Well, we have the rarest of all things – a Cleveland Guardians\u2019 rumor from a Twitter newsbreaker who actually knows things.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d have to wonder if the Guardians are looking to give France a minor-league deal and a chance to compete with David Fry for that right-handed hitting first base\/DH role. If this rumor is true, one would think the Guardians are also talking to Rhys Hoskins (who fills a similar role) and, perhaps, Randal Grichuk, who is the last right-handed hitter who can competently stand in centerfield left in free agency. Will they land any of them? Who knows? Probably not. But, this is at least an interesting thing to think about on a Thursday in early February.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at some stats:
France in 2025: 92 wRC+, 16.3\/4.3 K\/BB%, 90 wRC+ vs. LHP
France in his career: 110 wRC+, 18.1\/6.2 K\/BB%, 1110 vs. LHP (also 110 wRC+ vs. RHP)
As a defender, France had 9 Defensive Runs Saved and 10 Outs Above Average at first base last year. Wow! I had no idea he was that good at defense, there.<\/p>\n
Hoskins in 2025: 109 wRC+, 27.7\/11.3 K\/BB%,
Hoskins in his career: 121 wRC+, 25\/12.9 K\/BB%, 137 wRC+ vs. LHP.
Defensively, Hoskins had 1 DRS and 2 OAA at first base last year. He\u2019s been a poor defender at first for his career, but perhaps he\u2019s found a way to improve there.<\/p>\n
Grichuk in 2025: 82 wRC+, 20.8\/5.6 K\/BB%, 89 wRC+ vs. LHP
Grichuk in his career: 101 wRC+, 24.7\/5.6 K\/BB%, 116 wRC+ vs. LHP
Below average outfield defender, but can stand in centerfield and not absolutely embarrass you.<\/p>\n
Bottom line, I\u2019d be happy with any of these three, but Hoskins is the only one who would offer some legitimate excitement as someone who could PLAUSIBLY have a good enough season to be a middle-of-the-order bat.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see if the Guardians have some sort of Hail Mary up their sleeve to rescue themselves from an offseason of inactivity in adding to the offense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, we have the rarest of all things – a Cleveland Guardians\u2019 rumor from a Twitter newsbreaker who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,38552,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-556596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-guardians","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians-news","12":"tag-clevelandguardians","13":"tag-guardians","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116019926355999734","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556596","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=556596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}