CRYSTAL BALL: Cleveland Guardians 2026 ROSTER PROJECTION 1.0 | What Brendan Donovan Could Add

CRYSTAL BALL: Cleveland Guardians 2026 ROSTER PROJECTION 1.0 | What Brendan Donovan Could Add

Cleveland Guardians filled out their coaching staff with another former Mariners colleague of Stephen Vogt. We’ll talk about what he adds to the staff besides being a Stephen Vogt doppelganger. And we’ll give our first projection of the 2026 Opening Day roster. Tanner, Bobby, the Guardians and you’re listening to Locked On Guardians. You are Locked On Guardians, your daily podcast on the Cleveland Guardians, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team every day. Hey friends, Guardians fans all around the world, thanks for joining us for our favorite half hour of the day and hope it is yours as well because for the next half hour we’re talking about your Cleveland Guardians on the Lockdown Pod. Lockdown Guardians Podcast. We’re the only daily podcast that covers the Cleveland Guardians every day from the majors, the minors, the draft, everything in between. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network now the number one sports podcast network of every dayer. Welcome back. If you’re new here, I’m Justin Latta. I’m one of your two co hosts for the last three years and counting. Before joining my friend and co host Jeff Ellis, who has this episode off, I have 18 years of experience and counting covering the Cleveland Guardians minor league system as a prospect writer and editor from Arizona and Columbus. So coming up, we’ll talk about how the roster in 2026 could change throughout the year, what that might look like. We’re going to dive into our first roster projection of the offseason heading into 2026 in a little bit, but we start this episode off with some more coaching news. Tony Arage is the new bench coach and what he brings to the club. This episode of Logged In Guardians is brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel. Right now, if you’re a new customer, you can bet just $5. If that bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download the FanDuel app today. I don’t have the exact name of the commenter, but I did see, I think it’s Sizemore 24. It’s an Apple podcast review and he said, I think he said hello from Alaska. So we’ve got, you know, fans in Alaska of the Guardians, which is super cool. So we’re glad to kind of be able to bring the community together from all over to talk Guardians. And we’ve got some new exciting developments coming from the Lockdown Network as far as what really die hard fans of the podcast can expect and bring the community together even more than what we already have. So. All right, let’s kick off today’s show talking about the latest bit of news in the coaching staff. It seems like the coaching staff is all but taken care of at this point and that means Stephen Vod has replaced Craig Alvarez with another Seattle colleague, Tony Our Narage. So not really a surprise that Vote has brought in a former Mariners colleague. He already brought in Annie McKay as the field coordinator. He’s our now he’s got Tony Arnarich who he also worked with in Seattle. You know, before Vote, we had Francona And Francona Day 1 had Brad Mills who he was longtime friends with and played with. And they also brought in demarlo Hail to replace Mills when he semi retired the first time. And then, you know, he just retired again in Cincinnati. Vote brought Alberto in from San Francisco who he also played with and now McKay, who, you know, brought Vote to Seattle become the bullpen coach after he retired. Jeff covered that higher on Wednesday’s episode and I gave some additional thoughts in a bonus video you can go check out on the page as well. And on Thursday we learned that Tony Arnarich will be Votes new bench coach. So what does he bring to the team besides being a Steven V. Doppelganger? If you’re watching on YouTube, there’s a picture of Stephen Vogt. There is a picture of Tony Aric Tell me that if a a umpire ejects Stephen Vogt that he can’t just put on our uniform and say he’s Tony Ourage because he would take over as the manager for the game if Votes ejected. He wouldn’t have to do the whole Bobby Valentine glasses and mustache routine to stay on the field and try to lock in. So Tony or Eric maybe brings a little bit of doppelganger to that. That’s, that’s always good, but it won’t. Yeah, it won’t. Shouldn’t shock you that he’s an ex Mariners coach and also is a former catcher who played five years in the minors. So our Narich was with the Mariners since 2014 after he retired. And like McKay, he’s also very varied when it comes to areas and perspective that he’s coached in or served in. So he’s been with The Mariners since 2014 and he’s been they’re hitting a minor league hitting coordinator, a minor league catching coordinator. He’s also been a major league catching coach, major league hitting coordinate and ironically he also took over for Stephen Vogt when Vote came to Cleveland and leaving the Mariners bullpen job, bullpen coach job open and that was filled by Our narrat. So the Guardians, you know, they get poached every offseason, right? We’ve already seen Albert go, we’ve seen Kai Correa go. Matt Foreman had overtures