Ramirez Takes the Blame as Two Miscues Sink the Guardians in ALCS Game 2

Jose Ramirez carried the Guardians into a Game 1 win on Monday night. On Tuesday he handed the Rays the tying win, in one fourth inning he will be replaying all winter: a mental mistake, then a grounder that found the one bad seam in the infield, then three unearned runs in a 3-1 loss that sends the ALCS to Cleveland level at 1-1 instead of 2-0 to the Guardians.

What happened in the fourth inning?

Everything, in about five pitches. The game was scoreless with Victor Mesa Jr. on first and two outs when Chandler Simpson beat out a high chopper to shortstop Brayan Rocchio, AP reports. Ramirez, shifted toward second base against the left-handed hitter, took a few steps toward the play and watched the throw go to first, leaving third base uncovered behind him. Mesa saw it, rounded second and took third standing up while Ramirez tried in vain to catch up. Four pitches later, Ben Williamson hit a two-hopper toward third that struck the edge where the artificial turf meets the dirt, skipped between Ramirez’s legs into left field and scored Mesa. On the very next pitch, Liam Hicks pulled a slider into right-center for a two-run single and a 3-0 lead. Three runs, all unearned, on one uncovered base and one bad bounce.

Why did the grounder beat Ramirez?

Because Tropicana Field’s infield has a seam, and the ball found it. Ramirez explained through an interpreter that the surface plays a little faster, that he was positioned parallel to the base, and that the ball bounced right on the edge between the dirt and the turf, AP reports. Manager Stephen Vogt’s read was less about the hop and more about the feet: Ramirez got stuck, Vogt said, and sat back with his feet set instead of moving them, AP reports. Both things can be true. The bounce was genuinely awkward, and a third baseman of Ramirez’s class, a seven-time All-Star who has finished in the top five of MVP voting six times, expects to knock it down anyway. He homered off the lowest pitch of the postseason-tracking era against Chicago last week; this week the fine margins ran the other way.

How big is the swing from Game 1 to Game 2?

Total. On Monday, Ramirez had three hits and scored twice in the 7-3 win, his leadoff single starting the go-ahead rally in the eighth and his baserunning keying the put-away ninth, USA Today reports. He reached this series on a run of form that included home runs in Games 4 and 5 of the division series Cleveland won from 2-0 down, making him the first Cleveland player to homer in consecutive postseason games since Francisco Lindor in 2018, AP reports. Tuesday’s starter opposite him, Tampa Bay’s Freddy Peralta, threw six shutout innings, FOX Sports reports, and Cleveland’s only run was Chase DeLauter’s RBI double in the seventh. A series that could have gone to Cleveland 2-0 instead goes there level, with the Rays’ bullpen closing this one out cleanly behind Ian Seymour and a perfect ninth from Bryan Baker.

Is this becoming a pattern in these playoffs?

Errors are deciding innings everywhere this October. Milwaukee’s Logan Henderson threw away two runs in NLCS Game 2 against the Dodgers, and the Yankees made four errors in an ALDS game against these same Rays, three of them in a first inning unseen since 1909. The Ramirez case is different in one way that matters: the player involved is the franchise cornerstone, not a fringe arm or a fill-in, and the first mistake was not physical at all. Leaving the base uncovered is a concentration error, and it is the one Vogt can coach out before Thursday. The turf seam he cannot coach, which is the honest split in this story: half of the fourth inning was avoidable, and half was the building.

What happens next in the series?

Game 3 is Thursday at Progressive Field, with the series in Cleveland for three games, USA Today reports, and MLB has since moved it up five hours to a 1 p.m. start to beat the Cleveland rain. Ramirez gets the home crowd that watched him drag this team through a 2-0 division-series hole, and he was clear about the personal ledger: it is frustrating, he feels bad that the runs came after his play, AP reports. The Guardians had played flawless baseball through their four straight wins before Tuesday. One sloppy inning is all that separates that version of this team from a 1-1 series, and the margin says as much about Cleveland’s pitching, which held Tampa Bay scoreless for the other eight innings, as it does about its third baseman.