Bo Naylor’s swing change has the Guardians buzzing — is this finally the year he becomes a star?

Updated: Feb. 24, 2026, 10:42 a.m.|Published: Feb. 24, 2026, 10:35 a.m.

By Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — There is a moment in almost every talented player’s career when all the coaching, all the tweaking, and all the well-intentioned advice piling up from every corner of the organization becomes more of a burden than a blueprint. For Bo Naylor, that moment may have been the turning point that’s now unleashing one of the most exciting breakout stories of 2025 spring training.

The Guardians’ catcher has been one of the early standouts of Cactus League play, posting a .750 average with a 2.050 OPS through his first two appearances. The raw numbers are staggering. But even more striking — and more telling for Naylor’s long-term trajectory — is the way he looks doing it.

The latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast with cleveland.com beat reporters Joe Noga and Paul Hoynes gives listeners an on-the-ground look at exactly what has changed for Naylor this spring. The conversation is one that every Cleveland fan who has been waiting on this kid to break through needs to hear.

A simpler swing, a bigger future

The mechanical changes are immediately noticeable to anyone who has watched Naylor at the plate in previous seasons. The pronounced high leg kick that had become a defining — and at times destabilizing — feature of his pre-swing routine? Gone. Or at least dramatically reduced. What’s replaced it is a cleaner, more direct approach that Noga spotted right away.

“The point here is Bo Naylor looks and feels very comfortable at the plate right now. He’s sort of eliminated that high leg kick. His swing is a little more compact and a little quicker,” Noga said on the podcast.

A quicker, more compact swing means less room for mechanical failure in a fraction of a second. It means better plate coverage. It means more consistent, hard contact. For a player with Naylor’s raw power and athleticism, a simplified approach could be the difference between a solid starter and a legitimate offensive force at one of the game’s most demanding positions.

Stephen Vogt is calling his shot

Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt isn’t quietly hoping for a big year from his catcher — he’s saying it out loud. And Hoynes, who has covered this franchise through multiple playoff runs, says the vibe around Naylor feels genuinely different heading into this season.

“He looks loose and free. Vogt has said he thinks this is going to be a breakout season for Naylor...” Hoynes said on the podcast.

Loose and free. Those are two words that should make opposing pitchers uncomfortable. A hitter who isn’t fighting himself at the plate, who isn’t second-guessing every pitch sequence, who isn’t carrying the accumulated weight of unmet expectations into every at-bat — that’s a dangerous hitter. That appears to be exactly the version of Naylor showing up in Goodyear this spring.

Learning to trust himself

So what actually sparked the change? Hoynes offered a theory on the podcast that rings true for anyone who has ever been buried under too much information at the wrong moment: Naylor finally stopped sorting through everyone else’s input and started trusting his own instincts.

“He’s one of those guys that maybe got over-coached a little bit. He was listening to a lot of different people and finally, he just kind of took a deep breath and said let’s do it my way here. Take everything I’ve learned and just kind of free my mind up and swing the bat,” Hoynes said.

It’s a story as old as the game itself. A highly-touted prospect arrives in the majors and suddenly has a chorus of voices telling him to adjust this, tweak that, think about the other thing. The result is paralysis by analysis — a hitter who is so busy processing that he can no longer react. The talent is there. The noise drowns it out.

Naylor, who hit .290 in September last season and delivered a series of clutch, high-leverage hits as the Guardians pushed for the postseason, seems to have finally found the filter. He absorbed what was useful, discarded what wasn’t, and rebuilt his approach from scratch — his way.

The potential has always been there

For context, Naylor slugged 14 home runs last season — placing him in the top five on the club during a year when Cleveland’s offense was not a strength. His late-season surge wasn’t luck; it was a preview. The talent that made him a first-round pick hasn’t disappeared. It’s been waiting for this kind of clarity.

If the Naylor who is showing up in Goodyear — simplified swing, free mind, confident approach — is the one who takes the field for a full 162-game season, this Guardians offense has a dangerous new dimension.

To hear Noga and Hoynes break down the full Bo Naylor story — the mechanics, the mindset, and why this spring feels so different — catch the latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. The breakout season may have already begun.

