News and Notes for Friday, July 25th, 2025
Trade deadline season for MLB kicked off yesterday with the Mariners acquiring former Guardians’ slugger, Josh Naylor, from the Diamondbacks for a couple prospects.
The Naylor deal should get some dominoes falling, like Ryan O’Hearn and MAYBE Carlos Santana. Unfortunately, Santana is playing himself into more of a “placed on waivers and claimed by someone whose first basman got hurt in late August” territory than a “Boston might actually want him” territory, I think. In any case, the Guardians won’t get anything for him should they deal him.
The Guardians lost a 1-run, winnable game yesterday, described by Nick here. While taking 3 of 4 is good, they can’t really afford to do this any more if they want to climb out of their June-July hole and make the playoffs.
A.J. Preller is seen as desperate to upgrade his lineup. That is something to monitor, because, while the Padres don’t have much in the way of prospects, sounds like Preller could try to flip Dylan Cease, or Michael King or Robert Suarez for highly touted prospects which would enable him to pursue a needed solution in left field…
Nicole and I released an episode of the Disgusting Baseball Podcast in which we play “Buy, Sell, Hold” with the Guardians roster.
ZiPS gives Jose Ramirez a 38% chance of getting into the 400/400 club, which is pretty cool.
The Tigers are in a very bad stretch right now, losing yesterday, but they are still eight games ahead.