{"id":501657,"date":"2026-01-01T15:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T15:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/501657\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T15:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T15:58:12","slug":"guardians-free-agent-rumors-link-cleveland-to-3-right-handed-hitter-improvements-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/501657\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians free agent rumors link Cleveland to 3 right-handed hitter improvements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guardians free agent rumors link Cleveland to 3 right-handed hitter improvements<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cleveland Guardians<\/a> aren’t known for making big splashes in free agency.<\/p>\n

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But they also have quite the lopsided lineup, heavy on left-handed bats and weak in the outfield.<\/p>\n

They might be able to fix both those problems with one signing, if they approach the remaining time this winter in the right way.<\/p>\n

MLB.com’s Jared Greenspan and Theo DeRosa<\/a> have listed out three options the Guardians could consider signing:<\/p>\n

Hays and Andujar both finished the season with the Cincinnati Reds<\/a>, while Bader closed strong for the Philadelphia Phillies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Last season, the Guardians posted a .647 OPS against southpaws, the fourth-worst figure in the Majors,” the MLB.com duo writes. “A free-agent signing or two could be beneficial here, and there are\u00a0quite a few players\u00a0who fit the bill. Someone like Harrison Bader, Miguel Andujar, or Austin Hays would provide an above-average bat in an area of need, raising the floor of the lineup.”<\/p>\n

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MORE:\u00a0Team USA’s projected WBC lineup is incredible<\/a><\/p>\n

Cleveland is coming off a season in which it went on a wild run in the second half to chase down the Detroit Tigers<\/a> and win the AL Central Division.<\/p>\n

Now is not the time to be complacent. None of those three players would be too costly, and all three would make the Guardians better.<\/p>\n

It’s worth it for Cleveland to try and get at least one of them on board going forward.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guardians free agent rumors link Cleveland to 3 right-handed hitter improvements originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[124,5,50,135,51,2565,53,538,365,47710,4808,4,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-501657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-austin-hays","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-guardians","13":"tag-clevelandguardians","14":"tag-detroit-tigers","15":"tag-guardians","16":"tag-harrison-bader","17":"tag-jared-greenspan","18":"tag-miguel-andujar","19":"tag-mlb","20":"tag-philadelphia-phillies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115820672261463323","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}