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José Ramírez is already the most dangerous man in Guardians camp — and it has nothing to do with his bat

Updated: Feb. 24, 2026, 10:42 a.m.|Published: Feb. 24, 2026, 10:42 a.m.

By Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — What does it take to walk into a clubhouse and make every single teammate feel like the most important guy in the room? For José Ramírez, it comes as naturally as hitting baseballs into the Arizona desert sky.

The Guardians have opened their Cactus League schedule with a 4-0 record, and while the wins have been a welcome sight, a compelling storyline emerging from Goodyear this spring isn’t just about what’s happening between the lines — it’s about what’s happening in the clubhouse before and after the games. And it all centers on No. 11.

The latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, featuring cleveland.com beat reporters Joe Noga and Paul Hoynes, dives deep into Ramírez’s early spring, and the picture they paint is one of a player who doesn’t just lead by example — he leads by intention, by awareness, and by making every single teammate feel valued.

The response heard around Goodyear

Coming off a massive contract extension signed in the offseason, there were natural questions about how Ramírez would arrive to camp after a winter that was far from routine. A fourth child on the way kept him in Cleveland for much of the offseason, meaning the meticulous training regimen he usually follows was interrupted. You’d never know it from what he did Monday against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Ramírez went 2 for 3 with a double, a home run, and four RBIs in a 9-5 victory. But the home run wasn’t just a home run — it was a statement. Earlier in the game, he crushed a ball that everyone in the park thought was gone, only to have it ruled a ground-rule double. His answer the next time up? Same spot. Elevated. No doubt.

Noga captured the moment perfectly on the podcast: “Yeah, it sounded like it was typical José fashion. Well, if you’re going to call this first one a double, I’m going to erase all doubt with the second one and put it well out of the ballpark for a home run there.”

That’s not just talent. That’s a mentality. That’s the kind of icy, calculated response that makes teammates believe in themselves because they believe in him first.

No cliques. No exceptions.

But the most illuminating moments Hoynes shared on the podcast weren’t about home runs at all. They were about the quiet, consistent ways Ramírez makes the entire Guardians roster feel like a team rather than a collection of individuals.

“He’s still the focal point of that team and he’s in good spirits. When he walks in that clubhouse, he’s talking to everybody. Everybody kind of gravitates toward him. There’s no clicks when it comes to José. He talks to everyone and he just kind of fires everybody up,” Hoynes said.

No cliques. That detail is impossible to overstate. In a professional baseball clubhouse — where veterans, prospects, roster bubble players, and stars all share the same space — the natural tendency is for groups to form along invisible lines. Ramírez refuses to allow it. He talks to everyone. He energizes everyone. He makes it about the team, every day, without exception.

‘Jonesy’s back’

Perhaps the most telling anecdote from the podcast is a small one. When Nolan Jones had a big game against the Milwaukee Brewers last weekend, Ramírez walked into the locker room the very next day with a declaration that meant more than any box score.

“José, walks into the locker room and said, ‘Nolan Jones is back. Jonesy’s back,’” Hoynes recalled.

Two words. Massive impact. Public recognition from the best player in the building has a way of changing the trajectory of a teammate’s confidence — and Ramírez knows it. He sees everything. And he makes sure everyone knows he’s paying attention.

The foundation is set

With a new contract, a new child, and an interrupted offseason, every excuse was available for Ramírez to ease into spring. Instead, he’s come out swinging — literally and figuratively. The Guardians are 4-0, their franchise player looks locked in, and the clubhouse is clearly feeding off his energy from day one.

To hear Noga and Hoynes break down exactly why this version of Ramírez might be more dangerous than ever, tune into the latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. This is the episode that sets the tone for the entire season — don’t miss it.

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Tanner Bibee is done carrying the weight of his contract — a dominant spring debut signals his fresh start

Updated: Feb. 24, 2026, 10:46 a.m.|Published: Feb. 24, 2026, 10:43 a.m.

By Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The contract was supposed to be a reward. Instead, for a stretch of the 2024 season, it became an anchor.

