The 2025 Cleveland Guardians are, unfortunately, not as good as the 2024 version.
That doesn’t mean they can’t improve, or that a similar postseason run is out of the question: it’s just a bit more unlikely.
Of course, it will all depend on the direction the team decides to take at the trade deadline.
Cleveland sits 11.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central and three games behind the last AL Wild Card team, the Seattle Mariners.
Things are not looking good, and even though ace Shane Bieber is expected back around the All-Star break, it could be worse by then.
So what should the Guardians do? Should they go all-in on this season and sacrifice important prospects to get deadline improvements?
Or should they flip some veterans and stockpile more minor league talent for the future?
Paul Hoynes wrote about the situation for Cleveland.com, saying that “mediocrity has defined their season so far. At this moment, the one thing they excel at is bad baseball.”
“The Guardians are 3-1 against the Tigers this year, but do they have a realistic chance of running them down? There are still 80 games left in the season, and a lot of things can happen in that many games. A realist, however, could point to Cleveland’s first 82 games as evidence that the offense is incapable of the kind of turnaround necessary to make the Tigers sweat,” he wrote.
In reality, the Tigers have all but locked up the division already.
The question is, should the Guardians try for a Wild Card berth?
Not only did they fall far behind on that front, too, but they still have the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels between them and the Mariners.
“What caliber of player are the Guardians willing to take on or trade for a throw or two of the wild-card dice? Should the answer be none, they can try and trade the few veterans they have for future help, while promoting prospects such as Chase DeLauter and C.J. Kayfus to play out the season,” Hoynes wrote.
The next few weeks will be crucial to see if the Guardians try to get a boost from DeLauter and/or Kayfus, or if Bieber can come back and make a difference.
The Guardians are at a crossroads, and selling is starting to become a realistic option.
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