Guardians hold off Mets to clinch interleague series at Progressive Field

CLEVELAND — The Guardians are tough to beat these days, especially at Progressive Field. Behind milestone moments for Jose Ramirez and Emmanuel Clase and another big hit from David Fry, Cleveland won its sixth straight home game Tuesday night, beating the Mets 7-6 to clinch the interleague series. The Guardians, who won their fifth straight overall and eighth in the last nine games, improved to a major league-best 17-6 at home. They have won nine of their last 10 games at Progressive Field and 15 of their last 18. They improved to 7-1 in series at home and 12-4 overall. Cleveland won despite the Mets trimming three three-run deficits to one, leaving a happy bunch of Guardians in the clubhouse afterward. "We're having so much fun," Fry said. "The locker room is awesome, the dugout, everyone's just having a blast right now." As is the norm, Ramirez had a hand in the victory. With Cleveland in front by a run and two outs in the fifth, the five-time All-Star pushed the advantage to three for the second time by matching Josh Naylor for the team lead with his 12th homer. It was the 600th career extra-base hit for Ramirez, who had an RBI double in the Guardians' three-run third, recording his 101st multi-extra-base hit game to pass Hal Trosky for third place on the all-time list. "It's so hard to stay consistent, but the amount of work that he puts in off the field, in the weight room … he's keeping his body in a place where he can do this every day," manager Stephen Vogt said. "Just the dedication that Hosey has to playing this game at an elite level is something to look up to for our young guys." As is also the norm, at least this year, Fry delivered. After the Mets crept back into the game on Jeff McNeil's two-run homer off Sam Hentges in the sixth, Fry hit a pinch-hit, opposite-field homer to right in the bottom of the inning to restore the three-run cushion. Fry, an unheralded bench player to begin the season, is batting .338 over 33 games, leading the American League with a 1.064 OPS. "This is just a complete baseball player," Vogt said. "I keep saying it, but he just continues to have a slow heartbeat and go up and have a professional at-bat every time out. But to be able to drive the ball the other way the way he has and be ready to pull the ball when he needs to, he's just really confident right now." Called on from Triple-A Columbus to make a spot start for an injured Carlos Carrasco, right-hander Xzavion Curry began his outing with four scoreless innings before the Mets finally caught up to him after he struck out the leadoff batter in the fifth. Mark Vientos began a string of four straight hits for New York with his second home run and Francisco Lindor drove in the other run in the inning with a line-drive single to left to pull the Mets within 3-2. Vogt turned to right-hander Nick Sandlin, who walked the first batter he faced, but bounced back to strike out Brandon Nimmo and J.D. Martinez to end the inning with the bases loaded. Curry found out he was starting after Columbus arrived at the hotel in Omaha, Nebraska, on Monday night around 5 o'clock. He has struggled mightily in the minors, but has made two effective spot starts for the Guardians, tossing five scoreless innings in Boston on April 15. "It is a confidence picker up, just to be able to have that bad period of time down there in Triple-A and then be able to come up in the bigs and be able to perform how I would like to perform," Curry said. "That just kind of reiterates to me, 'just stay in my process, stay in my plan' and just keep moving forward. Sometimes you do want to wallow in self pity, but just being able to just keep moving forward is the key." The Mets duplicated McNeil's homer with another two-run shot from Starling Marte off Scott Barlow to pull within a run again in the eighth. But Clase, pitching for the third straight day, shut down the Mets in the ninth to record his MLB-leading 15th save (in 18 chances). It was career save No. 125 for the right-hander, who moved past Chris Perez for fourth place all time. "All of us in the dugout are like, 'we win,'" said Fry of Clase's appearances. "We know he's gonna get a zero. Today was beautiful." The Guardians improved to 32-17 overall. They didn't notch win No. 32 until June 15 last year. Contact Chris Assenheimer at (440) 329-7136 or cassenheimer@chroniclet.com. Like him on Facebook and follow him @CAwesomeheimer on Twitter.