The Cleveland Guardians went into this offseason with some clear and obvious needs on the heels of a second consecutive AL Central crown and disappointing playoff exit. With Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz both gone due to their alleged gambling infractions, it’s obvious that the team has big shoes to fill on the pitching staff, but the biggest issue on the roster is with the offense.
Nearly three months into the offseason, nothing has been done to remedy the fact that Cleveland had just two players hit more than 14 home runs last season, while ranking second-worst in the league with a .226 team batting average. Of the players to receive 70 at-bats for the Guardians last year, 13 of them hit .225 or worse, with seven of them hitting under .200.
The point is that this was a repugnant offense last year, and because nothing has been done to fix it, Zachary Rymer of Bleacher Report recently named the team in an article among teams with the worst offseasons in the league.
For years, this roster has needed a big bat, and for years, the front office hasn’t tried to get one.
“To be fair, the Guardians don’t normally throw their weight around during the winter. They indeed only have so much weight with which to do so, as this is notoriously a small-market, small-payroll franchise. This time should be different, however, and not simply because the Guardians have an AL Central title to defend heading into 2026. They also have a $24 million gap between what they spent in 2025 and what they project to spend in 2026. That’s real money. Real enough, even, to buy the slugger their offense badly needs alongside José Ramírez. That they have done basically nothing so far is hard to excuse, especially given that the wolves are very much at the door in Detroit and Kansas City,” Rymer wrote.
With Clase out of the picture, Jose Ramirez ($21 million) and Steven Kwan ($8.8 million projected in arbitration) are the only players on the roster slated to make more than $5 million in 2026. Tanner Bibee is the third-highest paid player on the team with a $4.4 million salary for ’26.
If ownership and the front office decide not to spend any money this offseason and feel comfortable going into the season with the roster constructed as is, then this is an unserious organization. Not including arbitration deals, Baseball Reference projects the Guardians to have just $62.6 million on the books in 2026. The fans continue to show up and support this team, and it’s a slap in the face if the Guardians don’t make some noise in free agency or via trade before the 2026 season starts.
There are still plenty of viable targets for the front office to go after, but we’ll see if anything actually happens.
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