{"id":850782,"date":"2026-11-11T08:36:50","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T08:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/850782\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T08:36:50","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T08:36:50","slug":"guardians-sign-lefty-reliever-who-made-mlb-debut-with-cubs-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/850782\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians sign lefty reliever who made MLB debut with Cubs in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Guardians<\/a> have signed a left-handed reliever who made his Major League debut with the Chicago Cubs<\/a> this past season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Monday, the AL Central club announced that it has agreed to a minor-league deal with Antoine Kelly<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kelly made one appearance with the Cubs in 2026, throwing 1.1 scoreless innings against the New York Yankees<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Otherwise, he spent the rest of the year at Triple-A with Chicago and the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>, posting a 4.62 ERA with a 23.7% strikeout rate in 50 2\/3 innings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kelly finished with a 16.7% walk rate in Triple-A, an alarming percentage for someone looking for a full-time job in the Majors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not the most alluring track record, but Kelly is a former second-round pick (No. 65 overall to the Brewers in 2019) who has previously drawn praise for a dominant fastball\/slider pairing that could make him an elite reliever if he could even get his command up from its currently dismal levels to merely below-average,” Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors <\/a>wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Phillies predicted to sign Cubs’ $85M former Silver Slugger finalist<\/a><\/p>\n

For the Guardians, there’s no real harm in signing Kelly to the minor league pact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They can invite him to spring training and see if he can improve his command enough to be considered for a bullpen role in Cleveland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kelly has one minor league option remaining, allowing the Guardians to move him to and from Triple-A Columbus and Cleveland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Guardians have signed a left-handed reliever who made his Major League debut with the Chicago Cubs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2565,538,4],"class_list":["post-850782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-guardians","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117596903371206090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850782","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=850782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}