We\u2019re just three short days away from the first game of the regular season, and there\u2019s still so much to look forward to. Here are three happy moments from the final week of Spring Training.<\/p>\n
Messick Makes the Rotation<\/p>\n
The Guardians announced on Saturday that Parker Messick will start the 2026 season in the starting rotation. While they rolled with a six-man rotation in 2025, they\u2019re sticking with five this season. This meant that Logan Allen was optioned to Triple-A Columbus, but gives Messick a very important chance to prove himself. He finished the 2025 season with a 2.72 ERA, 3-1 record, and 1.31 WHIP in 39.2 innings. Given a full season of work, he has the chance to become one of the best pitchers in the rotation. He\u2019s had a successful Spring so far, striking out 11 and owning a 3.60 ERA in 15 innings.<\/p>\n
Bibee to Make First Career Opening Day Start<\/p>\n
Well, this gets a little complicated because you probably read this same headline last year. While Tanner Bibee was in fact named the Opening Day starter in 2025, he wasn\u2019t able to complete the task as he fell ill the day before. Bibee finished the 2025 season with a 4.24 ERA with 162 strikeouts in 182.1 innings. Spring hasn\u2019t been as successful for him with 19 strikeouts and a 6.65 ERA in 23 innings, but as he gets into the regular-season-mindset, there\u2019s almost no doubt he\u2019ll be able to settle into his regular success.<\/p>\n
Spring Breakout Brings a Win<\/p>\n
A number of the Guardians top prospects faced off against those of the Los Angeles Angels in Thursday\u2019s Spring Breakout game, and they sure did break out. They took the win 4-2 over the Angels thanks to some defensive errors from Los Angeles as well as a huge three-run home run from Wuilfredo Antunez. The pitching staff also had a great day with Yorman G\u00f3mez going three scoreless innings, while Josh Hartle and Joey Oakie each struck out three across their two innings of work apiece. I didn\u2019t need any more reasons to be excited about our prospects, but they certainly provided me with a few anyway.<\/p>\n
Those of you reading this from anywhere in northern Ohio have most certainly read about (or maybe even experienced) the meteor that passed through the sky on Tuesday. The Guardians\u2019 Twitter account had some fun with it, posting the below picture of Superman flying over a Meteors sign at Progressive Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re just three short days away from the first game of the regular season, and there\u2019s still so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,79106,2589,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-639189","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-spring-training","12":"tag-cleveland-guardians-analysis","13":"tag-clevelandguardians","14":"tag-guardians","15":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639189","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=639189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}