Guardians quit on valuable 2024 playoff reliever yet again in unfortunate twist

Pedro Avila’s second stint with the Guardians was nowhere near as long as his first. 

On Tuesday, the Guardians granted Avila his release after he was informed that he wouldn’t be on the team’s Opening Day roster, adding yet another twist to Avila’s odd marriage with the Guardians that's spanned a good part of the past two years.

Former Guardians reliever Pedro Avila is back in free agency

Avila’s initial stint with the Guardians began in April 2024 after he was DFA’d by the Padres, and he quietly turned into one of the best most valuable pitchers on the Guardians’ roster. 

While he was one of the lowest-leverage arms in the bullpen, Avila still posted a 3.25 ERA in 74 2/3 innings of work, which trailed only Cade Smith and Hunter Gaddis when it came to innings pitched out of the bullpen. 

The Guardians initially left him off their postseason roster in that year’s ALDS before adding him for their ALCS matchup against the Yankees, where he threw four scoreless innings across three games. 

That performance wasn’t enough for him to stick on the roster, however, as the Guardians DFA’d him to make room for Paul Sewald. He then rejected a subsequent assignment to Triple-A, making him a free agent. 

He spent 2025 pitching for the Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball and had a 4.04 ERA in 82 1/3 innings while getting some work as a starter. He had a 17.8% strikeout rate and 43.9% ground ball rate during that time. 

That performance was clearly enough for the Guardians to want to roll the dice on him via a split-level deal, but it seems like he had some kind of opt-out in his deal that allowed for him to test the MLB waters after not making the Opening Day roster. 

Avila posted a 3.24 ERA in 8 1/3 innings with the Guardians this spring with one walk and four strikeouts.

While there’s still a chance that Avila could come back to the Guardians on a minor league deal if he doesn’t find an MLB job to his liking, 

“We told him, ‘We use 30 pitchers here every year,’” manager Stephen Vogt told reporters, per Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes. “We know Pedro is going to help us win some major league games at some point. It’s just unfortunate that it’s not going to be on Opening Day.”

He always had an uphill battle to make camp thanks to longman Kolby Allard also being in camp, but the presence of Rule 5 pick Peyton Pallette made it even tougher for Avila to be on the Guardians’ initial 26-man roster. 

Pallette likely isn’t going anywhere since the only way they could remove him from the roster is by exposing him to waivers, so he’ll likely suck up a lot of the low-leverage opportunities that could have been filled by Avila.