from Colorado before they landed on another Cleveland GM that wasn’t involved in baseball recently but was. That’s another story. But, you know, the Mariners made all the way to the alcs and it seemed like for a time they were going to make the World Series. So not really a shock that they are also seeing coaches get poached. But Stephen Vogt knows a lot of them and has relationships with them, which, you know, is important. I don’t know that you know, our narrator will have the same exact relationship with Vote because those two went way back to the minors and they have a very different friendship and relationship. But that could still be a good thing for Vote in the organization, especially considering you’re hiring without, like there were guys in the system they could have promoted for sure. But I’m not surprised that Vote, you know, the first two openings on his staff that have happened since he came to Cleveland, he filled with external guys that he’s worked with other places because you want more guys that you trust on your side. And necessarily you think the same because, you know, we, we’ve heard about, you know, Albanez would challenge Vote and they’d have a good bounce back and forth off each other, a good give and take relationship. But when you hire outside the organization, you know, it always brings in the possibility of outside perspective. Now, I know Vote and our narrator McKay worked together in Seattle, but not that long. But they obviously liked each other, trust each other, and they were a big part of why Vote was in Seattle. But coming to Cleveland, they don’t do things the same way. Right. The Mariners and Guardians are very similar organizations, but they bring in different perspectives. So those two guys in our Narich, you know, has a different way of doing things. He’s seen different things and he’s not really accustomed to how. He might know Stephen Vogt, but he hasn’t been in the dugout with Stephen Vogt a whole lot because Vote was the bullpen coach and our narrative was a hitting guy and a catching guy. They’re both catchers. But our narrator can bring in, you know, a different perspective, which I think is always important when you fill out your staff. You know, the Mariners are a solid organization. They made the playoffs and what, 22, 24 and 25. So that’s good and you get less group think and that’s always important. Too. And you, I think when you promote from within, sometimes you get a lot of the same people who have been around, the same processes, the same ideas, the same people. You get a lot of group think. But when you bring in people who aren’t part of the organization already, you get people who are doing things different ways and might have a different idea or might challenge you differently. And some of the things I like about our narrative is that he seems very open to different ideas, not just doing things the way they’ve always been done because that’s how he was taught. He’s, I’ve noticed in some of the videos he’s posted he’s been very active on social media and like coaching and other things like that that he did back to Covid, open to learning new concepts and ideas, make sure that he believes in what he’s teaching, sharing or believing that new ideas and information can be helpful. I think that’s something that holds a lot of teams back, especially experienced staffs because he’s coming from the outside the organization and having more catchers I think is always a good thing to be honest. And he also, you know, is a former hitting coordinator. So you know, that might maybe help out a little bit. But you also want to be careful because grand fig dan puente jr. Tances handle that. And you don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen. You don’t want too many voices, you know, saying different things. But I think if you get enough smart people in the room together, they are open minded, they can check their egos at the door. The way it seems like our marriage can and vote can. That can create advantages on the margins and attention to the little details that matter. I mean look at the, the base running that really affected the World Series and those little details and those margins can really lead to improvements that matter for a team like the guardians for something. You know, for a team that operates on the budget that it does, they need those, you know, kind of advantages, those perspectives to win little things. Especially when you’ve got, you know, it’s going to be a young roster again. So no surprises here. I think that really should fill out vote staff at this point. You know, I think there’s still a question of whether or not I don’t think Baltimore has a pitching coach as of yet. So I don’t know if, if Albert has might come calling for, for Brad Goldberger. Brad Goldberger, Joe Torres. I almost combine their names and you know, not surprising that Cleveland would lose a pitching coach but they haven’t yet. And some of their staffs are starting to get filled out. So I think things are a little bit settled for the time being. We’ll see what happens throughout the off season. But I like the higher Varnarich again. Seems like another good, good person. I’ve seen Seattle people keep talking about how