News and Notes for Sunday, July 27th, 2025
Today is the most important game of the 2025 season for the Cleveland Guardians. Sort of.
The Guardians are .500 again, after a frustrating split of a winnable doubleheader against the Royals. You can read a recap of game one here and a recap of game two here. Today, they face an excellent, young lefty in Noah Cameron. If they can find a way to beat him, they will be over .500 heading back home to play the Rockies. That MAY be enough to convince the Guardians’ front office to hold/buy instead of sell at the deadline.
Or, Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff may have already made up their minds and have trades in the works. Personally, I see no reason to think this team will make any kind of run to or in the playoffs. If the right deal is there for Emmanuel Clase or Steven Kwan or Shane Bieber, they should probably make it. But, I don’t know if those deals will be there or not. We will know by Thursday.
It is mildly interesting that Clase pitched in both games of the doubleheader yesterday (as did Gaddis). IF the Guardians are entertaining the idea of trading him, one would imagine inquiring teams wouldn’t be thrilled about that. So far, I can’t find a way to query how often pitchers have pitched in both halves of a doubleheader over the past ten years, but I can’t imagine this is a common occurrence in today’s attempts to mitigate pitcher injuries. But, props to Gaddis and Clase for stepping up when the team needed them.
Tom Hamilton received the Ford Frick Award, putting him in an illustrious group of broadcasters listed as award recipients in the Baseball Hall of Fame. You can listen to his speech here, and you can read a great tribute from Zack Meisel of the Athletic here. I love Hammy. For thirty years, I have listened to Tom more than I have to any other person on this planet and he’s helped me through a lot of bad times and made all the good times better. Congratulations on a well-deserved award, and here’s to many more years and finally getting to call a World Series winner someday in Cleveland!