Stefanski is not Francola

That the Guardians are off to a poor start this season is disappointing, especially offensively since many of the hitters are in a collective slump, but it’s hardly time to panic.

It’s disappointing because so much is expected from the team after its run to the Central Division championship last season and advancement to the divisional round of the American League playoffs.

Yet there’s no need to fret because the Guardians have Terry Francona (or Coach Francola, as former Browns head coach Hue Jackson used to call him), the best manager in baseball. He — Francola, not “Hilarious Hue”  — will figure it out. He always does.

Indeed, nobody in the game does more with less than him.

In fact, if you had a Mount Rushmore of Cleveland baseball managers, Francola would be on it along with Lou Boudreau, who in 1948 directed the franchise to its second, and last, World Series championship; Al Lopez, who in the first half of the 1950s made Cleveland possibly the second-best team in baseball behind the New York Yankees, including putting together a franchise-record .721 winning percentage (111-43) in 1954; and Mike Hargrove, whose teams in the 1990s went to the World Series twice in three years.

Now, if the Browns start out this fall like the Guardians have this spring, would — could — current head coach Kevin Stefanski pull them out of it? Is there any possibility of that at all?

Well, is there?

Uh, no, and therein lies the problem, sadly so.

Steve King