News and Notes for Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
In a long baseball season, sometimes your two-year old and your one-year old get you up three times during Sunday night and you fall asleep during Monday night’s late night Guardians’ game and miss your recap, and that’s what happened to yours truly. BUT, the good news, I woke up to see that the Guardians held on to their lead and won the opening game in a three-game series against the Diamondbacks, 3-1.
The heroes were CJ Kayfus and Brayan Rocchio who both hit home runs (Rocchio’s the two-run variety driving in Kayfus). Gavin Williams rebounded from a bit of a disappointing outing last time by pitching well and the bullpen was good, again, only Cade Smith allowing a run in the ninth while Erik Sabrowski, Matt Festa, Hunter Gaddis and Smith handled 3 and 2/3rds innings.
Shane Bieber will start on Friday for the Blue Jays. I wish him well. I doubt we will look at this season and conclude, come October, that keeping Bieber would have put this team in the playoffs. But, if that does happen, guess we just have to hope Kahl Stephen is as excellent as he seems like he could be.
I realize that it is quite pointless to plan on the Guardians’ spending money in free agency, but this is one of the few offeseasons where they will have a little extra money. How they allocate that money – 1. early extensions, 2. a trade aquisition or two, 3. a few cheap, veteran, one-year deals, or 4. an actual big fish – is yet to be seen, but, because there isn’t a lot of news today, thought I’d share a list of free agents they COULD consider if they decide to do so:
-Kyle Tucker, LHH RF (lol)
-Framber Valdez, LHP
-Cody Bellinger, LHH OF
-Pete Alonso, RHH 1B
-Ranger Suarez, LHP
-Dylan Cease, RHP
-Michael King, RHP
-Shane Bieber, RHP
-Kyle Schwarber, LHH OF/DH
-Bo Bichette, RHH SS
-Zac Gallen, RHP
-Brandon Woodruff, RHP
-Gleyber Torres, RHH 2B
-Ryan O’Hearn, LHH DH
It seems to me that IF, IF, IFFFF the Guardians are willing to commit to a decent free agent for 3-4 years for once in their lives, they could get a significant piece for the middle of their lineup… or a front of the rotation arm. I know not to even dream of doing both, nor to count on one, but hey, I can dream.
Zack Meisel has an article about Parker Messick, Triston McKenzie and some other Guardians’ notes.
AROUND MLB:
The Tigers destroyed the Astros, the Phillies beat the Mariners, and the Royals beat the Rangers.
Category: General Sports
