Project 3.18
Subscribe
Sign in
(Re)Remembering Ten Cent Beer Night
In Cleveland, it's often said of June 4, 1974: “If you can remember it, you weren’t there.” Not true for these guys.

PAUL JACKSON
JUN 04, 2024
This is Project 3.18, a newsletter where we remember moments when baseball didn’t go as planned, tell stories with the fans, and write about history and culture through the lens of the National Game.

If you enjoy this article, you can use the provided button to subscribe and receive future stories for free in your inbox; and please help share it on social media, via email, or a more vintage method of your preference.

For years, an Ohio relative offered to make an intriguing connection: Some of her high school buddies had attended Ten Cent Beer Night, and not only that, a few of them had been a part of the…on-stage party, if you will.

The first time she mentioned it, I was doing other things, but a dozen mentions later, my life had changed and I had resolved to tell this story again, from the perspective of the fan(s). So, she put me in touch with the old crew, who enthusiastically shared their stories from Ten Cent Beer Night.

When it happened, it wasn’t anyone’s proudest moment, but 50 years later, Project 3.18 is proud to bring you out onto the field during the wildest riot in modern baseball history.


MEET THE GUYS

RICH: Whenever somebody brought up Ten Cent Beer Night, I’m always the guy saying, ‘Well, I was there!’ And they say, ‘oh, sure you were. You just read some article, now you're going to tell us about it, aren't you?’

Rich mentioned that he had read, among numerous others, the original article I wrote about Ten Cent Beer Night. (And if you know nothing about the nuts and bolts of what happened at TCBN and want to learn, may I humbly recommend my 2008 work to you, before you go on with this 2024 remaster.)

DON: 280,000 people say they were there, but there were really only 25,000 of us, whatever the real number is.

25,134, including four high school pals from a town about an hour outside Cleveland: Don, Rich, Wayne, and Reggie.

We spoke with Don and Rich over Zoom, and were joined by one member of the old gang, Marty, who wasn’t at the game, but should have been (we’ll get to that story).

RICH: I caddied at a country club as a teenager. So I had money, I had a car. And, so it just ended up that I drove. It was a blue Rambler, so we called it the Midnight Rambler. I was a big Mick Jagger fan.

Rich was one year older than Marty and Don, which meant that, at 18 in 1974, if anyone checked ID’s, he could buy the alcohol, even though he did not really drink. This did not end up being a problem at Ten Cent Beer Night. Being of legal age and willing to drive made Rich the archetypal “stand-up guy” in the group.

DON: Rich always drove. I called him our Getaway Driver.

That’s true—it’s how he introduced Rich to me over email. Don spent a lot of our conversation making space for his friends to tell the story, until the moment when he knew he would inevitably take center stage. He struck me as an appreciative friend with an evidently gentle demeanor. If, based on deportment alone, you asked me which of these guys was going to end up down on the field during Ten Cent Beer Night, Don would have been my last guess.

MARTY: As usual, it was my idea to go to the game, for the cheap beer promotion. I read about that in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which I read every day.

Marty clearly took pride in having been what I’d call the group Activator. Every friend group needs one. He did the planning, figured out what everyone was going to do, and got everybody marching in one direction. 50 years later, he’d landed, perhaps inevitably, in politics.

DON: From my memory, there was no inclination that anybody was going to that game to challenge the Texas Rangers, or for revenge. I just think it was, ‘hey, a promotion,’ and like Marty was saying, it sounded like a fun time.

MARTY: We thought, hey, if you want an opportunity to get a cheap drunk when you're 17-18 years old, this is it, right?

DON: That's what gets me, we're 17 years old. I mean, we were going for a beer promotion. I keep doing the math and thinking: ‘No, I couldn't have only been 17?’ Yeah. We were 17!

MARTY: It was definitely about the beer, but we all knew about the Arlington brawl and so that built the anticipation. That's what I loved about baseball back then, man: You came in spikes-high on somebody, you're getting one in your ear hole the next time up, right?

In other words, after what had happened in Texas, the people of Cleveland were about to put one in the Rangers’ ear.

EARLY INNINGS

RICH: We were sitting on the right field, first base side, somewhere around there.

DON: Like if you drew a straight line, we were halfway down right field.

I could go down and get a container that held six soft drinks, and I got six beers in there. I really don't remember being that intoxicated. It was the kind of beer that you just drink as much as you want. You're just gonna pee it all out.

MARTY: Yeah, it was 3.2% beer wasn't it?

RICH: I think they were 12 ounce cups.

DON: The cups were plastic, the kind that if you squeeze it, it broke. I don't remember how I got beer. Rich, were you getting us beers or were we just walking down to get beer?

RICH: I don't remember having to show an ID or anything like that. I was probably drinking the least. I just remember everyone else drinking beer. And I remember the whole place smelling like beer.

DON: There was trash and beer everywhere; I mean, your ankles were wet because of beer all over the place, basically.

The night was like a stage production. A girl came out and kissed one of the umpires, or tried to. And the guy streaking, who ran to second base in the early innings. When that guy slid into second, everybody in the park laughed.

Then he ran to the center field wall, and the cops were chasing him—the stadium cops. And he’d go one way and they’d go after him and he’d go another way, almost like a Keystone Cops movie, you know,1 and then finally he flipped over the wall and escaped, and everybody went crazy. More cheering for that than anything in the game!

RICH: And then there was that woman who came out of the stands. I remember she looked like the housemother from The Facts of Life.


I had to look this one up, too. And apologies to Charlotte Rae that one of her characters got name-checked here; it is for illustrative purposes only.
RICH: Seeing somebody just go out and take her top off, I mean this was craziness, to us. That was the point when everything broke loose.