Tanner Bibee arrived at last year’s spring training as one of the most exciting young starters in the American League, fresh off a five-year extension that signaled the Cleveland Guardians believed he was a genuine cornerstone of their rotation for years to come. What followed was one of the most instructive — and in many ways, most human — storylines of the entire season: a talented pitcher who let the invisible weight of elevated expectations push him into trying to be more than he was ready to be.

But that was then. The 2026 version of Tanner Bibee showed up to the Guardians camp with a clean slate. On Monday he tossed two scoreless innings against the Diamondbacks, and came away with something even more valuable — a clear head.

The latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast with cleveland.com beat reporters Joe Noga and Paul Hoynes digs into what Bibee’s spring debut really means and why the mental reset is every bit as significant as the numbers on the mound.

His own words: ‘I didn’t handle either one’

The most powerful part of the Bibee conversation on the podcast is the level of self-awareness he’s brought to his own struggles. This isn’t a player making excuses or deflecting blame. This is a young pitcher who looked in the mirror, made an honest accounting of what went wrong, and walked out of the offseason with a sharper understanding of himself.

Hoynes, who spoke with Bibee directly after his first spring outing, relayed the pitcher’s candid self-assessment on the podcast: “He said there was adversity I could control and adversity I couldn’t control, and I didn’t really do a good job of handling either one. But he said he finally got kind of came to terms with it in the second half of the season and he really pitched well down the stretch.”

Owning both types of failure — the controllable and the uncontrollable — is not easy. It’s also not common. That level of intellectual honesty about his own performance is a sign of genuine growth, and the numbers bore it out. Bibee went 3-and-0 with a 1.30 ERA in his final four starts of the regular season, including a five-game winning streak after the All-Star break. The talent was never gone. It was buried under pressure that had no business sitting on a pitcher’s shoulders.

The contract that became a burden

So how did it start? Hoynes pointed to an unlikely culprit — the extension itself. The same deal designed to reward Bibee’s early brilliance and secure his future ended up creating a psychological burden that quietly warped his approach on the mound, pushing him to reach for something beyond his current capacity.

“He did say the extension that he signed in spring training, that five year extension, maybe put a little extra pressure on him, made him try to do more than he was capable of doing as a pitcher. But I think he’s come to terms with that and he looked great yesterday,” Hoynes said on the podcast.

It’s a paradox baseball players face more often than the public realizes. A big contract tells a pitcher the organization believes in him — but it also silently raises the bar for what he must deliver every single time out. For Bibee, the solution wasn’t trying harder. It was trying smarter. It was trusting his arsenal rather than trying to be a version of himself he wasn’t yet ready to become.

Mental coaching clicks into place

The Guardians have invested meaningfully in mental performance resources for their players, and for Bibee, those investments appear to have paid off in the back half of 2025 — and are carrying forward into this spring. Noga pointed to this evolution on the podcast as the critical piece of Bibee’s resurgence.

“All of the mental performance coaching that goes into getting some of these guys through the season seems to have clicked in and paid off. And now Bibee comes back this year with a clean slate,” Noga said.

Clean slate. Two words that carry enormous weight for a pitcher who spent a significant stretch of last season fighting a battle on the inside as much as the one on the mound. And if his Cactus League debut is any indication — seven batters faced, two scoreless innings, one hit, one strikeout — the reset is genuine.

Why it matters for Cleveland

The Guardians’ rotation ambitions in 2026 rest heavily on Bibee and Gavin Williams delivering at the top of the rotation. If Bibee is the pitcher he flashed the potential to be — the one dominant enough to earn a five-year deal before age 25 — Cleveland’s starting staff can be one of the most formidable in the AL. If last year’s struggles carry over, the math gets considerably harder.

Everything about the early returns from Goodyear suggests the former scenario is far more likely. A pitcher who has genuinely processed his adversity, simplified his mindset, and arrived to camp with an authentic fresh start is one of the most dangerous commodities in spring training baseball.

Want the full story, straight from the reporters who covered every start of Bibee’s difficult season and were there when he broke it all down this spring? Listen to the latest episode of the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast — this is the storyline you’ll be talking about all the way to October.

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