Yesterday was a celebration for Jose Ramirez, as the Guardians held a press conference to announce that Jose would be with the team through his age-40 season in 2026.
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Paul Dolan actually addressed the public and the media in this video. Now, he’s still doing his best to deflect every possible question to his management staff during this meeting, but for Guardian fans, it’s good to know that he hasn’t lost his voice since his last joint press conference in 2022.
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Again, the only place I can currently find the clip below is on Twitter, so I apologize to those who avoid that site. President of baseball operations Chris Antonetti and general manager Mike Chernoff repeated the now-familiar refrain that teams don’t add hitters because 1. they don’t want to hold back young players, and 2. the players they want to add don’t want to split playing time. Hats off to Mason Horodyski from WEWS on Twitter for being an absolute genius at getting and sharing these clips. If you’re on Twitter, follow him @MasonHorodyski:
I want to make three things clear:
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1. I agree that due to the lack of upgrades available, it makes sense for the Guardians to enter the season as is right now (unless a trade for a major upgrade is available, in which case they should absolutely pursue it).
2. The Guardians really have no midfielder. Chase DeLauter shouldn’t be asked to physically play midfield as the primary option. So they can at least provide someone with full-time representation. The reason they didn’t do this is because Paul Dolan (and likely David Blitzer) wanted to invest as little money as possible during a potential lockout in 2027. That’s the real reason no action was taken this offseason to fix MLB’s 28th-worst offense.
3. The platoon options Antonetti describes are all going to teams, where they will allocate time and compete for jobs. If they’re unwilling to try here, it’s only because the Guardians haven’t offered them enough money to put aside their qualms about fighting for jobs. This is the bottom line.
Well, I would also like to mention that Kiley McDaniel of ESPN ranks the Guardians’ farm system as the second-best in Major League Baseball. It looks like we’re about to see how much this helps the major league teams in 2026.