The Guardians and right-hander Connor Brogdon have agreed to a major league deal, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Brogdon will make a salary of $900K next year, per Zack Meisel of The Athletic. The Guardians have 40-man vacancies and don’t need to make a corresponding move.
It’s a bit surprising to see Brogdon, 31 in January, secure himself a big league deal. He settled for a minor league deal with the Angels last winter. He was added to the roster a couple of times during the season, but was later passed through waivers in both instances. He tossed 47 innings for the Halos around those transactions, allowing 5.55 earned runs per nine.
Those were obviously not great results but the Guardians are presumably seeing something attractive under the hood. Brogdon’s 24.6% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate were both close to league average. His ERA was inflated because he allowed 11 home runs, almost doubling his previous career high of six. There are some ERA estimators which consider home run spikes to be fluky. Brogdon’s SIERA, for instance, was just 3.86 this year.
It’s also perhaps worth pointing out that Brogdon’s velocity came back. He averaged 95.5 miles per hour on his fastball in 2025. In 2024, he had battled plantar fasciitis and only tossed three big league innings. In that small sample of work, his fastball was down to 92.8 mph.
The Guardians presumably feel there’s a path to get Brogdon back to his previous results. From 2020 to 2022, then with the Phillies, Brogdon tossed 113 innings with a 3.42 ERA, 25.1% strikeout rate and 7.3% walk rate. He earned three saves and 16 holds. He also tossed 8 2/3 postseason innings with a 2.08 ERA in 2022, as the Phils made it all the way to the World Series. His fastball velo was in the 95-96 mph range for those seasons.
In 2023, his results backed up. He posted a 4.03 ERA with a 20.5% strikeout rate and 10.2% walk rate. His average fastball velo fell to 94.7 mph. The following year, he bounced to the Dodgers and battled the aforementioned plantar fasciitis situation. With the Angels in 2025, his results weren’t fully back but the velo and strikeouts were close to his best years in Philadelphia.
The Guards generally have pretty good bullpens and that was the case in 2025. Even though they lost Emmanuel Clase to a gambling investigation in July, the club’s relief corps still finished the season with a collective 3.44 ERA, third in the majors behind the Padres and Red Sox. Brogdon will jump into that mix as the Guards try to coax better results out of him than the Angels did in 2025.
Brogdon is out of options, meaning he can’t be sent to the minors without being exposed to waivers. If the Guards pass him through waivers at some point, he would have the right to elect free agency as a player with at least three years of service time. However, since he has less than five years of service, he would have to forfeit his remaining salary commitments in order to exercise that right.
The $900K salary isn’t that high, considering the MLB minimum will be $780K next year. However, it is perhaps enough to dissuade other teams from claiming Brogdon. It’s also very unlikely Brogdon choose to leave that money on the table. Perhaps the Guardians are planning on having Brogdon in Triple-A as non-roster depth at some point in the future. If he is holding a roster spot at the end of the 2026 season, he can be retained via arbitration for 2027.
Photo courtesy of Ed Szczepanski, Imagn Images
Why give him a 40 man spot? Dude should be on a split minor league deal at best…
900K thrown right in the trash.
Is that 900,000 coming out of your pocket? Cleveland knows how redo pitchers. Just keep your fliping burgers at mickey d goof !
The Guards have been really good at finding pitchers like this and making them serviceable- just don’t at last year as a data point!
This guy is going to become an absolute monster. He’s going to break out next year, and then become a staple out of the Guardians bullpen in 2027 after they trade Cade Smith. He will dominate and become an all-star in 27, then will require Tommy John Surgery in late July. That’s when Cleveland will go 55-7 between August and September to make the playoffs, because that’s just what this team does.
Cannot wait to hear the FO spin on this one.
No spin. They know how to turn pitchers around with karl wllis. Please keep your day job mopping floors at walmart idiot !
2025 FIP was 5.35 per Fangraphs? Siera is another fielding independent pitching stat. The difference between 2025 FIP and 2025 Siera is nearly two runs. You can pick and chose your stats but this delta is big. His 2026 steamer projection is 0 war, an improvement over his historical negative war and his steamer FIP is nearly 5.00. Whip is nearly 1.35. Tough stats. A project pitcher.
Really Cleveland?
Dusty think he’d land a majors deal but Cleveland has much better coaching than we do so hopefully it works.
Meh, $900k is just a tick above league minimum. They could cut him and not really lose anything financially.
On the plus side, look at what the Guardians were able to do with Jakob Junis last season. Maybe they think they can do the same with Brogdon
I am just going to give the club the benefit of the doubt here. They seem to have a good track record in these types of deals for pitchers.
Imagine if maddux had Brogdon all of 2025. The results would have been much better.
CLE knows their 2026 season is already lost… between Ortiz and Clase, there’s just no way to overcome the decimation of losing both of them for nothing within a short span. They’re about to start selling off players this winter… I think Kwan is getting traded. If they can get the right deal for him, I think they’d be smart to trade Jose Ramirez this winter.
Didnt they have a historic run after those guys went away to win the central?
Baseball is a funny game, a team can get away with some things for a while but as the sample size increases, it removes luck and fluke. Over the course of an entire season, it will undoubtedly catch up to them. You can’t just lose that many quality innings of pitching and expect replacement players to be able to produce at the level those guys produced at. Mark my words, the loss of Ortiz and Clase will catch up to them this season.
Cleveland has had one of the best winning percentages over the last 25 seasons and since 2011. Cleveland has only played in 25 games without playoff implications over the last 13 seasons. You can say they may take a dip, but they always take hit and continue to produce.
No doubt that losing Clase and Ortiz is a huge blow to the franchise.. but they won the division without them in 2025. The pitching staff looks good enough to stay competitive.
Offense is the tricky part. They’ll need to add from outside the organization but Manzardo and Kayfus both showed something last year. DeLauter and Bazzana are probably longshots to make a big splash in 2026 but there is a lot of ability there. Brito is another guy with an injury history but could add to the offense, if healthy.
There is no chance Jose gets traded unless he specifically asks for it.
Good analysis, maybe a tad upbeat, you must be a fan like me. Last year I hoped for help from Delauter, Brito, Valera and Bazzana later on. Aside from a decent cameo from George it never came. One injury after another but still they hung in there. Imagine what a full year of help from the top prospects might bring on.
I’d like to see 2B turned over to Brito and then Bazzana. The team will take a hit on defense but I doubt it’ll be enough to overcome the difference between whatever hitting results they have (I think above league average) to the 30% below that Rocchio and Arias keep putting up. Just do it, quit stalling.
They would be better off with Connor MacLeod
There can be only one.
Angels’ bullpen just improved.
@Rsox. Angels were using him to much, and that’s when he crater. He has a good chance to bounce back. The angels defense probably didn’t help him either
In the annual tradition of You Don’t Know Jack, Cleveland signs a reliever everyone points and laughs at that then goes on to have an All-Star caliber season
I wouldn’t count on this guy, but prove me wrong. I’d expect a ceiling of 2024 Pedro Avila at best.
I can see the similarities only Brogdon doing pretty much everything better
Cleveland done spending for this off season? They are small market ,you probably know. I predict they sign someone else too. Maybe late January. By then, they won’t have to spend all the hours of analytical research on the guys that won’t sign there. Pretty shrewd.