What I’m hearing about the Guardians and the trade deadline after the Bo Naylor deal

CLEVELAND — The Guardians’ acquisition of catcher Patrick Bailey in early May signaled the end of Bo Naylor’s tenure with the Cleveland Guardians, a stint that dates to June 2018, when the club snagged him with the 29th pick in the draft.

The tenure officially ended Saturday, when the Guardians and Milwaukee Brewers completed a four-player swap that landed Naylor and pitcher Codi Heuer with Milwaukee and reliever Craig Yoho and outfielder Blake Perkins with Cleveland.

There was no path back to the big leagues for Naylor once he was demoted to the minors three months ago. Cleveland had Bailey and Austin Hedges (and even David Fry) in the majors. At Triple A, they had well-regarded prospect Cooper Ingle and Kody Huff, who is beloved in the organization and enjoying a breakout season at the plate.

The Guardians initially sent Naylor to their Arizona complex to make some tweaks to his swing, and then he spent the last couple of months at Triple-A Columbus, essentially waiting in purgatory until a trade materialized.

The Brewers were among the teams interested from the get-go. From the Guardians’ standpoint, it made sense to wait until the market became clearer and teams grew antsy as the deadline approached.

Perkins will head to Columbus. He’s depth at all three outfield spots. He’ll turn 30 in September. He owns a career .636 OPS in the majors. He’s a switch hitter. Think of him as another Petey Halpin or Stuart Fairchild.

Yoho is the part of the package that had the Guardians intrigued. He’s a reliever whose changeup has stymied hitters and whose 94 mph fastball looks a lot zippier because he has elite extension, so he’s releasing it much closer to the plate than the average pitcher. The Guardians will have control over him through the 2031 season. That might be two collective bargaining agreements from now.

To salvage anything for Naylor at this point is a plus, though it comes with the caveat — really, the headline — that a first-round pick and top prospect never scratched that sort of potential with the Guardians. Naylor was a sunk cost, unfortunately, which is an indictment of the organization’s hitting development that he never figured it out in Cleveland. Sometimes, that happens. Baseball is difficult to forecast and even more difficult to play. But as recently as this spring, the Guardians held high hopes for Naylor.

In mid-February, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said this about Naylor: “I think Bo’s just scratching the surface of the hitter he can be. … I think he’s putting himself into a position to have a big, breakout year.”

It made sense. Naylor had made significant strides with his walk and strikeout rates. He had flashed bursts of power. The swing was smooth, even if flawed. He had the athleticism, the work ethic and the instincts. The last frontier was to take all the increased contact on pitches he can handle and, well, produce. That didn’t happen, though, and even Vogt admitted he doesn’t have a clear explanation for it.

“It just never clicked,” Vogt said.

It’s almost like Vogt sprinkled magic fairy dust on Naylor, but did so on a windy day, and it instead blew onto fellow catcher Hedges, who is having a breakout season at the plate.

If it is going to click for Naylor, though, he’s in the right place. The Brewers have proven really good at this. They turned around Jake Bauers and Andrew Vaughn, for instance. That’s the risk involved with a change-of-scenery candidate.

“We scratched our heads a lot,” said Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti, “trying to figure out, ‘How do we do that? How do we support Bo better? But in the end, we just couldn’t help him unlock that consistency. … Hopefully Milwaukee can partner with him, give him a fresh set of eyes, some new voices, and I’m hoping he can get his career going in the direction that he wants.”

As for Yoho, the Guardians have been stockpiling pitchers with elite extension. Yoho ranks in the 93rd percentile in that category. Cade Smith, for instance, ranks in the 98th percentile, and hitters will tell you it makes his 97 mph heater look more like 100 mph. They have less time to decide whether to swing. Yoho pairs his fastball with a changeup that has limited hitters to a .103 average and .205 slugging percentage this season. The question is whether he can limit walks.

“He’s never been an elite strike-thrower,” Antonetti said, “but it’s certainly been better than his major-league stint. But we think once he gets into a role and settled, that he can throw enough strikes to be effective.”

Vogt and Brewers manager Pat Murphy chatted on the phone Saturday afternoon about the four players the teams exchanged. Vogt shadowed Murphy in Milwaukee in 2018 when he was sidelined with a shoulder injury and converted a lost season into an apprenticeship of sorts with the Brewers’ coaching staff. The two managers have remained close since.

So, what’s next for Cleveland? The Guardians are attempting to trade for help for their lineup. No, this trade didn’t change anything on that front. Cleveland wasted a valiant effort from Tanner Bibee on Friday night because Vogt’s lineup mustered one run on three hits against Diamondbacks rookie Mitch Bratt and four relievers.

“We want to improve the offense,” Antonetti said Saturday. “So if we can find a player or players externally that help us get better, we want to do that. But we need the group that’s here to perform better than they have.”

There’s a well-documented dearth of right-handed hitters available, especially in the outfield. Taylor Ward, Lane Thomas and Heliot Ramos all fit that description and would make sense for Cleveland. Someone like Luis Robert Jr. could be a low-risk dart throw if the New York Mets would cover a chunk of his salary.

Because of the market, and because of how desperate the Guardians are for offense — they rank 30th in the league with a .676 OPS — they know they can’t limit their pursuits.

“I do believe in the group of players that we have,” Antonetti said, “but the results are what they are. We need to play better for the balance of the season than we’ve played so far.”