they’re losing really good minds and the Guardians have been victims of brain drain too from their success and the Mariners are feeling it too. And you know it’s hard to challenge and question vote on these kind of decisions because he’s the two time manager of the year. As symbolic is that might be, but they’ve done a lot of good things here and his demeanor last year led them to their division title despite being 15 and a half back and dealing with a gambling scandal. So you know you give them the benefit of the doubt on these kind of hires. So now that we know who is going to be on the coaching staff, let’s talk about who is going to be on the roster in lineup come March 26, 2026. It’s time for 2026 roster projection 1.0 next NBA action is heating up and there’s no better place for you to get in on the action than with Vandal, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. So even if you miss the start of the game, or if you want to ride a hot hand, let’s say you like how someone’s playing in a game. You want to bet on the next bucket. You want to bet on a fourth quarter comeback made by the Cavs. You can do that on FanDuel and you can combine those live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. The Cavs took one on the chin against the Raptors on Thursday night. They’re back at home against the Grizzlies on Saturday. Ohio State’s playing this weekend. If you’re like me and a Buckeyes fan, the spreads over 30 there, I’m probably going to take that honestly. And the Browns are hosting the Ravens, getting I believe seven and a half as of right now. I didn’t make it a point to never bet anything positive for the Browns just because I’ve learned better. Better. But right now FanDuel is giving all new customers $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. So head on over to Fandel.com to sign up and play your game with Fandel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. As always, want to thank you for making lockdown guardians your first listen today. And every day wherever it is that you get podcast. And of course shout out to all the everydayers, shout out to the insiders. You’re all what makes this podcast worth doing. We love talking baseball with you every single day. And even bigger thank you for all of you who have made the Locked On Sports Podcast Network the number one sports podcast and network out there and you can keep up to date with all things Guardians during the off season. Make sure you’re hitting the Bell on YouTube so you get notified of the newest episode of Lockdown Guardians. Plus things like reaction videos. When it comes to coaching hires, free agents, trades, whatever it might be. We’ll have a video for it all in the moment before we record an episode so you get the news in a quick perspective and then you auto download on all your audio apps. We are free and available wherever you get podcasts so we appreciate your support there and we can go with you wherever you go this winter. So if you’re going on vacation to somewhere warm and you want to talk Guardians ball, well we’re going to be there with you if you will put us in your podcast feed on your audio platforms as well as shoveling snow if you’re staying in Cleveland or walking the dog or you want to talk about Guards ball at the dinner table at Thanksgiving, we’re here for you no matter what. So who do we have on the roster going the next year? Somebody on Twitter When I was out on Tuesday night at the Jonas Motors concert and I needed a quote unquote distraction from the concert. You know, I did this two years ago when I went with my wife to the concert. I said, you know, any Guardians, baseball questions, prospect, draft, whatever I would take on Twitter during the concert. I did the same thing again at the Jonas Brothers concert this week and one of the questions was who do I think will be on the 2026 Opening Day roster? And I didn’t even plan it like this, but we’ve got a player who we’ve been talking about for, you know, a little over a year now and we talked about our into this offseason who now has some news connecting him to Cleveland. So let’s start with the first on the offensive side. The catching position’s pretty well squared away, right? I think it’s pretty certain Bo Naylor and Austin Hedges will make up the majority of a bats at catcher, at least defense for Hedges. Hopefully David Fry is healthy enough between the elbow and his face surgeries he’ll be able to catch next year. So I’ve got him there. We know infield is settled with Jose Ramirez. I think we’ll have Kyle Manzardo and C.J. k for split at first base, maybe some outfield. They found a way to coexist on the roster last year. I have Brian Rocchio penciled in at shortstop for right now because he is a switch hitter and he made some strides late last year offensively and he still has options. I am kind of wondering about where things go for Gabriel Arias. You know, just the defense is so good, but the offense just never found a rhythm for him. And I think you might see Rokio be given more of a chance there, even though I like Arias’s defense better and Rokio was much better defensively at second base. But the new addition I have joining the Guardians in 2026 on the Opening Day roster is St. Louis Cardinals infielder right now, Brendan Donovan. So we’ve been talking about Donovan the last couple of years at least last maybe one or two. And we’ve mentioned him previously this offseason and now we saw A report from St. Louis Dispatch writer Derek Gould says the Guardians, among many other teams are interested in Donovan, which isn’t really a surprise. He’s got, let’s see, he’ll be a free agent in the end of 2027, so he’s got two years of club control left. He’s under arbitration and he is 28 years old. He’ll be 29 when the season starts. And yes, he’s another left handed hitter. Let’s start with the rumor mill though. So one of our listeners and then someone on Twitter pointed out, well, if he’s mentioned in the news and the Guardians are connected to him, that probably means it’s not going to happen, right? Because we know that for the Guardians, when there’s smoke, there’s no fire because they’re never connected to guys. Usually it’s always out of the blue. But I do think the Guardians will be calling. I don’t know necessarily how serious it is, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He isn’t a fit for this roster when it comes to how they would get him. You know, the Cardinals are looking to go a little bit younger and kind of, I don’t want to say move into their next contention window, but they’re trying to move into a younger roster to grow together. And this is a club that needs young pitching. So, you know, could the Guardians offer them something like, I don’t know about Logan. Allen’s not going to get it done. But you know, you could offer something Like Parker Messick. I don’t think Cleveland wants to necessarily subtract from the major league pitching staff, but there are guys like, you know, this might be a spot where Joey Cantello works. I’m not sure that’s the route you want to go, but I think he works here. If you want to go prospect wise. I’m pretty sure the Cardinals would have a lot of interest in a guy like Cal Stephen if you want to flip him. I don’t think they go the Austin Peterson route. You could tempt them with guys like Jason Cheerio. Other guys on the roster that are close to the majors, maybe you could see them move Daniel Schneemann over there to replace him and then maybe maybe they want a Valer, I don’t know. Or maybe they’re interested in other guys like Petey Halpin, Juan Brito could be of interest to them. So we’ll see. I. If you want to get a bigger bet, I know everyone, I know a lot of people have said like, well, Brendan Donovan doesn’t really solve your issues for the, for the offense and no, he’s not going to add a lot of power, but he makes sense because he doesn’t block anybody. He could be a better defender. He hasn’t always been graded out as the best defender at multiple positions, but he’s played second, he’s played some short. He’s played both corner outfield spots. So the big thing for him is he doesn’t block anybody. He’s a guy who consistently puts up an above average wrc. Plus he’s been since he’s come to the majors at age 25. 127, 118, 115, 119. I don’t need to tell you that the guardians last year that Brendan Donovan, 119, would have been second on the team last year. Second. He would have been their second best hitter by that metric. So he makes a ton of sense from that route. He doesn’t block anybody. If you want to bring up Travis Mazana, you could do that because Brendan Donovan can play another position besides second base. He can go to the outfield, he can play some third base to spell Ramirez. He can play shortstop to spell Rocchio. Not, maybe not very well, but he could. He can kind of COVID for everybody. And the idea is you need depth on your roster with good players who you can plug in if somebody gets hurt. Especially if you’re playing guys like Chase the Lauder and George Valera who are always injury prone. He can cover for those Guys, and you could still use them if they’re healthy, and you could still manage to bring up Travis Bazzana and Juan Bredo if Burrito’s not traded. So I think for Brendan Donovan, the price makes. Or the. The acquisition makes too much sense if the price is correct. And I think Rob Cirfolio, who’s the new AGM there, will have a lot of influence on who they. Who they covet. Other teams are interested, too. So I don’t know if Cleveland’s gonna have a leg up necessarily, but he’s gonna know the Guardians farm system very well. And I think Brendan Donovan, I think he knows Cleveland likes Brendan Donovan. They have in the past. