CLEVELAND — Before Tanner Bibee could sit on the dugout bench, wipe the sweat from his face and guzzle a Gatorade in the bottom of the third inning, Rhys Hoskins had launched a first-pitch sinker to the E. 9th Street Pier.For much of the season, Bibee has received paltry run support, and his coping mechanism has been to stress how he’s playing a separate game from his offense. He can only control his effort on the mound, not what the Guardians’ bats produce (or don’t).On Monday night, however, he couldn’t help but marvel at the activity unfolding before him. The beauty of baseball, it’s often said, is that you never know when you might witness the most far-fetched scenario your brain can fathom.On Sunday, the Guardians essentially created a compilation video for Little League coaches to show their kids, a crash course in fumbling the fundamentals. They didn’t cover bases, didn’t step on bases, didn’t slide into bases and didn’t reach bases safely.On Monday, they simply trotted around the bases, over and over, as they morphed into some blend of the 1927 New York Yankees and the Monstars from the first half of “Space Jam,” with a 13-4 win over the Minnesota Twins that had Hoskins, manager Stephen Vogt and every Cleveland fan saying: “We needed that.”The team that ranked 27th in the league in home runs sent a barrage of baseballs to Neptune against a pitcher, Joe Ryan, whom plenty of contenders are surely salivating at the thought of acquiring before the Aug. 3 trade deadline. The team that has looked mostly hapless at the plate the last two months unloaded eight singles, seven home runs, four doubles, two walks and, on Christmas In July Night at Progressive Field, a partridge in a pear tree.The Guardians scored in each of the first seven innings for the seventh time in franchise history, and only the second time in the last 60 years (the other: May 29, 2019, at Boston). The only inning in which they did not score came against Alex Jackson, the Twins’ backup catcher who, according to Statcast, tossed one 75.5-mph fastball and nine eephus pitches that averaged 46.5 mph. Jackson’s finesse-based arsenal kept the Guardians from becoming the 22nd team in league history to score in every inning. Again, baseball is maddeningly, charmingly nonsensical.Petey Halpin almost tagged Jackson for a two-out homer, the ball instead succumbing to gravity near the warning track. He had to settle for a two-homer night — the first two of his big-league career.
Guardians partake in a much-needed (and unexpected) game of home run derby
Cleveland hit six homers in the first four innings of a game for the first time in at least 50 years.








