{"id":72759,"date":"2025-08-15T23:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72759\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T23:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:37:09","slug":"guardians-outright-trevor-stephan-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/72759\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardians Outright Trevor Stephan – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardians passed right-handed reliever Trevor Stephan<\/a> through outright waivers and assigned him to Triple-A Columbus, per Tim Stebbins of MLB.com<\/a>. That removes him from the 40-man roster, but Stephan will remain with the organization.<\/p>\n

While Stephan could have rejected the assignment, doing so would\u2019ve meant forfeiting the remainder of this season\u2019s $2.3MM salary, all of next year\u2019s $3.5MM salary and the $1.25MM buyout on his 2027 club option. Stephan is about a month shy of reaching the necessary service time to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency but still retain his salary.<\/p>\n

The now-29-year-old was a breakout reliever for the 2022 Guardians, tossing 63 2\/3 innings with a 2.69 ERA, 30.7% strikeout rate, 6.7% walk rate and 19 holds. Cleveland signed him to a four-year, $10MM extension with a pair of club options prior to the 2023 season. He tallied 28 holds that year but saw his rate stats and velocity dip. In spring of 2024, Stephan was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament and underwent Tommy John surgery. He\u2019s yet to make it back to a major league mound.<\/p>\n

Stephan has had his rehab assignment stopped and restarted a couple times this summer. Cleveland activated him from the 60-day IL in late July and optioned him to Columbus. He\u2019s pitched 13 2\/3 innings in the minors this year and been rocked for a 9.22 ERA, although nine of the runs against him came in a brutal pair of back-to-back outings around the All-Star break. Over his past five appearances, Stephan has looked more like himself. He\u2019s tossed five shutout frames and fanned five opponents \u2014 albeit with four walks issued in that time as well.<\/p>\n

Stephan\u2019s outright is the latest in an overhaul of a Cleveland bullpen that looked almost unbeatable when he and Emmanuel Clase<\/a> were regularly handling the eighth and ninth innings. Stephan\u2019s future is at least somewhat up in the air, in light of his injuries and struggles during rehab work, while Clase\u2019s outlook is even cloudier. He\u2019s been on administrative leave<\/a> since July 28 in connection with an MLB investigation into violations of the league\u2019s sports-betting policy. Clase and teammate Luis Ortiz<\/a> are on leave through Aug. 31, though if the investigation hasn\u2019t concluded at that point, the leave can be extended even further.<\/p>\n

Righties Cade Smith<\/a> and Hunter Gaddis<\/a> now stand as the top two leverage options in manager Stephen Vogt<\/a>\u2019s bullpen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Guardians passed right-handed reliever Trevor Stephan through outright waivers and assigned him to Triple-A Columbus, per Tim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82,45012],"class_list":["post-72759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-trevor-stephan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}