Up until then, it was a baseball game. If you knew about the Arlington brawl, maybe you're rooting hard for the Indians or whatever. But this lady comes out, and that opened the gates. There was another lady that tried to come out, and I think they escorted her out, maybe an inning or two after that.

From there on, it was just pure craziness. And when you see someone, a guy, nude, run out and slide into second base…

MARTY: Another poor decision!

RICH: As an 18 year old, I'm standing there going, ‘what is going on here?’ And then the next thing we've got, what looked to me like a father and son duo going up the center field pole, the one with the American flag.

MARTY: I'm listening to the whole thing unfold on the radio and I hear, ‘Guys are streaking, guys are climbing up the flagpole with no clothes on!’ What idiot would climb up a flagpole with no clothes on? I mean, that's gonna leave a mark.

RICH: And soon we’re seeing 25 people go from left field to right field every half inning—nude. This is not something you see, even in 1974! It started out as individuals, but by the seventh or maybe even the sixth it was crowds, coming out in hordes and everyone's nude.

LEEEERON / JENKINS

Quoting…well…myself:

“Interest in the game itself peaked in the fourth inning, when Indians batter Leron Lee swatted a line drive back to Rangers pitcher Fergie Jenkins. Jenkins could not get out of the way and caught the ball with his stomach. As he writhed in pain, the fans began to clap. A chant began:

‘Hit him again, harder!’”

RICH: I don’t think the beer promotion caused the crowd to celebrate when Jenkins got hit. That wasn’t a reaction like, ‘ha ha, we're all drunk.’ It was: ‘I hope that hurt.’ That reaction really started the hostility.

And the other thing, and I don't know whether it's ever really been documented, but what caught my eye in this whole thing was the stuff people were doing to Billy Martin and the Rangers.

Behind the dugout, guys were tying strings on their firecrackers and throwing them over the dugout, so they would swing back in. That's what got Billy Martin really angry. This is the stuff that brought him out with a baseball bat. And he was holding a bat, I'm gonna say, maybe from the fifth inning on. The fact that nobody got hit with that bat was really surprising to me.

DON: Yeah, that really upped the hostility, the Billy Martin stuff. That’s when it started to turn from a fun and crazy hippie-fest. It became, like, ‘oh, that asshole, look what he’s doing now.’ The beer started to amplify everybody's moods in a negative way and every time they'd see his face, they’d get madder.

RICH: I was shocked with the ingenuity of the guys throwing firecrackers on strings. And to be honest with you, a little bit afraid of it too. I was thinking, ‘come on, now, that's jail time.’

MARTY: From my perspective, 60 miles, 70 miles away, the announcers were just disgusted. I mean, Joe Tait was just disgusted: ‘There's another idiot. Yeah, there's another idiot, there's idiots everywhere.’

DON: Martin was coming out of the dugout to make, maybe, a pitching change or to talk to the pitcher and somebody threw a wine bottle at him.

All of this was putting fuel in this thing. By the sixth and seventh inning, it was just a free-for-all and it was like, nobody had any regard. There was nobody trying to stop anybody on the field. It was mostly between innings, so people would clear off and the game would go on, until that magical ninth inning.

THAT MAGICAL NINTH INNING

MARTY: I know the Indians tied the game. It was 5-3. And they tied it at 5.

DON: Yeah, they brought in three bench guys. One was a catcher, I think [Alan Ashby]. And they got like three hits in a row.

Facing Texas reliever Steve Foucalt with one out:

George Hendrick doubled to left

Ed Crosby singled to center (Hendrick scores)

Rusty Torres singled to center

Alan Ashby singled to third base

John Lowenstein hit a sacrifice fly into center (Crosby scores)

DON: By then, there was no order. It was just…it was Woodstock.2 It was out of the realm of baseball.

MARTY: And let's not let's not forget also that It was 1974. So if you think beer was the only thing that was being consumed at that time… There were probably Quaaludes involved. There was probably plenty of pot being smoked. I mean, that place [Municipal Stadium] was a free-for-all normally, let alone throwing the ten cent beer in there.

DON: The baseball was a side note. The crowd became the show.

We came to the point in the evening when Jeff Burroughs, the Rangers’ right fielder, had a run-in with a fan.

MARTY: Jeff Burroughs. That's a name that these guys can expound on a little bit.

DON: So, that's what got me. That's what got me onto the field.

ONTO THE FIELD

DON: The game was tied up and several people were still running back and forth across the field. I vividly remember a young fan who did the wrong thing: He was running by Jeff Burroughs as Texas was making a pitching change, and the kid grabbed his hat. And Burroughs had the wherewithal to turn around and grab this kid by the back of the shirt, and what I saw was Burroughs drop the kid, and then his foot went down in a kicking motion. If that happened or not, I don't know for sure.

But to me, it looked like he kicked the kid. And then I was running, on my way down the aisle stairs towards the field wall. And other people were doing the same thing. It seemed like hundreds of people were rushing the field because of that kid. I have to assume they were all caught in that moment because they saw what I saw.

Don said that once he reached the field, the young fan who’d been tussling with Jeff Burroughs had already escaped, leaving Don and the others—their mission scrubbed—to scatter into guerrilla activity.

DON: I ran, and I think I went by a cop who was chasing after me. As I was running, I looked over my shoulder and the Indians and the Rangers are all out coming out of the bullpens, trying to protect themselves because this had turned into an instant melee.

