Australian Travis Bazzana has continued his impressive rookie season with two home runs, helping Cleveland secure a crucial 7-6 win over the Chicago White Sox in its battle for a Major League Baseball play-off berth.<\/p>\n
The Guardians have beaten the White Sox at home in their last two games, meaning they trail Chicago by just half a game in the American League Central standings.<\/p>\n
Whoever finishes their division on top will go through to the post-season. Cleveland has topped the AL Central standings for the last two years.<\/p>\n
Even if they finish second behind the White Sox, the Guardians are also well placed to progress with a wildcard berth.<\/p>\n
It was the second time in his debut MLB season that Bazzana has hit two homers in a game. The first Australian number one baseball draft pick has racked up hits in his last five games.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday (AEST), the all-star second baseman hit a solo homer in the first inning to give Cleveland a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
The Guardians were 6-4 down in the bottom of the sixth when Bazzana hit another solo shot.<\/p>\n
Brayan Rocchio ripped a two-run double with two outs in the ninth inning, scoring two runs to win the game.<\/p>\n
The shortstop, nicknamed “Rocctember” and “Playoff Rocchio” for his late-season heroics, starred with two for three, including a walk and two runners batted in (RBIs).<\/p>\n
Bazzana hit two for four with two RBIs.<\/p>\n
The Guardians improved to a 77-75 record and have 10 games left in the regular season, while the White Sox are at 77-74.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian Travis Bazzana has continued his impressive rookie season with two home runs, helping Cleveland secure a crucial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,4034,30050,67138,591,85,258653,23871],"class_list":["post-893749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baseball","tag-guardians","tag-home-run","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-travis-bazzana","tag-white-sox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}