With three and a half months remaining in the regular season, it would come as a surprise if Guardians manager Stephen Vogt was actively tracking the American League Central standings right now. There’s a lot of baseball to be played, and a lot can change over the next few months. Vogt hopes that his club will keep its focus in one place. “It's going to be a tough division. We know that,” Vogt said Wednesday morning. “We just have to take care of our stuff. We can't control what everybody else does. We were a testament to that last year.” In 2025, the Guardians completed a historic comeback to win the Central. This season, they find themselves in a race that doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down anytime soon. The Guardians fell, 8-4, to the Yankees at Progressive Field on Wednesday afternoon as New York completed a three-game sweep. It marked the first time Cleveland was swept since Aug. 22-24, 2025, against Texas, snapping a streak of 31 consecutive series without being swept, which led the AL. The Guardians (37-33, .529) have lost six of their past seven games and now have company atop the Central. The White Sox (36-31, .537) stand percentage points ahead of them after a 2-1 win over the Braves on Wednesday night. It’s the first time Cleveland has not held sole possession of first place since the morning of April 29. “Some of the bad things that happen, you just flush it and move on,” starter Parker Messick said. “It's a long season, and we're right in the middle of it. We’ve shown the kind of team that we can be. We're playing like the team that we don't really want to be right now.”