And I remember a chair came flying right over my head and it hit [Cleveland reliever] Tom Hilgendorf. It hit him right in the head. I was right there. I was about 10 feet away from that, because that chair went right over me. It was a wooden folding chair. It could have been a ball girl chair, or a bullpen chair.

I backed away and Hilgendorf went down, and people cleared back and there was a relief pitcher, one of the Rangers, I don't know who it was, but he was standing there with a cocked baseball bat and he says, ‘Take one more fucking step closer. Take one more fucking step closer…’ and that's when I said to myself, ‘whoa, whoa, I don't know if I should be here.’ But I continued my run because there was another scuffle going on down by the pitcher’s mound. It seemed like it was probably three or four minutes that I was down there, because by the time I got down to the pitcher's mound, it was just all people, like a rock concert.

RICH: Yeah, this was totally chaos. This was—you'd have to really think about whether you wanted to get on that field, if you weren't like my Killer Don here.

Don said when he ran back toward the infield he saw our future manager, Mike Hargrove [a rookie playing first base for Texas], who we didn't know at the time. Hargrove was pounding the heck out of somebody on first base.

DON: As I ran down that way, I ran right into the face of [Cleveland center fielder] George Hendrick. He had these eyes that pierced me like a laser. That's when I felt like I was about three feet tall and I said, ‘I shouldn't be here.’

Then a security guard bear-hugged me from the back and ran me over towards the first base dugout area and through a gate. I ran back up to find my friends, who didn’t know I’d gone onto the field. They were like, ‘where the hell were you?’

RICH: I remember saying, ‘what the hell were you doing?’

DON: Well, I didn't know what I was doing. I should not have been there in the first place. I realize all that. It was just probably the adrenaline.

MARTY: When they ended up just canceling the game, I heard the radio announcers say that one of the players was chasing a guy in the outfield. Honest to God, I thought to myself, ‘that's got to be one of my idiot buddies.’ I mean, I would have bet a thousand dollars. I had one of them that came right to mind.3 But I would say, Don and Rich would be the two least-likely guys.

I wouldn't think that either one of you guys would go down there and want to throw down with a professional ball player.

RICH: Hey, come on, now. I've thrown down with some guys. I got sucker-punched on many occasions!

Subscribe to receive stories of baseball, history, and culture in your inbox each week.

Type your email...
Subscribe
ETHICS IN BASEBALL RIOTS: A PRIMER

This next part of the conversation surprised me.

‘Why was I out there?’

With his story, it would have been all too easy for this older, wiser Don to laugh off his infamous trespass as a product of his still-developing frontal lobe. Kids, amirite?

But that wasn’t how Don processed the question. Rather, it seemed to turn him quickly and reflexively inward: Why was I out there…?

In fact, he’d asked this of himself at some length over the years, suggesting the answer was of personal importance. How many people who were out on that field examined their actions like this, near-term or long-term?

DON: I can't find a reason to blame it on alcohol. It seemed to me that I saw something wrong, you know? I think what I had focused on was the fact that the kid was young and a player was taking advantage of him. I'm the kind of guy who, if I see something wrong, I tend to react.

After the kid escaped, then it was just curiosity.

MARTY: I'm gonna say this about Don: I know him to be a ‘see wrong, take the right side’ kind of guy. So I can believe that that's exactly where his head was at.

RICH: Here's where the difference comes in, as far as I'm concerned. I was of the feeling that the kid kind of deserved it. Burroughs was looking toward home plate, this kid just runs up behind him and knocks his hat off.

There never was like, a square-off, you know, Burroughs was ambushed. He must have thought, ‘wait a second. I don't know who else is behind me,’ because there were people running from left field to right field the whole night.

MARTY: As you look back now, it's understandable that Burroughs would react like that. He doesn't know if it's 15 people or 30 people. But at the time, all you could think was, ‘That's wrong. He's the bad guy. Let's go get him.’

RICH: I can't begin to tell you how scary the whole situation was at that point, or could have been. Because these people had baseball bats and yeah, they didn't want to hurt anybody, but they could have…

DON: I think that there have been articles on the person who actually took Burroughs’ hat, and he said, of course he was wrong in hindsight, years going by, but I think he was 15 years old at the time.

RICH: Yeah, he wasn't very old, but you can see why the Rangers came out on the field.

DON: Oh, they were protecting their lives. Yeah, they would protect their lives.

RICH: Because all they see are people coming out of the stands. And they're like, ‘we gotta go.’

MARTY: I seem to recall Tait and Score saying that they felt like Burroughs was in danger.

RICH: He was in danger. He was.

MARTY: He didn't know 17-year-old Killer Don was on the loose!

DON: Sorry, it's tough to lose a reputation when you got one.

MARTY: Don’s nickname back then, by the way, was ‘Donut.’ Not exactly a killer nickname.

RICH: And mine was ‘Moosey.’

MARTY: Donut and Moosey. Couple of killers right there.

DON: We left on our own accord. I don't recall being forced out. I recall an announcement that the game was forfeited. And people, as they left, after the altercations, I think everybody realized that they had just been a part of something bad. I think it was like, ‘what did we just do?’

RICH: I’ve seen pictures of Hilgendorf. From the stands, the fans, we could tell that that happened. Once we found Don, we left pretty quickly. We didn't want anyone coming after us, you know…

Discount beer promotions were far from unusual in 1974, and they had mainly gone off smoothly, until this one…didn’t. This one produced—as Don had put it, with real feeling—“something bad,” drawing in a lot of people who (with the exception of the guys swinging firecrackers) hadn’t necessarily set out to be bad. So…

WHY THIS ONE? WHY DID IT GO BAD?

