Jose hits two bombs in Guards win

 Jose Ramirez hit a pair of home runs, and the Cleveland Guardians didn’t wilt when the Orioles stormed back as they came away with an 8-4 win on Sunday, April 19, at Progressive Field.

Ramirez hit home runs No. 5 and No. 6 to lead Cleveland, which jumped out to a 5-0 lead; saw Baltimore close to within one run at 5-4 before taking control of the contest again.

Ramirez’s second homer in the bottom of the fifth gave Cleveland a 6-4 lead, and Brayan Rocchio’s two-run single in the bottom of the eighth broke the affair open.

Joey Cantillo started and went 4 ⅔ innings. He could not get the third out of the fifth inning to qualify for the win.

He did strike out six and allowed five hits.

Rocchio had three hits and three RBI.

Cleveland, wearing the red jersey and white pant combination uniform, received  a strong effort from the bullpen. Peyton Pallette pitched two shutout innings. Erik Sabrowski struck out the side in a scoreless eighth inning and Shawn Armstrong pitched a scoreless ninth.

Matt Festa, who came on to record the final out of the fifth inning in relief of Cantillo, picked up the win for Cleveland.

It was the second straight performance for the Cleveland bullpen after it was torched in a come-from-ahead 6-4 loss to the Orioles on April 17, in which it wasted a 4-0 lead. With the win, Cleveland improved to 13-10.

A crowd of 17,408 had to battle through temps in the 40s under partly cloudy skies, there was actually a lot of sunshine. For example, Jose was drenched in sunlight when he hit one of his homers. But it was chilly. I did not attend the game, although I had a ticket through the Ballpark Pass.

How are they trending

The Guardians  have split their last 10 games and are in first place by a ½ game over Detroit and 1 ½ games over Minnesota.

Up next:

Houston comes to town with games on Monday and Tuesday night and a Wednesday matinee. Slade Ceconni takes the mound on Monday night for Cleveland  at 6:10 p.m. against Houston right-hander Spencer Arrighetti. Houston is in last place in the American League West and is  8-15. The Astros have lost 8-of-their-last-10 games, including four in a row, and are a putrid 1-9 on the road.