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a natural fit there. We’ll see what happens. In terms of rumors, I mean, Derek Gold has been around for quite a while now. He’s not a national reporter, but he knows the Cardinals pretty well. He’s been that beat for a long time, so I wouldn’t doubt that his sources are correct. The only question is the. How serious it is. But, you know, if it was coming from John Morosi, anybody else, I’d probably say, you know, I wouldn’t even entertain it right now. I would tell you not to, but at the very least, I’m entertaining it. I would love to get a bigger bat, but look, a bigger bat’s not gonna. You’re not going to be able to use Cantillo or Allen to get a bigger bat than Brendan Donovan. We talked the other day about Kettle Marte on the show, and we said that if you want to bat at the level of Kettle Marte, you’ve got to part with Gavin Williams. That’s just not going to happen for Cleveland right now. And Cantillo and Allen don’t get you there. They just. Neither does Parker Messick. And if you look at like the Red Sox, they want another pitcher, right? We talked about Jaren Duran on a previous episode. They want to get Joe Ryan or Pablo Lopez from the Twins. Yeah, well, guess what? Joey Cantillo and, and Logan Allen, they don’t even scratch the surface when it comes to those two guys. Gavin Williams is the only equal counterpart. So you can see the price of outfielders that are going to be asked for, and teams are not going to accept prospects, especially the Red Sox. The Cardinals may. So that’s why this makes a little bit of sense. We can certainly supplement it with other guys. All right, you got to talk about the outfield, still got talk about the pitching staff. And then I’ll tell you about how the roster could change as well throughout next season. We’ll get into that on the rest of this episode of Lockdown Guardians. If you need more Guardians baseball talk to warm you up during the winter, you can always follow Jeff at Jeff MLB Draft Everywhere, myself at Jail Underscore Baseball or JL Baseball. Join the Lockdown Guardians Insiders Club. We text daily with members of our community. We’re dropping any kind of news and rumors we hear if they’re. If they’re serious. We ask our insiders for mailbag questions for the mailbag episodes, which we need to do soon. We do monthly video chats, which we need to do soon as well provide some bonus content from time to time, too. They were the first ones to see my video that was like eight minutes long on Annie McKay, which, you know, I don’t see anybody else doing videos breaking down the hiring of a field coordinator. But we do all that here unlocked on Guardians. So you can head on over there and hang out with [email protected] Locked on guardians to tap in. All right, so we talked about the infield and the co, the catchers. As far as the Guardians go in my roster projection 1.0 on the first half. Talk about the pitching staff, the outfield and how things could evolve next year. So I have the Guardians right now bringing back Stephen Kwan. I know people have said that the Dodgers are interested and maybe they’ll listen. You know, Jeff did pitch yesterday. I forget who the major league asset was, but the minor league asset was Mike Sirota. And I said, well, I can get on board with Mike Sirota. I forget who he said the major leaguer was, but I could be interested in that. But I think overall it’s more unlikely than not that Quan is back this year and then we’ll be doing this again in July or next December when he has one year of control left. I’m gonna pencil in Chase the Lauder as of right now in the outfield for 2026 to start the year. We’ll have a future episode on this, but the case has to be made. The Chase the Lauder, I think as long as he’s healthy, has to be on the opening day major league roster. I don’t think you can send him back to AAA because you’re not going to acquire somebody with that potential this off season. You need to acquire insurance for him, I believe. But you’re not going to acquire somebody with that much potential. I don’t think so. There’s no reason to not have him on the major league roster at this point, especially since you put him right into the fire in the playoffs. George Valera I’m going to have on the open day roster too. Just because the Guardians don’t have a right fielder who’s earned the job. Like I’m not giving it to Daniel Schneman or anybody else and he might not even be here. Who knows? For right now, I’m going to also make the pitch. The Guardians sign Robert Ref Snider. I know Jeff and I have talked about him before too, and we said that likely he goes back to Boston. But, you know, maybe the Guardians get a little aggressive here and, and maybe they have more to offer for him in this year. He’s a great fit too. You know, he’s a right hand platoon guy who’s got some experience and versatility. He was with the Guardians in spring training years past, but he’s been a lefty master the last several years and he fits a lot of what the Guardians are trying to do right now. In terms of guys who barrel the ball and guys who don’t chase out of the zone. They’re looking for guys who will take walks, hit the ball hard. Ref Snyder certainly is doing that. His barrel rate was good last year. His hard hit rate was good. His Average exit velocity was 92. He had a 19% or he was only chased 19 of the time. So that was huge. He’s got great arm strength. I don’t think he works on the infield anymore. He did it one time. The last time he played infield was. We don’t count 20, 20. It looks like 2017 was the last time he played any infield. So he’s, he’s strictly an outfielder now, but he can help you there. And I’ll. I’ll keep on how. Martinez as a bench player too. I think he fits if he’s still a lefty hitter and speed, I don’t know. They changes the pitching staff. I’m gonna, I’m gonna assume Gavin Williams, Tanner Bitey, Joey Cantillo, Slate Saconi and Logan Allen are all part