Chicago’s 9-6 loss to Colorado<\/a> gave the Guardians (85-76) a two-game lead over the second-place White Sox (83-78) with one game remaining in the regular season.<\/p>\nJos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez and the Guardians are assured the No. 2 seed in the American League playoffs and a first-round bye into a best-of-five Division Series. They will have five days off and then home-field advantage against the winner of a best-of-three Wild Card Series between the No. 6 seed White Sox and either Houston or Texas \u2014 whichever one wins the AL West on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It is Cleveland’s seventh division crown in the past 11 seasons.<\/p>\n
Kansas City jumped on Tanner Bibee for three first-inning runs, highlighted by doubles from Carter Jensen and Jac Caglianone. But then Bibee shut out Kansas City as Cleveland quickly mounted a comeback.<\/p>\n
A fielding error by Bobby Witt Jr. at shortstop opened the Guardians\u2019 four-run second inning. Bailey hooked a two-run homer off the right-field foul pole, and Cleveland grabbed a 4-3 lead when Steven Kwan\u2019s slicing liner eluded diving left fielder Isaac Collins for an RBI triple \u2014 one of four extra-base hits in the inning.<\/p>\n
After missing four games with a right wrist sprain, Chase DeLauter lined Michael Wacha\u2019s second pitch of the third into the right-field seats for his 16th home run.<\/p>\n
Travis Bazzana tripled and scored on Nathaniel Lowe\u2019s sacrifice fly in the sixth, and Rocchio hit his 14th homer in the seventh. Bailey and Rocchio connected for back-to-back homers to highlight a four-run ninth.<\/p>\n
Nine of the Guardians\u2019 14 hits went for extra bases.<\/p>\n
Bibee (7-15) allowed three runs and seven hits in six innings, striking out six. Cleveland has won nine of 10 games and five straight series.<\/p>\n
Wacha (9-10) worked 6 1\/3 innings, permitting six runs \u2014 two earned \u2014 and six hits.<\/p>\n
The last-place Royals (68-93) have dropped 11 of 13 and 18 of 24. Kansas City lost eight straight series to finish the season, its longest such skid since losing eight in a row from April 10 to May 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
The Guardians were undecided on the mound for their regular-season finale Sunday against LHP Daniel Lynch (6-6, 4.13 ERA) and the Royals.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Once again, the Cleveland Guardians are division champs. Patrick Bailey and Brayan Rocchio each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,4034,591,6784,64736,76512,85],"class_list":["post-907072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-world-series","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907072","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=907072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}