3 unexpected ways the Guardians are impacted by the Rafael Devers trade

On Sunday night, the Giants and Red Sox stunned the baseball world by linking up for a trade that sent Rafael Devers to San Francisco in exchange for pitchers Jordan Hicks and Kyle Harrison along with prospects James Tibbs and Jose Bello. It was, by all standards, an incredible trade. 

It also didn't have the smoothest execution.

An hour before he was traded, Devers answered questions about Boston’s win over the Yankees and was packing up for a cross-country trade with the Red Sox. And while he's still headed west, he'll just be doing it on a different flight.

On the other side, the Giants traded Kyle Harrison minutes before he was supposed to start on Sunday Night Baseball and ended up using a pitcher before he was officially announced to be on the roster. 

Don’t let that disorganization fool you, however; this trade will impact seemingly every team in baseball.

Here’s three ways it will impact the Guardians.

3 unexpected ways the Guardians are impacted by the Rafael Devers trade

They’re going to see less of Devers 

This is a win for the Guardians no matter how you spin it. He’s slugged nine career home runs at Progressive Field, and is a career .335 hitter against Cleveland. They’ll go from seeing him twice a year (with the chance of seeing him in the postseason lingering in the background) to seeing him once a year and only having to worry about seeing him play at Progressive Field every other year. 

While there’s a chance that Devers’ contract doesn’t age well, he’s still one of the best hitters in baseball. Seeing less of him is a good thing.

The Red Sox still have a solid lineup and a plethora of top prospects, but they now have a roster that's based a lot more around "potential" than it was 24 hours ago.

It’ll help José Ramírez’s trophy case trophy case

Here’s how the American League Silver Slugger results have gone since 2020:

2020: José Ramírez
2021: Rafael Devers
2022: José Ramírez
2023: Rafael Devers
2024: José Ramírez

Ramírez has been an All-Star in each of the last four seasons; Devers has been one in three of the last four seasons. 

Ramírez has been a plague upon American League pitchers for the last decade, but Devers has been with him step by step. 

And while Devers wasn’t going to stand in Ramírez’s way for an award this year due to his move to becoming a full-time designated hitter, he’s the National League’s problem. 

While Ramírez still has to compete with Boston’s Alex Bregman (who is the whole reason that Devers has spent this year at designated hitter), it’s clear that the race for the American League third base awards is a two horse race.

Ramírez and Bregman are the only two AL third baseman to be worth 3.0+ bWAR (old friend Ernie Clement is third at 2.3).

The trade market could be all over the place 

Much like the Lakers' stunning trade for Luka Dončić earlier this year, this was a trade that caught the sports world by surprise and featured a return that was panned by everyone.

It’ll be interesting to see if this trade impacts the rest of the MLB world the same way the Dončić trade has impacted the rest of the NBA. 

While the Magic showed that NBA teams will still overpay for talent when they gave up a ransom to get Desmond Bane, the two leagues are a bit different when it comes to the transaction markets. 

The baseball hot stove can heat up like no other, but it’ll be interesting to see if Boston’s meager return has any lingering effects on trade talks this summer. 

This could also just be a Boston Red Sox problem. The Red Sox have dealt away two future Hall of Famers in Mookie Betts and Devers in the past six years, and the only thing they have to show for it is catcher Connor Wong and the return they got for Devers. 

While the Guardians will never sign a player to the kind of contract like the Red Sox gave Devers, they’re always involved in the transaction market in some capacity, so any change to market valuation will still impact them even if they’re not trying to ink players to $300 million contracts. 

The Guardians will get their first look at the new-look Devers tomorrow when they open a three-game series against the Giants in San Francisco.