of the opening day rotation in 2026. Especially you send Parker Messick back to AAA as your 6 starter or you use them in a trade. I don’t, I don’t want to, but it’s always a possibility. And then the bullpen. So Kate Smith comes back as your closer. We have Hunter Gattis. Got a pencil. And Sam Hanches for now because when he’s healthy, he’s really good. The Health has been an issue. I think the Guardians are more than willing to pay Matt Festa 1 million to come back. He’s a solid fourth or fifth guy in your pen. Eric Zabrowski was good last year when he came back, except you know, he had some strike throwing issues, but the stuff was really good. I’ll say. Tim Heron also makes this team because he improved at the end of last year. I’m not sure how much that’ll hold up, but I I think it’s enough. The two guys I’m adding to the bullpen the Guardian signed two relievers last season. They they signed Paul Seawald and Jacob Junas. I would be advocating for Junas to come back, but I’ve also heard that he is looking for clubs that may sign him as a starting pitcher and I don’t know if the Guardians want to do that, especially if that’s his preference and they may not have that that spot, but that could change if they trade a starter for a bat and maybe they say Junas could be their fifth starter. I’m he hasn’t really worked well as a starter in a while. I think he’s better off being in the bullpen, but we’ll see. So the two guys I have Cleveland adding in the bullpen are one year deal guys that are former Cleveland pitchers. I have, we talked about it earlier this week. I have the Guardians going out and getting Phil meiton and Sean Armstrong. Armstrong has been a closer for the Rays and the Rangers. Maton has plenty of experience in different roles in the bullpen, and I’ve read some interesting stuff on him lately about how he’s reinvented himself with his mechanics and his physique and his curveball and his cutter and his pitch usage. And he bumped his velocity a little bit during the season. He doesn’t throw that hard, but he I think he bumped himself up one or two miles an hour with the cutter. So he’s like 90, 91 as opposed to 88, 89. That may not make a difference, but maybe he’ll get more velocity. Maybe he’s found something that he’ll eventually creep up towards and they know him very well. And maytime, you know, go look at his Baseball Savant page. I know that doesn’t paint the entire picture for you, but it’s pretty good and I think the numbers back it up and you only have to do it for one year. So I think that makes a ton of sense for the Guardians given their situation, the lockout, all that kind of stuff. And as Much as I would like to see them go out and add a Devin Williams or a Luke Weaver or who else have we talked about in that, that relief market? Earlier this week we did an extensive episode on the relief market. Tyler Rogers, although I saw Brad Keller, but Brad Keller scares me a little bit and he’s getting interest as a starter. Pete Fairbanks to me has that Raynaud syndrome where his hands go numb in the cold. Not really ideal for Cleveland, as much as I’ve always liked him. So I think those two guys make a ton of sense for Cleveland. So I said that, you know, Donovan and ref Snyder don’t block anybody because they’re older guys that are going to be here for one or two years most and they can move around positions. So. And ref Snyder himself is a platoon bat. So you’re adding two. You’re adding two guys that raise your offensive floor a little bit, right and you’re adding two experienced relievers that don’t break the bank, that give you flexibility, that have experience, I think, I think lengthen the pen. Those additions don’t block the lotter from playing. He can still start. You can still platoon him if you have to or give him days off if he needs rest because you can move Angel Martinez in the center or you can move Ref Snider or Donovan out there even though they’re not great. But you know, daughter is not going to be great out there either because he’s, he’s a bad first guy and I like that, those moves over signing Lane Thomas because I just don’t want to add another injury prone outfielder to platoon with Delauder and Valera because that leaves you three guys with injury concerns. And I just. And that’s why I like Donovan and ref Snyder, because those are guys that like, maybe you don’t want to play them every day. Although they’re both above average, at least offensively, especially Donovan. They’re guys that you can count on to play 100 games. Like you’re not going to be upset if they play 100 games because they have a good floor. And that’s, I think, what this team needs because they’re, they’re going to say we’re going to have to grow internally. That’s the law. That’s Valera, that’s Bazano, that’s, you know, maybe Brito. And you can move Donovan and ref Snyder around and still the flexibility to bring those guys up. You can even consider Bazana in the outfield if you absolutely need to because Donovan gives you that flexibility with his Positional value and the fact that he only is here for two more years and you’re only getting maybe ref Snyder for a year, you have to rush them. You know, Brito has some defensive versatility as well. It’s