3 Questions the Guardians Must Answer After the All-Star Break
The Cleveland Guardians still have many decisions to make during the 2026 regular season.
Video Transcript
As the Cleveland Guardians get ready for the second half of the 2026 season, they certainly have a couple of questions that must be answered between now and the end of the year, and some of them even sooner as the trade deadline rapidly approaches.
And some of the questions that I think need to be answered are as followed.
The first question is, where will the offense come from?
The Guardians lineup this season has at times looked much better as it has in years past, and at times has continued to struggle as well.
Overall, Cleveland's six seventy-nine OPS is the second worst in MLB, same with its ninety-two weighted runs created plus.
And heading into the All-Star break, the Guardians had scored the third fewest runs in MLB with three hundred and eighty-five.
Simply put, this just cannot continue.
The Guardians pitching staff is still strong, but the American League Central is still tight and same with the American League wild card race too.
At some point, the lineup is going to need to step up and give the Guardians a little bit more to secure some maybe more comfortable wins at that.
W-- The question though, where is that offense going to come from?
Will the Guardians continue to be aggressive in prospect call-ups?
Ralpy Velasquez and Angel Hanae certainly seem like the next two players up that could help this team, or will the Guardians go in the route of adding a bat at the trade deadline?
That really seems like the two best routes the Guardians could take, and they're gonna have to figure out which one it's going to be soon.
The next question up is, how will the roster look once Jose Ramirez and Angel Martinez are healthy?
The two players are likely still a couple of weeks off from rejoining this team, but once they are healthy, the Guardians are gonna have some complicated and tough roster decisions to make.
When they were injured and placed on the injured list, Khalil Watson was called up, and the way he's been swinging his bat, it looks like he deserves an extended stay at the big league level.
Gabriel Arias was activated off the injured list.
There's an argument to be made that he was the odd man out, but he's been one of Cleveland's hottest hitters over the last couple of weeks, and that offense is a premium and something that Cleveland can't ignore.
Cooper Engel was someone who had a cup of coffee with the Guardians before being optioned back down.
Do they still view him as an option later this season, or do they view him as someone who still needs more development time at the minor league level?
There's certainly gonna be a lot of tough decisions that the Guardians need to make with their roster once Ramirez and Martinez are healthy and speculating what that roster could look like could change day by day.
The last question that Cleveland must answer and must answer soon is, what will their trade deadline plan be?
The Guardians are not known to necessarily be typically big buyers at the deadline, but looking at the landscape of the American League right now, an argument can be made with the prospect capital that they have, they could go out and make a big move.
Or will they continue being one of the younger teams in all of baseball and rely on just the continued development of this group to hopefully get them back into the postseason?
Again, from where will the offense come from, to how the off-- the roster will look like once Ramirez and Martinez are back, with how the trade deadline will shape out.
The Guardians have a lot of questions that must be answered sooner rather than later.
