CLEVELAND — Eight hours before Francisco Lindor was to play shortstop for the Mets in their wild-card series opener, the second pitch of the game in Cleveland on Friday afternoon was a rocket of a one-hopper that knocked Cleveland second baseman Andrés Giménez backward, smack onto his rear end.
As he has been doing with verve all season, he sprung up and made the play.
“What can I say?” Giménez said after the Guardians edged Tampa Bay, 2-1, behind starter Shane Bieber’s brilliance, closer Emmanuel Clase’s dominance, third baseman José Ramírez’s power and, of course, the keystone combination of Giménez and shortstop Amed Rosario.
“It was a rocket,” Giménez said with a small chuckle that was more sigh of relief than laugh. “Obviously, I was ready for it. When you can make a catch like that to help your team in the first inning, it’s important.”
Less than two years ago, this day surely seemed light-years away for Cleveland baseball fans. It was on Jan. 7, 2021, that the ball club, unable to reach a contract agreement with Lindor, shipped him to the Mets for four players. Two of them were Giménez and Rosario. A four-time All-Star and enormously popular both in the clubhouse and around town, Lindor left a gaping chasm in his departure.
It didn’t close much last year as Giménez, Cleveland’s Opening Day shortstop, struggled offensively over the season’s first six weeks and was dispatched to Class AAA Columbus for nearly two months.
It also didn’t appear as if it were going to close much by Opening Day this year, when Rosario dropped a fly ball in left field to start the bottom of the fifth inning in a 3-1 Guardians loss.
But it wound up closing significantly this year as a young, raw team grew up far more quickly than expected. And at the top of the list was Giménez, 24, who has produced one of the more remarkable seasons in club history.
Not only did his 7.2 wins above replacement rank third in the American League behind two men who produced historic seasons — the Yankees’ Aaron Judge (10.6) and the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani (9.6) — it was also the highest by a second baseman in his age-23-or-younger season since the Philadelphia Athletics’ Eddie Collins in 1910 (10.5).
It also is the second-highest for a Cleveland player in his age-23-or-younger season after Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1911 (9.2). And that is in an organization that lists Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Lou Boudreau, Larry Doby and Kenny Lofton among its all-time roster.
“Something I like about him is that he never stopped working,” said another Cleveland blast from the past, Carlos Baerga, the former infielder who now hosts a local podcast. “When he went to the minor leagues, he worked hard.”
Since early June, Giménez has played almost exclusively at second base. When he started there for the American League in July, replacing an injured Jose Altuve, he became the youngest Cleveland player to start an All-Star Game since Bob Feller, then 22, in 1941.
“You know who he reminds me of? Roberto Alomar,” Baerga said of the Hall of Famer. “He’s that kind of special player, turning double plays and going side-to-side at second base.”
Giménez didn’t need much range to field that early-game, one-hop smash as Cleveland pushed the Rays to the brink of elimination in their best-of-three series. But he’s certainly exhibited range far beyond second base in honing his game over these past 12 months. Aside from sliding over from shortstop to second, he dropped the leg kick he used last year while batting in favor of a toe tap, which aids him as a timing mechanism.
He uses the whole field and hits right-handers well (.286 batting average) and left-handers dangerously well (.336). His overall batting average this year was .297 in 146 games, as opposed to .218 in 68 games in 2021.
“Last year was his first year with us,” said Manager Terry Francona, who has proved himself as something of a rookie whisperer this year with his handling of a young roster. “So, not only was he young, English is his second language, and with a new team, but he was trying to get two hits every day so he could stay in the lineup. And I understand that. You try to tell guys, you don’t have to go about it that way, but I understand it.”
This year, Giménez doesn’t even resemble that player.
“He’s playing to help us win every day and whether it’s bunting or hitting or playing second,” Francona said. “He’s just kind of growing up. When you have those kind of tools, you start to see them come out. Then, when guys get confident, they start doing things maybe they didn’t do before, or they do it more, on a more consistent basis.”
Trading an icon like Lindor is never easy, on many levels. The most immediate and obvious aspect is the emotional blow to the team’s fan base and to the team itself. But further down the road comes the true test, when club officials essentially get graded on their evaluation skills. Running an $82 million payroll, as the Guardians are this year (28th in M.L.B.), there is precious little room for error.
To win the American League Central just two seasons after dealing Lindor is a testament not only to Francona, but also to Chris Antonetti, Cleveland’s president of baseball operations, and Mike Chernoff, its general manager.
“It’s a good reminder for young players out there,” Chernoff said of Giménez’s turnaround. “When you get to the big leagues, you always face adversity. And it’s about how you bounce back from that adversity. Just the way that he has taken a consistent mental approach to his at-bats this year.”
Chernoff noted that Giménez didn’t allow last year’s disappointment to damage him.
“He let it play out this year,” Chernoff said. “He just put his head down and continued to improve. And now he’s one of the best defensive second basemen in all of baseball, and his bat has really come around.”
Looking back, Giménez said he was surprised when the Mets told him they were trading him, but an even bigger surprise came this July when Francona informed him that he was an All-Star. The team was in Kansas City, and the manager gathered the players in the clubhouse and announced that José Ramírez and Clase were going to Dodger Stadium. Then, Francona started to walk away before turning and dramatically saying that, oh, by the way, Giménez made the team, too.
A roar went up in the clubhouse, and Giménez soon went to the dugout to break the news to his wife and mother in an emotional FaceTime call. At the game, he was especially touched when Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera, his countryman and a national hero in Venezuela, made it a special point to congratulate him.
“Pretty cool,” Giménez said.
Friday, after fielding Yandy Diaz’s first-inning smash, Giménez made a snappy turn to complete an inning-ending double play in the second as Bieber threw seven and two-thirds innings of one-run ball. Rosario collected two hits, the second of which came just ahead of Ramírez’s home run that made all the difference.
“You never know how it’s going to play out,” Chernoff said of the trade. “But obviously, thankfully, we’ve been fortunate in how it’s played out so far.”
