt, either. He’s destined to be the next guy wearing our hat to go to Cooperstown. This game, on this night, technically had no meaning. We had everything clinched. But….as I sat there with the man who gave me this fandom for his Father’s Day gift, it felt like the culmination of everything we enjoyed this year. The first six innings of this bullpen game were perfect. No runs, no hits. It was a performance befitting of the best bullpen in baseball in over twenty years. And then, adversity hit, just as it did in July and August. It hit here too in the form of a bunt single that sent the fans into a fit of rage and it broke the brains of a team who was among the best in baseball defensively, committing three errors in two innings, leading to a tied game going into the eighth.

My all time favorite Cleveland baseball memory happened on July 18, 1995. All 1995, the Indians, the losers of 100 games three times in my childhood(usually in front of 70,000 empty seats), became this juggernaut in this beautiful new stadium in front of sellout crowds. Every game was a walkoff or a 10-2 obliteration. It was surreal and exhilarating, especially for a fifteen year old like me who had never experienced this with this team. To this point, we had already had double digit walkoffs, including an 8-0 comeback against the Cy Young award winner in David Cone, and the Manny Ramirez, “WOW,” walkoff against one of the top five closers of all time three days earlier with Dennis Eckersley. Down 5-3, the Indians built the rally in the 9th, getting one guy on, then another, the crowd getting louder. Then, as Carlos Baerga drew a walk to load the bases, he turned to Albert Belle, yelling, “Let’s go!” The pitcher, Lee Smith, was a HOFer, just like Eck. It didn’t matter. Baerga knew what was coming. Belle knew what was coming. WE knew what was coming. And somehow, knowing this somehow made it even cooler as we saw the grand slam sail 420 feet into the night.

With two outs in the eighth this night, Kwan got a hit. Then, Kyle Manzardo did. Just like that night 29 years ago, I felt it. My father felt it. The crowd felt it. So, when his three run homer flew out and he turned to the bench with a smirk that said, “I got you,” it further reinforced that Jose was and is OURS, and we are HIS. Baseball is great because it is every day over six months. We get to know our teams more intimately than any other team, and we get to know fellow fans in the same way.

Baseball may continue to change in how the game is played, but these are the great things about it that will never change.