not great, but, you know, this team has sort of punted on defense. Brandon Donovan has won a Gold Glove. I would take him at second base over there too. And I think as far as the bullpen goes, I, you know, it as tempting as it is to say, like, Daniel Espino could be a really great bullpen piece, I think anything he gives you in 2026 has to be a bonus. But it would be really exciting to add to the bullpen at some point. You still have Parker, Messick, Cal, Stephen, you know, maybe Austin Peterson, Jorman, Gomez, depending on, you know, who they end up giving up for if they trade for Brendan Donovan. I’m not 100 sure, but that’s still a good farm system to trade from. It still offers you a lot of depth and a lineup. I think of Quan, you know, Jose Delauder. Brendan Donovan is a great two hitter Manzardo. You add in ref Snyder as a platoon guy. You know, Valero was, was solid in his very brief time last year. Is that a sexy lineup? No, you’re not going to compare them to the Blue Jays and the Mariners or the Yankees, but that’s a deep and solid lineup of guys that do a lot of things well that fit the profiles they’re looking for right now. And, and if you get David Fry back to being a lefty matcher and you can platoon Bo Naylor against, you know, lefties and righties, you don’t have to use Austin Hedges in the lineup all the time. You can come in for defense. You, you really give yourself the ability to have depth and flexibility to maximize matchups, which is something the San Francisco Giants did really well several years ago when, you know, guys like Craig Alvarez and Kai Correa were over there. They mixed and matched their roster so well, and they got the most out of that roster. They were really good and they were led by strong pitching, which is what the Guardians have to do no matter what, no matter what they do this off season, what they do the next couple off seasons. Starting pitching is still the key to this franchise going as deep as they can. But if you give them a solid floor lineup like this and you can bring up guys like Bazano or Burrito or maybe you can still make a trade, I think that gives you a good floor and a good base to work with that’s just a lot of projection, obviously. I’m hoping those moves happen. We’ll see what happens at the off season. I’m very interested to see who they bring in as starting pitching depth. Like I could see them bringing in like a Griffin Canning, maybe some other guys on minor league deals who compete for depth options. So we’ll see what happens throughout the year. All right, on Monday, Jeff will be back with you and he’ll give you the weekend updates from all the news that happens over the weekend, if anything does. And I know he’s going to have the Kenny Lofton trade tree as promised. People have been wanting that. They’ve enjoyed Jeff’s segments on history, draft history, trade history. So he’ll be back doing that on Monday if there’s not a whole bunch of news. And then next week we’re gonna have Jeff Ponce on the show. You know, We’ve got the roll five 40 man roster deadline coming up, but next week Jeff Ponce will come on the show and we’re going to ask him about the Guardians 2025 draft strategy and the changes they made. And we’re also going to ask him about Travis Bazan and his 2024 season compared to, you know, Nick Kurtz and other guys that won the draft, too. So I’m excited to hear his perspective and he’s always been a popular guest and we love talking ball with him, too. So if there’s anything else you want to ask him, you know, we can take questions for that as well. But in the meantime, have a warm and safe weekend. Enjoy some Cavs basketball, enjoy time with your family, maybe watch the Buckeyes. If you’re like me, I’ll be doing that. The Browns played 425 on on Sunday Eastern. That’s kind of random, but maybe they’ll do something good to make you feel good this weekend. In the meantime, go, go, Guardians, go. And we back with more baseball talk on Monday.

Cleveland Guardians round out their coaching staff as Stephen Vogt brings in former Seattle Mariners colleague Tony Arnerich as bench coach—can this new dynamic spark a fresh approach for the Guardians’ dugout? Justin Lada highlights the importance of diverse perspectives on the staff and analyzes what Arnerich’s catching and hitting expertise will mean for Cleveland’s player development and game strategy.

Projecting the 2026 Opening Day roster, Justin Lada suggests bold moves, including a potential trade for St. Louis Cardinals’ Brendan Donovan and key roles for exciting young talents like Chase DeLauter and George Valera. The episode breaks down likely rotation arms such as Gavin Williams and Tanner Bibee, bullpen targets like Phil Maton and Shawn Armstrong, and the value of platoon bats like Rob Refsnyder. Will Cleveland build a deeper, more flexible lineup for a playoff charge while balancing player growth and trade capital?

05:12 Vote’s Staffing Strategy in Cleveland
09:17 2026 Roster Projection
14:59 Guardians Trade Rumor Discussion
18:51 Cleveland’s Trade Options Debate
21:43 “Kwan Future and DeLauter’s Spot
26:33 Guardians’ Offseason Moves Analyzed
30:24 Guardians’ Success Hinges on Pitching

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