{"id":2017067,"date":"2025-09-12T17:02:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2017067"},"modified":"2025-09-12T17:02:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:02:57","slug":"how-c-j-kayfus-kept-guardians-playoff-hopes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/how-c-j-kayfus-kept-guardians-playoff-hopes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"How C. J. Kayfus Kept Guardians playoff hopes alive"},"content":{"rendered":"

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They\u2019re not gonna quit, are they? The battle is uphill, sitting 3.5 games behind the Seattle Mariners (4.5 if you include the tiebreaker) for the last American League Wild Card spot, but the Cleveland Guardians are not going down without a fight. <\/p>\n

After Wednesday\u2019s loss to the Royals, Thursday could have been a rollover performance when Vinnie Pasquantino opened the game with a two-run home run. Cleveland fought back again.<\/p>\n

Gavin Williams labored at times through six innings but allowed just four hits and three walks. Williams kept the Royals off the scoreboard after Pasquantino\u2019s jack. His start capped a great four-game stretch of outings against Kansas City. Slade Cecconi was masterful Monday<\/a> night, Joey Cantillo followed up Cecconi\u2019s eight innings with eight of his own, and Logan Allen was steadfast on Wednesday, keeping the team in the ballgame before Williams\u2019 strong Thursday. The Guardians starting pitchers\u2019 length this week allowed for a slew of relievers to be used to secure a close game to lead to last night\u2019s comeback.<\/p>\n

Jose Ramirez knocked in Steven Kwan in the bottom of the fourth inning to cut the deficit in half, continuing his strong September. Ramirez has enjoyed one of his best years on and off the field<\/a>, and this team will stay in the pennant race as long as his bat scorches Earth. Ramirez\u2019s Hall of Fame trajectory grows with every passing year his OPS hovers around .900 and he wills Cleveland\u2019s offense toward October.<\/p>\n

The biggest hit of the night came in the eighth inning\u2014the biggest of CJ Kayfus\u2019 young career<\/a>, that is. With Bo Naylor on base, Kayfus launched a low pitch into the right-center field bullpen seats to give Cleveland a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the frame. It hasn\u2019t been all rainbows for the prospect since his debut, as he\u2019s hovered around the Mendoza line, but the home run was a flash of Kayfus\u2019 potential and should be a confidence-building block.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no feeling in the world like that one,\u201d Kayfus told The Athletic\u2019s<\/em> Zack Meisel. \u201cThat was truly, probably the best feeling I\u2019ve ever had in my life right there.\u201d That sounds like a young man who got his swagger back. Kayfus\u2019 home run, combined with Williams\u2019 start and the bullpen\u2019s incredible performance, keeps the Guardians hanging on by a thread in the Wild Card race.<\/p>\n

Cleveland now has a strong chance to make up ground on Seattle as they head to Chicago to take on the downtrodden White Sox before looping back to Detroit for another division series next week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.si.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They\u2019re not gonna quit, are they? The battle is uphill, sitting 3.5 games behind the Seattle Mariners (4.5 if you include the tiebreaker) for the last American League Wild Card spot, but the Cleveland Guardians are not going down without a fight. After Wednesday\u2019s loss to the Royals, Thursday could have been a rollover performance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2017068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2017067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/How-C-J-Kayfus-Kept-Guardians-playoff-hopes-alive.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2017068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}