Guardians finalizing 7-year extension with Giménez

Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said he was confident at least one contract extension would get done before the start of the season. As it turns out, he was right.

Second baseman Andrés Giménez is close to finalizing a contract extension with the Guardians, a source told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand on Tuesday. The deal, which will begin in 2024, is for seven years and worth $106.5 million, with a club option for an eighth year. The club has not confirmed the deal.

John Adams, Who Banged His Drum in the Cleveland Bleachers, Has Died

Mr. Adams’s drumming was heard at more than 3,700 home games, first at Cleveland Municipal Stadium and then, starting in 1994, at Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field). Stationed deep in the bleachers, he steadily urged the team on by rhythmically banging his drum with two mallets.

“Football has its bands and its cheerleaders, and all of them help get into the spirit of the game,” Mr. Adams told The Akron Beacon Journal in 1983, explaining his long-running stadium gig. “Baseball has nothing, so I thought of the war drum thing for the Indians.”

His status as a superfan was acknowledged when the team gave away bobblehead figures of him with a drum and movable arms at a home game in 2006. Six years later, Great Lakes Brewing introduced Rally Drum Red Ale in his honor.

Mike Zunino, free-agent catcher, to sign with Cleveland Guardians

Free-agent catcher Mike Zunino is set to sign with the Cleveland Guardians, a club source confirmed Tuesday to cleveland.com.

MLB insider Ken Rosenthal first reported that Zunino, 31, and the Guardians were in agreement on a contract pending review of medical reports.

Zunino appeared in 36 games with the Rays last season before undergoing surgery on his left (non-throwing) shoulder for thoracic outlet syndrome. The 2021 All-Star has hit 146 homers in his 10-year big league career and is expected to be ready for spring training.

Guardians, Josh Bell agree on a two-year, $33 million deal

The KC Royals have a new pitching coach ... and they took him from an AL Central rival

The Kansas City Royals have settled on a new leader for their pitching staff, and they scooped him up from a division rival that has been among the top organizations in Major League Baseball in producing pitching talent in recent years. The Royals hired former big-league pitcher Brian Sweeney, who has been the bullpen coach for the Cleveland Guardians for the past three years, as their new pitching coach.

When Cleveland Was Where Careers Went To End

Winfield was still with the Twins when play stopped on Aug. 12, 1994, for what turned out to be a lengthy players’ strike. But as long as there was a chance that there would be baseball that year, Indians GM John Hart continued to make moves, and he acquired Winfield—while he was technically on strike—just before midnight on Aug. 31, the deadline for rosters to be set for whatever postseason might be played.

“I don’t have any inside information that the strike is going to end,” Hart told the Plain Dealer the time, “but I couldn’t live with myself if we had a chance to improve and didn’t do something.”

Winfield waived a no-trade clause for the deal. Hart told the Plain Dealer that Winfield said, “I love your club and I think I can help.”

Because it was during the strike, there was some confusion about terms for a guy who would be a free agent at the end of the 1994 season (an end that nobody yet realized had already happened: baseball wouldn’t resume until 1995). The deal between the Indians and Twins was Winfield for “future considerations,” a broader term than the cliched “player to be named later.” It has entered popular lore that Hart bought Twins general manager Andy MacPhail dinner to call it square, but the truth seems to be more nebulous than that.

MLB made a bad situation worse with Yankees-Guardians delay decisions

The Yankees and the Guardians were fully motivated to get the game in, and to preserve the off-day afforded the winner to travel to Houston and prepare for Wednesday’s opener of the ALCS. Marinak said the plan was for starting pitchers Jameson Taillon and Aaron Civale to begin warming up around 8:30, and then to get underway around 8:45.

“But then a second pocket of rain that had not been on the radar popped up,” Marinak said. Suddenly the first pitch looked like it wouldn’t be thrown until after 10 p.m.

“We felt that was the time to call the game,” Marinak said. He called that unexpected wave of showers “the final straw.”

Fine. Professional weather forecasters get paid a lot of money to get it wrong all the time. The Yankees and Guardians wanted to play, MLB tried to thread the needle by radar, and everyone went home the loser. Those in charge of the sport had a plan, but as Buck Showalter loves to say, if you want to make the baseball gods laugh, tell them about your plans.