@CSN216
Account based inUnited States
About this account
- Account based in
- United States
- Connected via
- United States App Store
Account-level information from X, not a live location or the device used for a specific post.
The Analyst that Bleeds. Covering Cleveland Sports
Joined February 2026
- Tweets255
- Following90
- Followers33
- Likes444
Cleveland Sports Network retweeted
WHAT?! Tony Grossi was asked which QB he thinks gives the Browns the best chance to win.
"I’d say Sanders now. I’m off the Watson train."
ALDS tickets at Progressive Field went on sale at 10 a.m. today — online only at CLEGuardians.com/postseason, six per game, mobile only. If a game is never played, the refund is automatic at the end of the postseason, minus the order fee.
The part worth understanding is that Cleveland also put Wild Card Series tickets on sale Monday, and those two sales are for outcomes that cannot both happen.
In the twelve-team format, the top two division winners skip the Wild Card round and host the Division Series. The third division winner hosts a best-of-three Wild Card Series, then plays the entire ALDS on the road if it advances. A club hosts a Wild Card Series or it hosts ALDS games. Never both — anyone playing the Wild Card round is by definition not a bye team, and no wild card club ever hosts an ALDS game. That fork holds whether Cleveland wins the Central or falls to a wild card.
If the season ended today Cleveland is on the right side of that line, and it is stranger than it sounds. The AL division leaders are Tampa Bay at 93-59, Cleveland at 78-75 and Houston at 76-76. Second-best record among the three is the two seed and the bye. A team that has been outscored by seven runs on the season would get it.
So the path to a home ALDS game is narrower than first place: win the Central, and finish clear of whoever wins a .500 AL West, where Houston and Texas are tied at 76-76.
Nothing is clinched — not the division, not a berth. Cleveland leads Chicago by a half game with nine to play, and the magic number is ten. Ten with nine left means they cannot finish this by themselves: win every remaining game and Chicago, with ten to play, can still tie them. At least one White Sox loss has to come from somewhere.
Buy the seat if you want it. Just know you are buying one of two Octobers, and the other one refunds.
Figures: MLB Stats API. Ticket terms: the Guardians' postseason ticket page. On-sale details: WKYC, Fox 8 and Cleveland 19; reported by Joe Noga, cleveland.com.
Cleveland Sports Network retweeted
Jon Gruden called for the Browns to make a change at quarterback, advocating for Shedeur Sanders to get an extended opportunity while using Taylen Green in a specialized role.
"I'd probably start Taylen Green from Arkansas because he has a blank slate. I had Green in here in the offseason. Honestly, the man is 6'6. He can run 4.35. I know he can hand the ball off and run bootlegs and create plays. But I would go with Shedeur Sanders. I would want to see what he looks like for an extended period. And I'd start giving Taylen Green some reps and let him come in and run some short yardage, run some goal line, have a package of plays where we can utilize his athleticism. We just need a change, and we need a fresh start, I think."
(via Fanta in 60 | NBC Sports)
Call them your FIRST PLACE @CLEGuardians!
ALT Final Score Graphic: 9/16/26 Chicago White Sox 3 (77-75), Cleveland Guardians 6 (78-75) Pictured: Petey Halpin yells as he rounds the bases after his 3-run homer. He wears a white Guardians uniform with red and black lettering and a black helmet.
Guardians 6, White Sox 3, and Cleveland is alone in first place in the AL Central for the first time since July 3. Chicago had been there 74 days.
Five hits. Six walks. Six runs, and every one of the six RBI came with two outs — Halpin three, Adell two, Ramírez one. Six walks made the traffic, and one Halpin swing drove in three of the six.
Petey Halpin's three-run homer in the sixth, two down, off Sean Newcomb, was the swing. It ties his career high in RBI rather than setting one, and he is hitting .217 with a .581 OPS. That is the honest frame: this was his night, not his level, and the win counts the same.
Parker Messick went six innings, struck out eight and walked nobody. The command was the story rather than the strikeouts — his season high in a start is 12, but this was his seventh start this year without a walk. He is 12-9 with a 2.57 ERA. Cade Smith got the last four outs for his 37th save in 42 chances.
José Ramírez doubled twice and now has 424 career doubles, tying Nap Lajoie for second in franchise history. Only Tris Speaker's 486 is above him.
Nine games left for Cleveland, ten for Chicago, and they do not play each other again — the White Sox won the season series 7-6. The magic number is ten.
Stephen Vogt, after: "It feels good. It doesn't mean anything yet. We've got a job to do for nine more games."
Figures: MLB Stats API. First-place history, the 74 days and quotes: AP.
"I anticipate Deshaun will be our starter." That was Todd Monken on Monday. Cleveland practised Wednesday and he stuck with it, so Watson is still the expected starter Sunday in Tampa.
