CLEVELAND (AP) — Gabriel Arias was placed on the 10-day injured list by the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday due to a strained left hamstring.

Juan Brito was called up from Triple-A Columbus and will make his big league debut during Tuesday afternoon's game against Kansas City. Brito is batting sixth and playing second base.

“We’ve been excited about Juan for a really long time. And I feel like last year with his injuries, we would have seen him last year at some point, but we just couldn’t be more excited,” manager Stephen Vogt said. “Juan has historically been a good decision maker at the plate. He’s got the ability to make contact and he’s got the power to drive the ball out of the yard. So he’s a complete hitter from both sides.”

Brito — who played in only 31 games last season due to thumb and hamstring injuries — is in his seventh professional season and fourth in Cleveland’s organization. He was 11 for 35 with five doubles and four RBIs in nine games this season for Columbus.

Brito played mostly at third base for the Clippers, but Vogt said he would primarily be at second base while Arias is sidelined.

Arias suffered the injury during the fifth inning of Monday night's game. The shortstop appeared to get hurt while running to second base on his double to right field.

The injury comes at an inopportune time for Arias, who was 5 for 14 with two home runs and four RBIs in his last five games.

Arias is expected to miss at least a month due to the injury, which has been classified as a moderate hamstring strain.

Brayan Rocchio and Daniel Schneemann will be the primary shortstops. Rocchio had been playing second base during the first two weeks of the season.

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

CLEVELAND (AP) — Carter Jensen and Jonathan India homered, Michael Wacha allowed one run in seven innings and the Kansas City Royals defeated the Cleveland Guardians 4-2 on Monday night.

All-Star third baseman José Ramírez became Cleveland's franchise leader in games played with 1,620. Ramírez, who went 0 for 2 with two walks, surpassed Terry Turner's nearly 108-year-old mark.

Steven Kwan and Brayan Rocchio had solo shots for the Guardians, who have dropped two of three.

Kansas City took a 2-1 lead in the sixth when Jensen lined a fastball by Peyton Pallette (0-1) over the wall in right field for a solo homer. India added a two-run shot in the eighth to extend the advantage to three.

Wacha (1-0) allowed only three hits with three walks and three strikeouts in his second start of the season. The right-hander threw six shutout innings March 28 at Atlanta but was scratched from his scheduled April 3 outing against Milwaukee due to illness.

Lucas Erceg earned his third save with a scoreless ninth.

Wacha's only costly mistake came in the third inning when Kwan drove a fastball down the right-field line to put Cleveland up 1-0. Wacha threw 102 pitches, including 62 strikes. He is the second Royals starter this season to go over 100 pitches.

The Royals — who have won two of three — tied it in the fourth by capitalizing on a Guardians mistake. Jensen struck out, which would have ended the inning, but got on base due to Tanner Bibee's wild pitch. India followed with a looping base hit to right field to drive in Vinnie Pasquantino.

Rocchio homered to left-center in the eighth.

Up next

Kansas City lefty Noah Cameron (1-0, 1.80 ERA) opposes Cleveland RHP Gavin Williams (1-1, 2.25) on Tuesday. The game has been moved up to an afternoon start due to forecasted frigid temperatures at night.

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

CLEVELAND (AP) — José Ramírez became Cleveland's franchise leader for games played on Monday night against Kansas City.

The Guardians' all-star third baseman played in his 1,620th game, surpassing Terry Turner's mark, which held more than 108 years. Turner spent 15 of his 17 big league seasons with Cleveland from 1904 through ’18 and played in 1,619 games.

Ramírez received the third-base bag from longtime Cleveland first-base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. before the sixth inning, after the game became official.

According to MLB, Ramírez will be the only active player to lead his franchise in games played.

Ramírez made his major league debut on Sept. 1, 2013, as a pinch runner for Carlos Santana during the ninth inning of Cleveland’s game at Detroit. He has been part of six AL Central Division titles, including the 2016 World Series squad, which lost in seven games to the Chicago Cubs.

He is the only player in Cleveland’s 125-year franchise history to have at least 250 home runs and 250 stolen bases. He currently has 286 home runs and 289 stolen bases.

Ramírez leads the franchise in extra-base hits (729) and has 27 multihomer games. He ranks second in home runs, stolen bases, total bases (3,018), and RBIs (954), third in doubles (400) and seventh in hits (1,674).

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

ESPN is literally going back to the beginning on Monday night when it debuts a 90-minute documentary about its creation.

“Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN” will premieres at 8:30 p.m. EDT. It will air the same night as the championship game of the NCAA Tournament, an event that helped put the network on the map by showing early-round games.

The documentary showcases Bill Rasmussen and his son, Scott Rasmussen, as they bring to life the idea of a network that would carry sports around the clock.

“Many people claim to be the founders of ESPN. The founders are most definitely Bill and Scott Rasmussen,” said Rosa Gatti, who was ESPN’s publicist from 1980 through 2013.

Bill Rasmussen’s original idea was a cable channel covering only Connecticut sports. Many cable operators in the state were skeptical, but someone suggested buying satellite time to reach a national audience.

The documentary also covers how the Rasmussens secured financial backing from Getty Oil, a rights deal with the NCAA, and built a studio in Bristol, Connecticut, still under construction when ESPN went on the air on Sept. 7, 1979.

The Getty investment and the deal with the NCAA occurred on the same day.

“When someone tells you you can’t do something, you want to prove them wrong,” Bill Rasmussen said. “Many, many people told us there wasn’t enough sports to do a 24-hour channel. I didn’t argue with anybody. I just thought they were wrong and I was right.”

The first minutes of ESPN going on the air are shown, along with the frantic four hours before the debut. George Grande welcomed viewers to the first “SportsCenter” broadcast before the network’s first live event, a slow-pitch softball game between the Kentucky Bourbons and the Milwaukee Schlitz.

“In those days, we didn’t know if we’d last four weeks, four years, let alone 40-some, but we knew it was special,” Grande said. “Bottom line was Bill Rasmussen was the true pervader of the original American dream, and he gave us all something very special that we still have today.”

In an ESPN blog post previewing the documentary, Scott Rasmussen said his estimate of how many households the network would reach by the end of the 1980’s was a little off.

“I estimated that ESPN would be in 30 million cable households by the end of the ’80s. That certainly seemed aggressive at a time when only 12 million households in the country had cable television,” he wrote. “When all was said and done, my numbers were way off. Rather than my optimistic projection of 30 million households, ESPN ended up in nearly 60 million households by the end of the ’80s!

“That success says more about the tens of thousands of people who worked at ESPN after I left than it does about my projections. My work showed what was possible; their work made it happen.”

The Rasmussens were forced out of ESPN in 1980. At the time, Getty owned 85% of the network.

Bill Rasmussen and the network were estranged until 1999, when company executives invited him to the 20th anniversary celebration. Since then, he has been embraced and recognized for his vision of creating an all-sports network. He toured the country in 2019 for the 40th anniversary and gave speeches at Walt Disney Company and ESPN events.

The documentary marks the first time Scott Rasmussen has spoken at length about the network’s birth and its early days.

“There was a whole lot of chutzpah and a whole lot of vision, and they’re maxed out on their credit cards. It’s the American dream,” said Bob Ley, one of the network’s original anchors.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports