CLEVELAND — The Guardians and White Sox enter July 5 tied in both the season series between them and in the American League Central race. The final game of the four-game series at Progressive Field would determine the leader in both, if the game is played at all.
Rain and inclement weather are threatening both delays and postponements today, though the Guardians and White Sox might be able to fit Sunday’s game into Mother Nature’s schedule.
Follow along here for live score (weather) updates, analysis and highlights from the July 5 Guardians-White matchup.
The Guardians and White Sox will play today, as both teams have approved the warning track conditions.
They’re now targeting a first pitch time of 3:30, or 90 minutes after the original start time when the day began.
Tanner Bibee, today’s starter for the Guardians, is walking out to the bullpen.
At 3:03 p.m., both managers stepped onto the field to inspect the outfield and discuss the situation. The entire ballpark remains in a waiting pattern. Guardians general manager Mike Chernoff is also walking out to the warning track to inspect the field.
This is quite unusual. It’s unclear when, or if, a game will be played today depending on how they view the warning track’s condition.
After a few minutes of looking it over, Vogt, Venable, Chernoff and the umpires all met in center field to talk.
The Guardians-White Sox game is now officially in a further delay, as they won’t start the game until the grounds crew has enough time to properly address the entire warning track with player safety concerns in mind.
So for now, the game is again in a delay as dirt is spread basically from foul pole to foul pole.
A real question here is how this might impact today’s starting pitchers, and how far they were into their warmup routines after this false start.
Guardians manager Stephen Vogt, White Sox manager Will Venable and the umpires are discussing the condition of the warning track in center field at 2:30 p.m., when the first pitch was supposed to be taking place. The national anthem has already been sung and the lineups announced.
Vogt was looking at the warning track in center field as the grounds crew continued to spread as much dirt as possible to make it playable following heavy rains that brought standing water. Vogt then jogged to home plate as the lineups were being exchanged to get all four umpires to take a closer look at the warning track condition. Venable is also part of the discussion.
While center field is the area needing the most attention, there are small areas of standing water in both left field and right field that need to be addressed as well.
The entire grounds crew is working as quickly as possible to spread as much dirt as possible as Vogt, Venable and the umpires check several different areas.
No announcement has been made while all this is going on.
The Guardians provided an injury update on third baseman Jose Ramirez as he rehabs from a fractured hamate bone.
The Guardians and White Sox are set for a 2:30 p.m. first pitch time for the July 5 game.
The Guardians and White Sox won’t be starting on time, as they’re now officially in a rain delay. No later start time has been released as of yet.
The skies cleared up for a little bit before opening again with heavy rains around 1:15.
As of noon, it’s raining pretty hard at Progressive Field. The current word around the clubhouse is that the plan is still to try to play today, and that different forecasts call for different outcomes with today’s weather. As of now, it’s looking like at least a delay to the start of the game is likely, but the gates are expected to open as usual — though all of that could change as the radar forecasts shift.
Below is some pregame information.
The July 5 Guardians-White Sox game has a first-pitch time of 2 p.m.
The July 5 Guardians-White Sox game can be viewed on Peacock.
Five of the first six games between the two teams this season were one-run games, with the White Sox’s July 4 win tying the season series 3-3. The Guardians won the first two games of this current series in their final at-bat, winning 6-5 on July 2 and 4-3 on July 3. Both walk-off wins came after Cleveland trailed by multiple runs during each game. The White Sox won two of three games from the Guardians in Chicago, June 22-24. The White Sox won the first two games, 6-5 and 2-1, before the Guardians won the series finale 4-3.
- Travis Bazzana, 2B
- Kahlil Watson, CF
- Chase DeLauter, RF
- Kyle Manzardo, 1B
- Kahlil Watson, RF
- Gabriel Arias, 3B
- Cooper Ingle, DH
- Daniel Schneemann, SS
- Patrick Bailey, C
- Steven Kwan, CF
- Guardians (47-43) —
- White Sox (46-42) —
- Twins (43-47) 4. GB
- Tigers (39-50) 7.5 GB
- Royals (35-54) 11.5 GB
Ryan Lewis covers the Guardians for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