Anticipate was the word on Monday. Asked whether the staff had discussed a change, Monken said they hadn't — "just confirmed it when I looked at the tape." Asked Wednesday whether Watson is playing to earn a Week 3 start, he wouldn't take the framing: "I always expect our players to play well. I wouldn't put them out there if I didn't."
The tape was 16 of 22 for 205 yards, a touchdown, an interception and five sacks in a 34-10 loss. It was also Watson's first football since October 20, 2024, the afternoon he tore his Achilles, which he then re-tore in rehab and lost a season to.
The other thing that's true: Dillon Gabriel is on injured reserve with a back injury and can't come back until after Week 4. So Sunday's alternative is Shedeur Sanders, with Taylen Green behind him as the emergency third. That is the room.
Browns at Baker Mayfield's Buccaneers, 1:00 Sunday.
Reporting: Todd Monken via ESPN and cleveland.com (Monday) and NBC Sports' ProFootballTalk (Wednesday); clevelandbrowns.com. Figures: ESPN.
The Browns placed Dylan Sampson on injured reserve Tuesday with a knee injury. That is four games minimum, which puts his earliest return at October 18 against Baltimore.
He was hurt on special teams. Two kickoff returns for 64 yards in the first quarter at Jacksonville, one of them a 37-yarder to open the game, and then he was gone — questionable to return, then out before halftime, without ever taking an offensive snap.
Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com reports an MRI on Monday confirmed a significant knee sprain. Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports he is expected to miss significant time. Nobody has reported structural damage or surgery, and the club's own transaction says only "knee".
What Cleveland is without, judged on last season rather than this one: as a rookie he played 15 games, ran 65 times for 175 yards and caught 33 passes on 40 targets. The catching is the harder part to replace — a back defenses have to account for on third down is a different job. This year he had no carries and no targets before he got hurt, so what Cleveland loses is a role it had not used yet.
Jaleel McLaughlin comes up from the practice squad to take the roster spot.
Sampson's season so far is 64 yards on two kick returns and a walk to the locker room. The job Cleveland drafted him to do is still waiting for him in October.
Reporting: clevelandbrowns.com; Mary Kay Cabot, cleveland.com; Jeremy Fowler, ESPN. Figures: ESPN.
Guardians 7, White Sox 6. Brayan Rocchio's two-out double in the ninth off Grant Taylor scored Daniel Schneemann and David Fry, both pinch runners, and Cleveland wakes up half a game back with ten to play.
The sixth is why it was needed, and it died in two stages. Craig Yoho came on with a 4-2 lead, got one out, walked two and left the bases loaded. Hunter Gaddis relieved him, and all three of those runners scored, plus one of his own. Four in the inning, and a two-run lead was a two-run deficit.
Cleveland hit the ball hard and got eight hits out of it. Thirteen of 31 batted balls left the bat at 95-plus mph. The hardest was Jo Adell's 110.1 mph home run in the first; the next two, Nathaniel Lowe at 108.0 and Petey Halpin at 106.7, were groundouts. Nineteen balls left Cleveland bats harder than Rocchio's 88.8 mph double. Thirteen of the nineteen were outs.
That is the 26th-ranked scoring offense winning a baseball game, and it did it without Chase DeLauter (wrist soreness) and Angel Martínez (flank inflammation), both out of the lineup per MLB.com. Travis Bazzana homered twice. Cade Smith got the last five outs.
Rocchio beat these same White Sox on July 2 too, a two-run homer off Grant Taylor. Same pitcher, eleven weeks apart.
Cleveland holds the last AL wild card by a game and a half and sits half a game behind Chicago. The White Sox have also already clinched the season series, whatever happens today. Parker Messick against Anthony Kay at 1:10 this afternoon, the last meeting of the year.
Figures: MLB Stats API. Walk-off history and injuries: MLB.com.
Tonight's lineup vs the White Sox, and the team Cleveland is chasing is in the other dugout. The Guardians are half a game back. Gavin Williams on the mound, Sean Newcomb for Chicago.
José Ramírez is back in the lineup and batting second after sitting Sunday. Chase DeLauter, second on Sunday, hits third tonight with the best OPS in the order at .819. Travis Bazzana, who drove in three from that spot Sunday, hits fifth. The club hasn't explained either change.
Williams brings 228 strikeouts into it, tied for third in baseball. Steven Kwan and his .375 on-base percentage lead off in front of everybody. Half a game, and the answer to it starts at 6:40.
Figures: MLB Stats API.
Guardians 9, Twins 2, and the White Sox lost to St. Louis. Cleveland is half a game out of first with 12 to play, and the next three are against Chicago, starting Monday.
This wasn't a night of lucky timing. Cleveland had 14 hits and three home runs and hit .359 as a team, from a lineup that hits .237 on the season. That is a lot of hitting from a team that ranks 27th in baseball in runs, and one nine-run game doesn't change the 27th.
This morning I pointed at the reshuffled order. Travis Bazzana, up from seventh to third, went 2-for-4 with a home run, and all three of his RBI came with two outs. The part I singled out was half right. Steven Kwan was on base four times, but Chase DeLauter, hitting right behind him, went 1-for-4 with a walk, grounded into a double play and drove in nobody. That's one night for each of them, and a batting order doesn't get graded in one night.
Jo Adell's third-inning homer left the bat at 116.8 mph and went an estimated 451 feet, the hardest-hit home run by a Cleveland player in the Statcast era, per the AP. Tanner Bibee went 6.2 innings and struck out seven.
José Ramírez didn't play, and the club hasn't said why. Before the game, Connor Brogdon was called up from Columbus and Franco Aleman was optioned there.
Half a game, 12 to play, and the team they're chasing is next. That's the good kind of nervous.
Reporting: AP. Figures: MLB Stats API.
Jaguars 34, Browns 10. It was 24-0 at halftime of Todd Monken's first game as a head coach.
Both teams had the ball nine times. Cleveland went 1-for-8 on third down, 0-for-2 in the red zone and turned it over twice, and that's how 272 yards becomes 10 points. The flags are part of why third down went that way: 11 for 75 yards, most of them before the snap, per the AP. One stretch before halftime stacked a hold, a false start and a delay of game into a first-and-30, per Tony Grossi of The Land On Demand.
Deshaun Watson, in his first start since 2024, went 16 of 22 for 205 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and was sacked five times. That was the question going in: a rookie tackle making his first start at right guard, and no Parker Brailsford at center, inactive with a thumb injury. Five sacks is one week's answer. Nobody has reported which blocks were lost, so I'm not assigning them. Watson's touchdown, a 46-yarder to Denzel Boston in the fourth, was the first of the rookie's career and Cleveland's only one of the day.
Dylan Sampson left in the first quarter with a knee injury and did not return. The team hasn't said more than that.
Trevor Lawrence threw four touchdowns and posted a 150.6 rating, a career high, per the AP. Cleveland sacked him once.
On Saturday I wrote that everything before kickoff was working from memory. Now there's a real number. It's 34-10, and five sacks against one is the part I'll be watching next week.
Reporting: AP; Tony Grossi, The Land On Demand; clevelandbrowns.com. Figures: ESPN.
Myles Garrett is having arthroscopic surgery on his knee and going on injured reserve, per Tom Pelissero. That's at least four games. He played the Rams' opener on Thursday, and the surgery comes days later.
Mary Kay Cabot raised that the injury could affect the 2027 first-round pick the Browns got in the trade. It can, but only one way: if the Rams lose more without him, that pick lands earlier. No reported term ties that pick to his games, his snaps or his sacks.
The trade does carry one condition, and it's on a different pick. The 2029 third-rounder becomes a first-rounder if the Rams ever trade Garrett to Pittsburgh, Baltimore or Cincinnati, per Cabot. It has nothing to do with his health.
He's a year removed from 23 sacks, the NFL single-season record, and a unanimous Defensive Player of the Year. The pick will be whatever the pick turns out to be. I'm not doing math on a man's knee in September.
Reporting: Tom Pelissero, The Ringer; Mary Kay Cabot, cleveland.com. Trade terms: clevelandbrowns.com. Record: NFL.com.
This afternoon's lineup at Minnesota. Tanner Bibee on the mound, Joe Ryan for the Twins.
The order moved overnight. Chase DeLauter, third yesterday, bats second. Travis Bazzana jumps from seventh to third. José Ramírez, who hit second yesterday, is not in the lineup, and nothing in the lineup data says why.
DeLauter's .820 OPS is still the best in the nine, with Nathaniel Lowe's .776 at fifth next. Yesterday the question was whether anyone would be on base when DeLauter hit. Today nobody stands between him and Steven Kwan's .371 on-base percentage. The club hasn't explained whether the shuffle is about last night's five hits or something else, and the box score will say more than any guess about it.
Figures: MLB Stats API.
This afternoon's lineup at Minnesota. Daniel Espino opens, Connor Prielipp for the Twins.
Chase DeLauter's .823 OPS is the highest in this order, and it isn't a hot month — that's 454 at-bats. The next best marks belong to Angel Martínez and Travis Bazzana, both at .730.
DeLauter hits third, behind Kwan and Ramírez, and that's where the afternoon gets decided. He's the best bat in the nine, so he's the one you want up when the bases aren't empty, and his .460 slugging says the extra-base hits are real — they just need someone standing on first. Which makes this turn less on DeLauter than on whether the two spots ahead of him reach base: a quieter thing to watch than it sounds, and the reason a low-scoring loss reads like an offensive failure instead of four at-bats that never had anyone on.
Figures: MLB Stats API.
