Terry Francona continues to pad his historic resume during Cleveland Guardians tenure

The Cleveland Guardians may be struggling this year, but Terry Francona continues to excel.

It’s easy to be an armchair manager. You can sit there, and critique every baseball manager’s decision for hours on end, and you’d be correct. That’s the power of hindsight. The thing is, most baseball fans can’t do what a baseball manager can do. Being a good manager isn’t just looking at stats, it’s knowing your players. Who’s trending up, and who’s trending down? Who’s not playing well to home issues, and who’s about to break out? It’s those quiet moments, the ones that don’t get written about nearly as much, that define a manager. So it’s not surprising at all that Terry Francona, the greatest manager the Cleveland Guardians (or Indians) ever had in the history of their franchise continues to impress.

Francona, who is in the middle of his 11th season in Cleveland, has tallied 1,901 wins as of press time, with his 1,900 coming on Saturday, June 3, 2023. After 22 and a half seasons in the Majors, with stops in Philadelphia with the Phillies and as a member of the Boston Red Sox organization, Francona continues to do something that not many managers can say; win.

He’s now just one of 15 human beings in history to win that many games in the MLB.

Not only that, but he’s one of 11 managers in MLB history who have won at least 54% of their games managed, with 2,5000 games being the minimum.

The Cleveland Guardians need Terry Francona now more than ever

The Cleveland Guardians have posted one of their best stretches of the season so far, going 6-4 over their last 10 and winning, or tying, their three last series in a row. The team is in need of some strong production and it looks like the team is finally clicking on all cylinders.

And for some reason, that’s due to Francona. Historically, Francona’s teams in Cleveland struggle early on but come alive in June and this team is right on time for that. It’s a mystery to many as to why that is. Francona’s influence should only reach so far, right? Despite that mystery, Francona always has a way of getting the most out of the guys on his team, at least in Cleveland this year the team is going to need all the help they can muster.

The club is currently 27-32, but only 3.5 games out of first place in the AL Central. A few strong series and not only are the Guardians over .500, but they’re probably in command of the division at that point.

They have the Red Sox up next (30-30), then the Astros (36-24), the Padrers (28-32), the Diamondbacks (35-25), the A’s (12-50) and the Brewers (32-28). All very winnable series for the Guardians, with the Astros probably being the toughest to get a series win against.

The Guardians could realistically head into July with only one series loss in the month of June and that would a game-changer for this club.