The Cleveland Guardians have had trouble scoring runs over the past few seasons, and the start of this one continued that troubling trend. Counting on some internal improvements to make the lineup better, the Guardians continue to fall short at one position in particular.
With catcher Bo Naylor coming off an outstanding final month of the 2025 season, even bigger things were expected from him in 2026. However, Naylor has reverted to his previous form and is batting just .156 over the first 23 games.
Instead, a boost has surprisingly come from catcher Austin Hedges, a longtime defensive specialist with a career batting average of under .200. So far this season, Hedges is batting .250, which would be a career high by almost 20 points.
If Naylor can reach even modest expectations, and Hedges can stay close to his current level as the season moves along, the key Guardians unit has a chance to break a historic slump and end a five-year stretch of batting under .200.
“If [Austin] Hedges’ career-long slump ends — and if Bo Naylor’s promising underlying data begins producing better outcomes — the Guardians could finally address one of the game’s more glaring weaknesses in recent years. Their catchers have combined to hit .186 over the last five seasons. It’s the only position group in the majors to sustain a sub-.200 batting average over such a stretch. It’s the fifth-worst such stretch of all time among catcher groups, rivaling the 1900s Brooklyn Superbas catchers who combined for the four worst five-year periods on record. It’s been a historic, long-running issue. But maybe it’s coming to an end. And should that happen, it began with a single motivation: Hedges never accepted he could not improve,” Travis Sawchik wrote.
With David Fry also part of this group now that he can play the field again, fully recovered from elbow surgery, the Guardians have a good chance to end the streak. Their catchers are currently batting .210 for the season, with 17 hits in 81 at-bats. Interestingly, that is better than their second basemen (.187) and DH (.167) are doing this year.
Last season, with Naylor and Hedges, the Guardians’ catchers batted .187, with just 96 hits in 162 games, including two hits by Dom Nunez in his two games. The last time Cleveland’s catchers batted over .200 in a full season was 2019, when Roberto Perez, Kevin Plawecki, and Eric Haase combined to post a .229 average.
Naylor finally showed some positive signs with his first home run of the season, against the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday. It gave him three hits in his past 12 at-bats over four games. Meanwhile, Hedges could be further motivated by the fact that he got engaged after their victory on Sunday.
It is never a good sign when a team threatens a streak of futility that dates back more than a century, so hopefully the Guardians can put an end to it this season.
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