Nobody had the answer—I’m not sure there is one—but it’s interesting to see everyone’s math on the question, which is why I ask.

MARTY

MARTY: Who hit the ball that hit Jenkins? Leron Lee, yeah. The fans were chanting like, ‘hit him again,’ or something. Get him again and hit him again, like the old football high school football cheer, right? See, to me, listening to it, I heard the disgust from Joe Tait at that moment.

I think that right there just helped escalate the poor sportsmanship of the fans. It helped create greater tension.

DON: Yeah, it magnified everything.

RICH

RICH: Where have you ever been that you've seen a hundred people nude? Even in this day and age. Well, the lady who came out and just baring her chest, without any real consequence. I think that opened the door to a lot of drunk people to say, ‘let's go.’

DON: There was not much security involvement. I mean, it was really minute, the security.

MARTY: That was one of the biggest mistakes.

DON: So, I think everybody just thought they had liberty to do whatever they wanted to. You know, you leave the kids without a babysitter, what happens?

DON

DON: I'm telling you, I believe everybody was in the same mode as I was. That kid was in trouble. [Helping him,] I think that was the intention, because everybody in the group I was involved with was traveling in his direction. Emotion took over, believe it or not.

Obviously it's not one of my proud moments in life. I can't lie about that.

RICH: I was proud of you, Don.

MARTY: We were all proud of you, Don.4

DON: That's pretty much it. Every once in a while I get asked, so I repeat the story and then I wonder if I still tell it the way it really happened. Rich, you had gotten a hold of me and said HBO was doing a 25th anniversary, or some kind of anniversary.

Somebody got a hold of me from HBO and asked me to tell the story over the phone. Then we're looking, they were looking for a ticket stub or something, anything that I could show, but I didn't have anything. So anyhow, she says, ‘what happened?’ And I say, ‘well, jeez, I could tell you what I think happened.’


Without being asked, Don sent this picture to me to verify his TCBN bona fides. Even I don’t have riot memorabilia up on my mantle.
MARTY: So it's 50 years later now. And Don, to me, the story you told when I saw you the next day, is the same story that you just told. I think you've been pretty consistent.

Hey, let me tell the story of how I got screwed out of being at Ten Cent Beer Night.

THE OTHER TEN CENT BEER NIGHT

Hearing Don’s account, it’s easy to see why the night’s events left such a vivid impression, no matter how much “3.2” beer he had, even becoming an impetus for interrogating his own youthful character. But if he didn’t get to go, why did Marty even have a story, let alone one he was so eager to tell? What’s to remember?

MARTY: We bought the tickets. At the time, a couple of us, me, Rich, Reggie, we were working at a gas station. Well, the day before Ten Cent Beer Night, I go to our manager: ‘Hey, by the way, I need tomorrow night off because…’ And he goes, ‘Oh, Reggie already took the night off. You can't off.’ And Rich was already off.

So Reggie took my ticket and went to the game that I made all the plans to go to. Reggie, God, I should have killed him like 18 different times.5

So, on Ten Cent Beer Night, I am steaming. Another side note here is, in the summer of 1974, If you research it, you'll find that was when we had a so-called Gas Shortage6

So, cars would line up and down the street for the gas station, and back then we very rarely took a credit card. It was all cash. We just stuffed cash in our pockets. And then the manager would come out and relieve you of your cash. Just keep pumping and stuffing. So I'm listening to the game on a radio. And it's getting stupid crazy and I'm laughing and it's a warm summer night.

And I'm telling people that are pulling in, ‘Hey, are you listening to the Indians game, you gotta turn on the Indians game.’ I'm going down the line telling people to turn it on. So now everybody's got their windows open. Traffic's backed up for two blocks, everybody's got their windows open and you could hear the game. You could be standing a hundred feet away and you could hear it because everybody had it on. It was really cool. You know, today that would never happen.

It delighted me to discover this alternate version of Ten Cent Beer Night living as vibrantly in Marty’s memory as the real thing did in Don’s. Yes, there was the howling, sparking chaos of the field at Cleveland Municipal Stadium—certainly that was Ten Cent Beer Night. But there was this quieter, lovelier inverse. A less epic scene, certainly, but just as evocative: a warm Tuesday evening in June, a high school senior stuck working outside, serving a bunch of similarly-stuck commuters, none of whom had a phone, let alone a pocket entertainment system, waiting in line for punishingly-expensive gas. All they had were each other and their car radios.

With a little encouragement from the friendly neighborhood gas pumper, this dispiriting fuel queue bloomed into spontaneous community. Headlights pierced the humid darkness and illuminated summer insect swarms while idling American-made engines kept up a rumbling purr two blocks long. Over all that noise, you still could hear, from everywhere, the sounds of a baseball game (or whichever version of Woodstock had supplanted it in that moment).

Where Marty was, 60 miles away from the action, that was Ten Cent Beer Night: a line of cars, their windows rolled down and their radios on, the sounds of Joe Tait and Herb Score’s dismayed narration crackling through the air as people’s imaginations brought the described scene to shared life. For Marty, Ten Cent Beer Night was neighbors and strangers talking, shaking their heads in disbelief, forgetting their glum circumstances and laughing about the game.

No wonder he had to share that story.


1
I do not, but I left a link.

2
The first two-thirds of the game leaned toward Woodstock ‘69, while this latter third presaged the vibe of Woodstock ‘99. It’s a cross-generational reference!

3
Marty would have put it all $1,000 on Wayne. Sorry, Wayne. Or, maybe, congratulations? Only you and Marty know.

4
All three of these guys were the dude-iest of dudes. Let it never be said that dudes don’t express feelings. It just has to happen in the course of talking about baseball.

