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#GuardsBall = Garbage Baseball, someone had to say it - Opinion by Tim Shirer
I want to start off with, I love baseball, it’s my favorite sport and it’s not even close. Everything about the game is great when you play it right. But it can be awful when it is run by people who don’t actually care about the game and become obsessed with numbers and small samples.
The negatives I listed above are 100% what #GuardsBall is. It is absolutely unwatchable in 2026. Guardians’ fans deserve better. I’m not going to blame Paul Dolan although he hired the guy I’m going to blame. That guy is Chris Antonetti. Antonetti has become a victim of the “I’m the smartest guy in the world” syndrome.
This guy and his analytics nerds are happy with platooning and destroying young players due to lack of consistent playing time. Look at the track record since Antonetti took over, yes, they make the playoffs more than they don’t. A lot of us want them to win the World Series. For those of us who have been waiting 50+ years we are no longer satisfied with just making the postseason and getting eliminated in the wild card or division round. Since Antonetti or as he was referred to in the Lake County Press Box (Classic Park) when he worked as Mark Shapiro’s assistant “Boy Bot” became team president the team has qualified for the post season seven times and has been eliminated in the wild card or division round five of the seven years. Yeah, it’s great to experience playoff baseball, but it would be even better to win a little bit when the team gets there.
That brings us to this season, don’t worry, we’ll rehash the past 11 years some more. But this season it has become really annoying when the team uses the slogan #GuardBall. Let’s be honest, #GaurdBall has become a negative slogan, because it means let’s hope we score and every once in while we will score in an odd manner and promote it like we’re great it. That’s what it’s become.
Since 2021, the Guardians offense led strictly by an all in analytics approach has never come close to averaging 5 runs a game, their highest runs per game average in the last 6 seasons is 4.37, yes, 4.37 and that was in the 2024 when they lost in the ALCS to the New York Yankees.
Do you want some proof that you need to average more than 4.37 runs a game to win a World Series? Not one team has averaged 4.37 runs per game in the last 10 seasons and won the World Series. To take it one step further, 9 of the 10 teams to win the World Series averaged more than 5 runs per game.
But the millennials that make up a large part of the fans base and who are all in on analytics (in most cases because they can’t judge a player by just watching them) believe in the horrible philosophy of platoon and data only driven lineups.
This philosophy is not only losing the team games, but it is absolutely holding the organization back from developing talent. When was the last time a guy who was a top prospect in the organization that wasn’t a college drat pick became an everyday outfielder for the Indians/Guardians? I’ll wait.
It hasn’t happened since Antonetti has been in charge. He would rather bring in outfielders who have failed other places, were nothing special or past their prime like Stuart Fairchild (I could write w whole commentary on why that signing was disgusting from the second it happened), Nolan Jones, Ramon Laureano, Kole Calhoun, Ben Gamel, Daniel Johnson, Carlos Gonzalez, Leonys Martin.
I bet any baseball writer who has covered the game for a long period of time can count on one hand how many team presidents have screwed up so bad that they had to fly to the city their team was playing in to talk to the team because they gave up on their them at the deadline. Antonetti is one of them.
What Antonetti also knows is, the Dolan family are extremely loyal people. He knows his job is safe, even though his teams have been mediocre at best. But this #GuardBall team in 2026 is absolutely unwatchable garbage right now.
I’ll be honest, I don’t see it getting better any time soon.?
POSTED 08/06/2026 15:58
