Cleveland Guardians stand pat at the trade deadline but a major move is coming

The Cleveland Guardians didn’t make any major moves during the final hours of the trade deadline.

The Cleveland Guardians decided the kids were all right and decided to stay the course with the team as it is without making any major trades on Tuesday. The Trade Deadline saw a lot of activity, namely Juan Soto going to the San Diego Padres in a massive trade. The Guardians, on the other hand, made a minor move of trading Sandy Leon to the Minnesota Twins for pitcher Ian Hamilton.

Those dang Dolans, constantly trading away our best players.

The move signifies a desire from the front office to not trade away prospects who were maturing into Major Leaguers in front of our very eyes, a move that will pay off in the long run. Not only are guys like Steven Kwan, Nolan Jones, and Konnor Pilkington proving what they can do, but the team also called up Will Benson, whom we’re going to talk about later on in a different article.

This is a team that’s young, prone to streaky play but is overall very good. This was the right move in the grand scheme of things.

That doesn’t mean that no moves were made.

Franmil Reyes is getting sent down to Triple-A

I’m all for giving guys like Myles Straw the opportunity to hit himself out of his slump, after all, he still has a .300 on-base percentage and is second on the team in walks. He’s clearly not suffering from poor plate vision. Yet, why the Guardians waited this long on Franmil Reyes and sent him down to the minors is beyond me. Reyes has, historically, even dating back to his early minor league days, been a bad hitter, who’s too impatient at the plate.

So now, the Guardians have had enough, and are sending the slugger down to Triple-A to work out his swing. It probably won’t make a marketed improvement, this isn’t a new issue. So why would anyone think that this will work?

It shouldn’t be overlooked that Reyes’ return started the offenses’ inconsistencies and while Reyes had a game or two along the way where he was vital, most of his outings saw him strike out two or three times in a given game.

He has 104 strikeouts to only 56 hits. He struck out 37% of the time he stepped into the batter’s box. Of every hitter with at least 200 plate appearances this year, only Austin Hedges, 24%, is over the 20% mark.

Demoting Reyes is two months too late but hopefully getting him out of the lineup can allow the team to go back to their consistent ways. Yes, it may have only been a run every inning or so, and the team didn’t have a lot of home run power beyond Josh Naylor and Jose Ramirez but they put up runs and they won.

Hopefully, that returns without the albatrosses that was Reyes in the lineup.