The Cleveland Guardians are 37-29, sitting in the middle of an AL Central race with a roster that has outperformed expectations at nearly every turn. Logic says a team in that position goes out and adds at the trade deadline. But according to The Athletic’s Zack Meisel, the path to doing so may be more complicated than the standings suggest.
Meisel outlined two specific factors that could slow Cleveland’s ability to operate as buyers when July rolls around, and both are worth understanding for anyone expecting the Guardians to make a straightforward run at the market.
“For one, there’s that darn collective bargaining agreement that’s set to expire this winter. The Guardians ran into this a bit last summer when they surveyed the trade markets for Emmanuel Clase and Steven Kwan. It could take some time for the trade landscape to take shape, too. There are a slew of teams that were expected to be contenders (Mets, Tigers, Red Sox, Giants) that might want to delay their decision before reluctantly selling,” Meisel wrote.
The CBA issue is real and it is not going away before the deadline arrives. When the collective bargaining agreement is set to expire, contracts and financial commitments carry added uncertainty for every team in baseball. Players acquired in trades come with salaries and club options that could be affected by whatever new labor deal gets negotiated this winter. For a franchise that operates with Cleveland’s level of financial discipline, taking on that kind of contractual uncertainty is a meaningful obstacle, not just a minor inconvenience. The Guardians experienced a version of this problem last summer when they explored the market around Clase and Kwan and found the waters murkier than expected.
The second factor is equally significant. When too many teams are undecided about whether they are buyers or sellers, the market stalls. The teams Meisel identified, the Mets, Tigers, Red Sox, and Giants, all entered 2026 with postseason ambitions and are now staring at seasons that have not gone according to plan. Rather than accepting seller status early and opening up their rosters for negotiation, those clubs have every incentive to wait, hope things turn around, and delay the kind of decisions that would make players available.
The Guardians will almost certainly attempt to add. A 37-29 record and a legitimate division race demand it, and the front office under Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff has a long history of finding creative ways to improve the roster even when the obvious paths are blocked. The 2016 blueprint Meisel references in his piece is the model Cleveland has always pointed to when resources are limited and imagination has to fill the gap.
The Guardians are good enough to be buyers. Whether the market cooperates with that ambition before the deadline arrives is a different question entirely.
NEXT: Brayan Rocchio Reveals How the Guardians Feel About Tanner Bibee