5
Marty then recounted several of the 18 times he should have killed Reggie. These anecdotes were compelling, but cut for relevance.

6
From Wikipedia: “The average US retail price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose 43% from 38.5¢ in May 1973 to 55.1¢ in June 1974. … Politicians called for a national gasoline rationing program. President Nixon asked gasoline retailers not to sell on Saturday nights or Sundays; 90% of gas station owners complied, which produced long lines of motorists wanting to fill up their cars while they still could.”

I am Rich from the story above. Paul Jackson decided to use aliases for everyone in the story. All 4 of us attended the game this past Tuesday against the Royals. Imagine attending a game with 3 of your best buddies 50 years later !

Very cool story. My only story that comes close is OSU / MI game the fall after Kent State when High Street was trashed / looted. The cops started at one end and used tear gas and rubber pellet guns to clear the street (and blew out the glass window of the Jolly Roger donut shop)...and then going to a Buckeye game with the same guys 50 years later.

Sounds like a good time !

As he flirts with .400, here are 7 Steven Kwan stats bound to blow your mind CINCINNATI, OHIO - JUNE 11: Steven Kwan #38 of the Cleveland Guardians hits a two RBI double in the third inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on June 11, 2024 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
By Zack Meisel
Jun 17, 2024



Remember the last time Steven Kwan played an entire game and failed to record a base hit? Remember that, on May 2 in Houston, a mere seven weeks ago?

OK, sure, Kwan was sidelined for four weeks with a hamstring strain during that stretch, but all he’s done since he returned from the injured list — and, really, all he did before he landed on the injured list — is hit. And hit some more. And hit some more.

He’s flirting with the vaunted .400 mark, and not an eye-contact-from-across-the-bar type of flirting. There might be something here, something that can last. No big-leaguer has hit .400 since the ’40s. It’s not even fair to Kwan to surmise whether he can maintain this otherworldly pace for another few months. But he’s certainly positioning himself to have one of the more memorable hitting seasons in recent or semi-recent Cleveland history.

With a four-hit performance in Toronto on Sunday, Kwan boosted his average to .398. But the statistics that are difficult to wrap your head around extend far beyond his batting average. Let’s dig deeper.

His lead for a batting title is massive

Kwan is 70-for-176 this season, hitting .398, but he’s about 18 plate appearances short of qualifying for a batting title. He should make up enough ground in the next few weeks to join the leaderboards. And when he does, he’ll almost assuredly sit at the top in batting average.

Bobby Witt Jr. is the leader, at .327. For Kwan to fall below .327, he would have to go hitless in his next 39 at-bats. Thirty-nine!

And, well, that seems unlikely, considering …
Kwan’s longest hitless streak this season is seven plate appearances

The only time he’s had back-to-back hitless games: April 21 and 23 (with an off day in between). In the second game, he went 0-for-2 with a pair of walks.

Odds are, Kwan will cool off at some point. Can he hit .350 or better? Here’s the list of Cleveland players (minimum 400 plate appearances) to do that in the last 75 years:

Manny Ramirez, 2000: .351
Albert Belle, 1994: .357
Tito Francona, 1959: .363

The last Cleveland player to hit at least .365: Earl Averill, who hit .378 in 1936.
He’s the first player in 23 years with 70 hits in his first 43 games

Ichiro Suzuki is the only other player in the 21st century to tally that many base knocks in his first 43 games of a season. Kwan is one of seven players to accomplish the feat in the last 50 seasons.

The only player in franchise history, which dates to 1901, with more hits in his first 43 games of a season? Roy Weatherly, a 21-year-old rookie who totaled 73 hits in that span after being called up at the end of June during the 1936 season.
70 hits in first 43 games, last 50 years
Steven Kwan

70

2024
Ichiro Suzuki

73

2001
Dante Bichette

71

1998
Andrés Galarraga

70

1993
Lenny Dykstra

74

1990
Carney Lansford

74

1988
Rod Carew

77

1983
Kwan has more three-hit games than zero-hit games

Three-hit games: 11
Zero-hit games: seven

In one of those seven, he exited in the fourth inning with the aforementioned hamstring injury. Apparently, that injury gave him superpowers, because …
Since returning from the injured list, Kwan is batting .535 in 11 games

He’s 23-for-43, and he has six walks, four doubles and only three strikeouts.

In those 11 games:

Four-hit games: one
Three-hit games: three
Two-hit games: three
One-hit games: four
Zero-hit games: ha, yeah right
Kwan has three strikeouts in his last 125 plate appearances

Luis Arraez and Kwan boast the two best strikeout rates in the league, and there’s a huge gap between them and the rest of the field. They’re the only ones with a rate below than 10 percent.

To put Kwan’s recent stretch into perspective, Reds outfielder Will Benson, his close friend and former teammate, owns the league’s worst strikeout rate this season. Benson has 49 strikeouts in his last 125 plate appearances.

Overall, Kwan has 14 strikeouts in 196 plate appearances.

Kwan’s strikeout rate, per year:

2022: 9.4 percent
2023: 10.4 percent
2024: 7.1 percent

He has nearly as many three-hit games (11) as strikeouts (14) this season.
He’s on a record-setting-Ichiro-esque hit pace

Hits per game by Kwan in 2024: 1.6279
Hits per game by Ichiro in 2004: 1.6273

That’s the year Ichiro — one of Kwan’s idols — set a major-league record with 262 hits, surpassing George Sisler’s mark that stood for 84 years. Ichiro appeared in all but one game that season for the 63-99 Mariners and posted a .372/.414/.455 slash line, slapping singles across the diamond on a nightly basis.

He had only 37 extra-base hits.

His 225 singles smashed Willie Keeler’s record of 206, set in 1898. In fact, Ichiro owns three of the top six single-season singles totals, along with a pair of Keeler seasons, plus one from Lloyd Waner in 1927.

Another way to frame this: Singles accounted for 85.9 percent of Ichiro’s hits in 2004. Singles account for 77.1 percent of Kwan’s hits this season, which explains, in part, why his slugging percentage sits 90 points higher than Ichiro’s did 20 years ago.

Ichiro’s ability to sustain that hitting prowess across an entire season, without ever spending time on the injured list, was admirable. Kwan has another three and a half months to torment pitchers and then perhaps we can compare these seasons a bit more closely.

MLB contenders prospect chips

Cleveland Guardians: The surprise AL Central-leading Guardians don’t have any top-50 prospects after the graduations of Brayan Rocchio and Kyle Manzardo, but they still have a solid system — even with top prospect Chase Delauter’s struggles to stay healthy.

Jaison Chourio (brother of Jackson) has shown impressive on-base skills and plus speed in Low A. Catcher Ralphy Velazquez has looked exactly like the plus power prospect the Guardians were expecting when they took him in the first round last year out of high school. He’s hit seven home runs in 48 games in Low A this season. Alex Mooney, a seventh-round pick out of Duke last season, is showing impressive power and speed for High-A Lake County. Outfielder Johnathan Rodriguez has big power and enough Triple-A experience to jump into a non-contender’s lineup right away.

Like Milwaukee, Cleveland should benefit from its track record of strong development when teams consider its pitching prospects. Talented left-hander Joey Cantillo is back in Triple A after missing the start of the season with a hamstring strain. Unheralded lefty Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson may be the biggest pop-up prospect of the year so far, and he continues to miss bats at a very high rate since moving up to High A. Right-hander Parker Messick — a 2022 second-round pick — is pitching well in High A and looks ready for a Double-A challenge.

system seems pretty average at present as we wait for some Class A guys looking very impressive.
Not much pitching in AAA or AA. Cantillo is a good but not great prospect. Columbus pitching stats overall are quite poor; very few pitchers who've walked less than 1 man per 2 innings.
Growing bunch of near ready IF and OF in Columbus [Tena, Noel, Martinez, Rodriguez] and Akron [Kayfus, DeLauter I guess, maybe Halpin
Lake County: Alex Mooney, Genao
Lynchburg Chourio, Velazquez, Antunez? E.Gonzalez?

Surprisingly thin on pitching without Espino; without 2022 2nd round pick Justin Campbell.
Yes Wilkinson is interesting and I'm really interested as think I commented on in Minor Matters on vastly improved Aaron Davenport in AA; Dan Denholm and Austin Peterson have been effective. Not sure what kind of stuff anyone of those young guys have.

Lynchburg also has potential but erractic pitchers Alex Clemmey great stuff, needs a lot of work on his command. Jackson Humphries a few very good many very bad starts.

Probably saw it at MLB.com or maybe Cleveland.com but I have read some very impressive defensive stats for Rocchio. In fact MLB.com attributes the improved defense as the key to this year's improved record.
Well, no question replacing Rosario at SS was important
and skipping 1/3 of the season with a catcher who could no longer catch or throw [or hit] helps too
But it does seem that the offensive upsurge has a bit to do with the record too

Well put - the offensive upsurge actually made it palatable to have a Rey Ordonez type shortstop. Great fielder - the eye test agrees - and enough bat to ball and on base skills to get by.

And don't forget baserunning - he is a very smart baserunner.

That said if Schneeman can field the position he is a natural replacement for either Rocchio or Freeman in CF. As you know he did play some CF in the minors before called up.

The Guardians have a starting pitching problem and no ideal ways to fix it CLEVELAND, OHIO - JUNE 18: Triston McKenzie #24 of the Cleveland Guardians throws a pitch during the first inning against the Seattle Mariners at Progressive Field on June 18, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images)
By Zack Meisel


CLEVELAND — There’s a fire in the pitching factory and it might be a while before help arrives.

Guardians right-hander Triston McKenzie, armed with his best velocity of the season, exited after 2 1/3 innings on Tuesday, continuing an alarming trend of abbreviated outings for Cleveland’s starters. That’s not a trait any team covets when attempting to survive 162 games.

Take a look at the innings pitched by Cleveland’s starters in each game over the last three weeks:

6 1/3

6

5 2/3

5 1/3 (three times)

5 (five times)

4 2/3

4 (two times)

3 1/3

2 1/3

1 2/3

That’s an average of 4 2/3 innings per start. They had four off-days in the last two weeks, which helped manager Stephen Vogt navigate the recent stretch.

Tanner Bibee is a burgeoning frontline starter, but he’s still enduring the usual bumps in the road that surface during a sophomore season. Logan Allen has trended in the right direction recently, but that has only lowered his ERA to an unsightly 5.30. Ben Lively is enjoying a career year, but for a 32-year-old journeyman with an 89-mph heater, playing the role of savior is a hefty ask. Carlos Carrasco is 37 and his pitches no longer overpower or fool opposing hitters.

And then there’s McKenzie, still searching for some elusive remedy. He missed almost all of last year, and elected to rest for a couple months instead of undergoing elbow surgery. His velocity was much better on Tuesday — his 92.2 mph average fastball was his best this season — but his swing-and-miss stuff remains in hiding.

In 2022, when he recorded a banner year, he limited walks, regularly convinced hitters to chase and used his fastball to set up his slider and curveball. (He threw the two secondary pitches exactly 616 times each.) The curveball, in particular, was electrifying, with a 45 percent whiff rate and an opponent average of .120 and slugging percentage of .203.

This year, McKenzie has leaned on the same approach, but the fastball has been pulverized.

2022: 1,575 fastballs, 13 home runs

2024: 620 fastballs, 13 home runs

His chase rate has plummeted, his walk rate ranks among the worst in the league and his swing-and-miss rate has decreased.

“I think it’s growing pains,” McKenzie said after his outing Tuesday. “It’s something different every start. I think everybody goes through it.”

Clearly, the Guardians’ rotation needs a boost or two.

This group was intended to have Shane Bieber. Losing him to elbow surgery two starts into the season, especially when he was once again tossing filthy stuff, was a critical blow. And yet, it hasn’t truly proven to be an Achilles’ heel — a weak spot in need of an upgrade, sure, but not a debilitating deficiency — until now.

Vogt has masterfully deployed what has been the league’s top bullpen, and the off days have helped. But now the Guardians have to battle the Mariners, Blue Jays, Orioles and Royals before their next chance to catch their breath. It’s not ideal to burn through 6 2/3 innings of relief on Day 1 of that stretch.

So, what can they do?

This rotation was also supposed to feature Gavin Williams, but what was initially suggested to be a minor elbow malady — really, there’s no such thing for a pitcher — has spiraled into a three-month absence. He’s scheduled to start Friday for Double-A Akron. It could be his final minor-league tune-up, but he hasn’t exactly resembled someone ready to rescue an ailing rotation.

The Triple-A rotation at the moment includes Joey Cantillo (who is stretched out to 59 pitches after a two-month absence), Xzavion Curry (who has been walloped in Columbus all season), Will Dion (who has been similarly shaky) and Connor Gillispie and Darren McCaughan (who have been slightly less shaky, but still aren’t enticing options).

Even in Cleveland, where for years they have seemingly churned out capable starters at the top of every hour, team officials have always stressed there’s no such thing as sufficient pitching quantity. And yet, this winter, they merely swapped out Cal Quantrill for Lively and called it a day and, well… [chaotic hand motions].

That corners them into a desperate position when it comes to the trade deadline.

It’s difficult to execute a deal in mid-June or late June or even early July, especially in a world with three wild-card berths in each league and with a draft lottery that offers less incentive for bad teams to become worse as soon as possible. There are a ton of teams hovering around the .500 mark who won’t need to decide whether to buy or sell until the pressure mounts in five weeks. The Guardians fell into that camp last summer. There are also a bunch of contenders that need starting pitching help.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, of course. Our trade buzz crew at The Athletic reported in recent days that the Miami Marlins are open for business, and would make a deal well in advance of the July 30 deadline if the return met their demands.

Jesús Luzardo will likely be their most coveted prize, and he’d fit what the Guardians are seeking. So would most starters. Cleveland’s front office shouldn’t be picky. The club could use a frontline hurler, sure, but a mid-rotation innings eater would help, too.

The Guardians’ most pressing issue, though, is they need help fast.

Bieber, in town for a regularly scheduled checkup, walked into the Guardians’ clubhouse on Tuesday afternoon and caught up with his teammates. Unfortunately for them, he can’t offer them any assistance on the mound. The Guardians are still searching for his replacement, and then some.

Meisel is absolutely correct: starting pitching has not been especially good and there's no solution on hand. The only possible positive is if Williams can finish his rehab and return to the level he pitched at as a rookie, when he was no. 2 rookied behind Bibee but had a greater prospect ceiling.
As Bibee and Allen have reminded us, it is not a certainty that a pitcher will just get better and better every season.
Not that we weren't quite aware of that. There have been plenty of one year wonders. Bibee should be able to avoid that.

BTW. Zach Plesac is back in the majors with the Angels; hadn't really shown much in AAA but at least he was not the disaster he was last summer in Columbus. "only" 14 homers in 74 innings. last year 30 in 95
Quantrill could be the Rockies' All Star representative.
Civale at least has stayed healthy for Tampa.
Not so Clevinger.

I really hope they are kicking themselves for giving Quantrill away.

In retrospective it was a bad move. But at the time Q was coming off a pretty bad season and the choice to deepen the bullpen has helped

How many Cleveland Guardians will make the All-Star team? Jun 6, 2024; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez (11) rounds the bases after hitting a home run during the third inning against the Kansas City Royals at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports
By Zack Meisel
4h ago

8
Save Article

CLEVELAND — It seems likely the Cleveland Guardians will send at least three players to the All-Star Game next month in Texas.

It would mark the ninth time this century that Cleveland has had three or more representatives.

2022: José Ramírez, Emmanuel Clase, Andrés Giménez
2019: Carlos Santana, Francisco Lindor, Brad Hand, Shane Bieber
2018: José Ramírez, Michael Brantley, Francisco Lindor, Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, Yan Gomes
2017: José Ramírez, Michael Brantley, Francisco Lindor, Corey Kluber, Andrew Miller
2016: Francisco Lindor, Danny Salazar, Corey Kluber
2007: CC Sabathia, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore
2004: CC Sabathia, Ronnie Belliard, Matt Lawton, Victor Martinez, Jake Westbrook
2000: Roberto Alomar, Chuck Finley, Travis Fryman, Manny Ramirez

In 2000, Cleveland finished one game shy of a playoff berth. In 2004, Cleveland went 80-82. In each of those six instances since, however, the club has qualified for the postseason.

Unsurprisingly, a wealth of All-Star candidates often translates to a successful first half of the season. That’s certainly the case in Cleveland this year. Here’s a breakdown of who could venture to Arlington, Texas, in a few weeks.
The locks

José Ramírez, Emmanuel Clase, Steven Kwan

Ramírez holds a massive lead in the balloting, with nearly twice as many votes as any other third-base candidate. This will be his sixth trip to the All-Star Game. Only five Cleveland players have ever tallied more.

Most All-Star nods, Cleveland history

8: Bob Feller, Lou Boudreau
7: Larry Doby, Bob Lemon, Ken Keltner
6: Earl Averill, Sandy Alomar Jr., Sam McDowell
5: Kenny Lofton, Jim Hegan, José Ramírez (for now)

Assuming the remainder of his votes don’t get lost in cyberspace, Ramírez will join Alomar as the only Cleveland players in the past half-century with more than five trips to the annual showcase.

Clase has allowed three earned runs … all season.

This is a no-brainer selection for a third consecutive year. He has been automatic, with a league-leading 22 saves, a 0.76 ERA and a ridiculous 36-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s reminiscent of his 2022 form, in which every ninth inning was a 90-second breeze.

2022: 1.98 FIP, 5.3 H/9, 9.5 K/9
2024: 1.90 FIP, 4.8 H/9, 9.2 K/9

In 2022, Clase sealed the American League’s win in the All-Star Game by mowing down Garrett Cooper, Kyle Schwarber and Jake Cronenworth in order. He missed an immaculate inning by one pitch.

Other closers who could join Clase: Kirby Yates (TEX), Clay Holmes (NYY), Andres Muñoz (SEA) and Mason Miller (OAK). It’s really difficult for a middle reliever or setup man to earn a spot, much to the dismay of those in Cleveland’s loaded bullpen. Four full-time Guardians relievers boast an ERA under 2.00: Clase (0.76), Tim Herrin (1.20), Hunter Gaddis (1.56) and Cade Smith (1.82).

In the initial voting update, Kwan ranked fourth among AL outfielders, behind Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Kyle Tucker. The top six will advance to the final stage of voting. No matter how it shakes out, a guy flirting with a .400 batting average — even if he missed a few weeks — won’t be overlooked.

Once he qualifies for the league batting title in a couple of weeks, he’ll hold a substantial lead in that category. He’s had more three-hit games (11) than zero-hit games (seven). He has struck out a whopping 15 times. He ranks sixth in fWAR among all AL position players, despite missing 23 games with a hamstring injury. He ranks third in the majors in OPS. He deserves the spotlight, and, who knows, perhaps it’ll shake out so he sneaks his way into the starting lineup, maybe even into the leadoff spot.
The wild card

David Fry

Just as everyone expected, a utility player scrapping for the last spot on the roster in spring training is part of an All-Star conversation in June.

The sport’s OPS leaderboard of players with a minimum of 180 plate appearances (entering Thursday) is spellbinding:

1. Aaron Judge
2. Juan Soto
3. Steven Kwan
4. Shohei Ohtani
5. Marcell Ozuna
6. Kyle Tucker
7. David Fry

Everything about Fry screams All-Star except his playing time. He has about 60 percent of the plate appearances that many of his fellow leaderboard dwellers have. He would be a manager’s dream in a game like this because he offers so much defensive versatility, with the ability to fill in at catcher, the corner infield or the corner outfield. On the ballot, he’s listed as a designated hitter, and he sits behind Yordan Alvarez and Giancarlo Stanton in the voting.
The redemption tour

Josh Naylor

Naylor seemed like a lock last year, as he entered the break with a .305/.344/.481 slash line. When he was snubbed, he contended it didn’t bug him and that he didn’t need to use it as fuel. Sure thing.

Naylor seemed like a lock through the first month of this season, too, but a severe slump has jeopardized his chances. He endured an eight-week stretch in which he compiled a .186/.277/.407 slash line. A two-homer game came at a perfect time on Wednesday. His OPS (.819) and his home run total (19) are worthy. His metrics suggest he’ll rebound — not that his peers are looking that deep when considering whom to nominate for an All-Star spot.

There’s not a ton of competition at first base, though. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Ryan Mountcastle sit ahead of Naylor in the voting. Their numbers are all comparable.

(Entering play Thursday)

Guerrero: .278 average, .760 OPS, seven homers
Mountcastle: .273 average, .789 OPS, 11 homers
Naylor: .237 average, .820 OPS, 19 homers
The crowded field

Ben Lively, Tanner Bibee

Lively is having a career year at age 32, though his ERA looked more appealing last week (2.59) than it does now (3.02), after a rough start on Sunday in Toronto. He’d rank 10th among AL starters in ERA if he had enough innings to qualify. That’ll likely drive his downfall; he’s about 30 innings behind his colleagues, and there’s a bunch of competition here. Corbin Burnes, Luis Gil, Tanner Houck, Tarik Skubal, Ronel Blanco, Seth Lugo, Garrett Crochet, Jack Flaherty and Logan Gilbert are all deserving. Cases could be made for Cole Ragans, Tyler Anderson, Joe Ryan and a handful of others. Lively might be the most surprising name in this conversation, but he’s on the outskirts of the debate since he lacks the quantity.

That crowd will likely squeeze out Tanner Bibee, too. Bibee’s path to an All-Star nod is different; he has the innings and the strikeouts, some of the stuff his peers and coaches will appreciate. His 3.65 ERA is tied for 25th among AL starters. He did submit his strongest outing of the year on Wednesday, with 12 strikeouts across six scoreless innings. If he continues to dazzle in his next few starts, perhaps he can make some headway, but it seems like a tall order.