Guardians' magic ain't done yet — and Brayan Rocchio has found his cape

Billy Heyen

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Guardians' magic ain't done yet — and Brayan Rocchio has found his cape image

The three biggest moments delivered by the Cleveland Guardians in the win that kept their season alive came from three players who spent a significant portion of the season in the minor leagues.

Without George Valera, Chase DeLauter and especially Brayan Rocchio, these Guardians would be going home for good. But because of them, they'll be back at Progressive Field on Thursday afternoon to try and eliminate the Detroit Tigers in the third and decisive game of the AL Wild Card Round.

Rocchio is the headliner, the No. 9 hitter who belted his second massive home run this week, this time to take a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the eighth. The Guardians had sent him down earlier this season to figure his bat out and to learn second base.

It's not like Rocchio has been on fire since his return. But his homer Sunday secured the division title in walk-off fashion, and now the go-ahead blast Wednesday broke the game open for Cleveland.

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Valera is the one who opened the scoring. He had just reached double-digit regular season games by the final week of the season, but on Thursday, the moment didn't faze him. He took a fastball in his first at bat 411 feet to right field for a 1-0 lead.

And then there's DeLauter, the rookie centerfielder making his major league debut, just the sixth guy to do so in a postseason game.

DeLauter dropped the first fly ball hit to him, an adventure in the wind and the sun.

But on his next key outfield chance, he threw a bullet to third base to cut down a runner, which in turn prevented another run from scoring that hadn't gotten to home plate before the third out. For most of the game, that was the play that kept a 1-1 game tied instead of a Cleveland deficit.

And isn't that how it works with a team like this?

The Guardians don't make a whole lot of sense. They went on a legitimate, terrible, no good things about it 10-game losing streak in July. But then by the stretch run, they were winning 17 of 19 games and making up a 15.5-game deficit on the Tigers to win the AL Central title.

There's some baseball magic in the air, to be sure.

That showed on the mound on Wednesday, when in four consecutive middle innings, the Guardians allowed two Tigers to reach base, and all four times stranded two runners.

And then after Rocchio opened the floodgates, the party was on in the eighth. Steven Kwan doubled. Daniel Schneeman doubled. Eventually, Bo Naylor hit a three-run home run for a 6-1 lead.

And so it'll all come down to one game, at least for this round, for the right to play more baseball this season.

There might not be a ton of rational reasons to bet on the Guardians to pull something like this off once more.

But baseball, at its best, is just a little irrational. That's how the Guardians are in this spot at all.

And with just the right amount of magic, irrationality and never-give-up-ness, the Guardians are still playing baseball tomorrow. There's no better feeling than that.

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Billy Heyen

Billy Heyen is a freelance writer with The Sporting News. He is a 2019 graduate of Syracuse University who has written about many sports and fantasy sports for The Sporting News. Sports reporting work has also appeared in a number of newspapers, including the Sandusky Register and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle