3 Guardians Who Could Be Traded Before the Deadline
The Cleveland Guardians have a couple of players who could be intriguing trade candidates ahead of the MLB deadline.
Video Transcript
The MLB trade deadline is less than a week, and a lot of the narrative surrounding the Cleveland Guardians have been about what players the team could acquire before then.
But I also think it's important to look at three players who could be moved and traded before then as well.
So here are three Guardians that I think could be trade candidates before August third.
The first one up is Bo Naylor.
And there actually was a report earlier this season by Ken Rosenthal that other teams had inquired about some of the Cleveland Guardians catchers, and Bo Naylor probably will be the most likely one to get moved, considering that the team effectively ended their time with him when they acquired Patrick Bailey last May.
And right now, Naylor is taking up a spot on the forty-man roster, a spot that could become very valuable as the season continues on.
So of course, Naylor's big league career has not gone the way he would like to so far with an OPS or career OPS just above six hundred, and he also has been questionable on defense sometimes.
But there are quite a few teams out there that are looking for catchers before the trade deadline.
The, the Texas Rangers, the New York Yankees, his division rival, the Chicago White Sox being another one of them.
So it would not be surprising to see Naylor on the move considering how many teams need a catcher, considering that Bo Naylor really does not have a p-path- pathway back to the big league roster with the Guardians.
Next one up is Steven Kwan, and this one might be a little bit controversial, but Steven Kwan was one of the top names on the trade market last season, but the Guardians opted to keep him.
That said, his time with the Guardians and his time with the plate since last trade deadline has not necessarily gone the way he would have liked to, as he really struggled at the end of last season, as we know, at the beginning of this season as well.
So much so that he was demoted all the way down to hitting ninth in the Guardians lineup just a few months back.
But Steven Kwan has seemingly turned his season around, and he has a three forty-four, four thirty-two, four thirty-eight slash line over the la-- over the last thirty games and remains one of the best outfield defenders in all baseball as well.
Considering that Kwan only has a year and a half of team control left, it would not be surprising whatsoever considering how this organization typically operates to see them strike high on what value Kwan still has left and potentially trade him this trade deadline to recoup at least a little bit of the prospects they could have got last season if they would have traded him then.
That being said, Kwan has been one of the Guardian's best hitters in one of the worst lineups in baseball over the last couple of years.
So it would be a little-- maybe a hard sell to the locker room to move him, too.
The last one up is Rhys Hoskins.
Now, Hoskins, again, is another player who has not had the season he would have liked to, and it really has not been effective in the role the Guardians would have hoped for him to have in that platoon role.
And he has, on track for a career low OPS of six seventy-three.
That being said, it does seem like right-handed hitters are going to be the hot commodity this trade deadline, and there are not a lot of them, especially with Spencer Steer and Casey Schmidt both heading to the injured list.
The top two right-handed hitters on the market might just be Lane Thomas and Taylor Ward.
If a team strikes out on acquiring one of those players, perhaps they might look at a guy like Hoskins who does, even though this season is not performing at the level he's been, he's been a good right-handed hitter in years past, has playoff experience.
The Guardians likely wouldn't get a lot in return for him considering the season he's having, and he's a pending free agent, but it also wouldn't be surprising to see him get moved either, either.
So looking at those three players again, Bo Naylor, Steven Kwan, Rhys Hoskins.
If any of them get traded within the next week, it would not be surprising whatsoever.
