Chicago is also postseason-bound<\/a> after defeating the Kansas City Royals 9-1 earlier Thursday.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Champagne is burning my eyes, and that\u2019s a good thing,\u201d said Adell, who has 22 home runs and 93 RBIs this season. \u201cWhen I came here, I was so psyched with the ability to be who I am and help this team make a push to this point. We\u2019ve had a lot of games where we\u2019ve had to grind and try to figure it out, but to win a 1-0 game with the pitching performances we got is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does it mean to lead a team to three consecutive trips to MLB\u2019s second season?<\/p>\n
\u201cOur fans get to watch playoff baseball. This is why we play. We play for our fans and we\u2019re proud that we\u2019re going again,\u201d Vogt said.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Cleveland rode a 20-8 record in September to earn an invite to the postseason. After Angel Mart\u00ednez homered for the game\u2019s lone run on Thursday and All-Star closer Cade Smith struck out the side in the ninth inning for his MLB-best 41st save, the Guardians improved to 14-8 this month with three games remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve been positioned all three years, but with our pitching and our lineup, we have the opportunity to hit with people (in scoring position). That hasn\u2019t always been the case. I really like the way this offense has been clicking over the last couple of months, and we\u2019re pitching well,\u201d Vogt said. \u201cYou got hot at the right time, and this team is getting hot in September.\u201d<\/p>\n
The postseason berth might be secured, but the AL Central is still up for grabs. Cleveland heads into the final series of the regular season with a one-game lead over Chicago. The Guardians will play three games at Kansas City while the White Sox host the Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n
The winner of the Central will clinch the No. 2 seed in the American League bracket and won\u2019t have to worry about the best-of-three Wild Card Series.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not done,\u201d Adell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne pitch at a time, one day at a time,\u201d Mart\u00ednez said. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s about enjoying. Tomorrow is another day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014\u00a0Jo Adell isn\u2019t much of a sparkling wine guy. \u201cI am tonight,\u201d said the outfielder with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[41445,2722,2724,852,363,3,6454,90616,99,452],"class_list":["post-860359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-cleveland","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-cleveland-guardians","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}